Yes, we really did it

Well, it's been six months since I drafted that first post, and what a lot has happened in that time! Most importantly, I should really change the name of this blog to 'Two and a half escape to the country' as we've now got a little Warburton bun in the oven, getting ready to ping at the end of December!

Two weeks ago we left the wonderful city of Liverpool, our home for thirteen years, and moved into the village of Shipton-under-Wychwood.

I can't believe that this is actually our home, I mean look at it! It looks like a setting from a Richard Curtis rom-com! Hopefully we'll be able to use this blog to keep in touch with our friends and family around the country as we settle in to our new life.

So here is our new house - The Swallows! I will upload a little tour of the house once we've unpacked everything, but fortunately there's not much that we need to do in terms of decorating or DIY so we've been able to get set up straight away. One thing we need to do before it gets too cold is to install central heating as at the moment we're relying on log-burning stoves - very pretty but not enough to heat the whole house. We have also replaced this monstrosity of a toilet seat, which the previous owners kindly left for us.

We're lucky to have a nice garden and an enormous hedge that goes around three quarters of the house, so we will be looking for help to maintain it as neither of us really know what we're doing!

I've already set up the guest room, as you can see here being modelled by Suki, so visitors are welcome imminently! Suki, by the way, has adapted very well to her new home and can't wait to be let outside. She did escape out of the bathroom window onto the flat roof earlier in the week, so hilarity ensued as we tried to coax her back in before she went on an expedition around the road via all of our neighbours roofs.

Our neighbours have all been very friendly so far, and we've already had offers of knitted goodies for the little one. We haven't yet met anyone our age, but we're hoping that this will change when we start our NCT classes in a couple of weeks. There must be some young people lurking out there somewhere!

I'll leave you with a photo from our walk to the Doctors the other day - quite different to Allerton Road!

Are we really going to do this?

That's what I keep on thinking to myself, as at the moment it doesn't seem quite real.

We've often spoke about 'moving to the countryside' as the ultimate dream, but I don't think I ever really thought it would happen. But yes, these two city dwellers have made the huge decision to pack our bags and relocate to rural Oxfordshire.

Last week was full of adrenaline...was this house really 'the one'? Was somebody else going to beat us to it and gazump us at the last minute? Was I really going to hand in my notice at my nice secure job in a school with people that I absolutely love? And then the excitement of having our offer accepted on our dream house!

And now....the waiting.

The painstakingly slow process of buying a house. Now the adrenaline has gone, all we can do is wait expectantly for emails from solicitors, surveyors and estate agents, all the while knowing that this little dream we have built for ourselves in our perfect little house, could all come crashing without any notice, through no fault of our own.