Living as a family - Moving on

Making the moving on decision

Living as a family, as I described in an earlier Hub, was a five year plan, that has now turned into nine years. Now it is time to 'move on' !

Over the last 2 or 3 years my husband and I have found that the amount of work needed to keep the hundreds of rose plants, garden,hedges, pruning and lawns looking as they should,had become a full time job, leaving no time,or very little to do other things.

The rest of the family had their own lives,priorities, and young children to take care of and did not have the time to put into the upkeep of the gardens and lawns. They did what they could when they could. Having full time jobs,spare time was extremely limited.
With this in our minds we have all decided to sell this large property and each family buy their own smaller home.

This decision did not come easy for any of us and has taken some considerable time to reach, there was a lot of soul searching,is this what we really want. Discussions on a daily basis, we shared our ideas and needs, they shared theirs. Some days things went forward, other days things went back, and eventually everything was worked out and we were all more than happy with our final decisions. Big smiles all around. :) :)

First there was repairs and maintenance on the property, which fortunately there were not a lot, and did not take too much effort or time.
Next came the garden,cutting back shrubs, pruning, mulching and all the rest of it, There was not a lot to do there either, but it does all take time. I must say the garden looked a picture when we had finished.
Then came the slashing, mowing, whipper-snipping of the grass and lawns.
It was all pretty full on, but everyone pitched in which made it a lot easier.
We have had so much rain over the past three or four weeks, the lawn mowers were getting bogged,which made things a little harder, (this is our summer). We got there in the end, and were more than happy with ourselves. :)

This is a large property and we are all too busy doing other things to look after it as we would like to and it should be. The roses alone are a full time job.

Next was to choose an Estate Agent, that was a nightmare on it's own. Out of 9 that came to look at and discuss our needs and expectations re our property only one had any clues on selling acreage and his body language was spot on plus we all liked him. So now we had our Agent, thank goodness for that.
The "For Sale" Signs are up. It has just hit me, this is for real and it is all happening .

Three of the five garages were full of stuff that we had collected, some of it was never unpacked when we moved here. It was like Christmas going through things that we had long forgotten we had, so we figured that if we had not used it in nine years it would have to go, apart from some items that were special to us.

Next came the Garage Sales (Yard Sales) where you put all your unwanted stuff in and around your garage, put a sign out the front of your home, and people drop in to check it out and haggle over the price. It is fun, no one likes to pay what you are asking. It makes it very interesting,and you get a little money for stuff that you don't want or need anymore.

It was an eye opener for me, being a novice at garage sales, Items that to me were worth very little, folks would pay more then we thought they were worth, and things we thought were worth a little more they only wanted to pay half the price. It,s a strange and wonderful world.
Our Granddaughter was only three months old when we moved here, she is now over nine. She wanted to have her own stall to sell clothing that she and her brother had grown out of, plus unwanted toys, she sorted it, set it up and priced it all by herself, had her moneybox ready to collect the money. It was beautiful not one person tried to beat her down on price.( there was nothing over two dollars.) She was so excited and proud of herself, walking around smiling at everyone that came in, and I guess making sure that no one took anything of hers without paying. (that,s not nice but unfortunately it happens). She loved it and wants to do it again soon. She is a beautiful and very polite little lady, and oh so very much loved, as is our Grandson.

Our Grandchildren were a little upset when told that we would be moving away from them, we did explain to them that they could come for holidays anytime that they wanted to, that helped a little, but they were not fully convinced.
Also they did not understand that their new home (land size) would be a lot smaller than this property, yes they have visited friends that live on small blocks, but have never lived on one themselves, also these small blocks do not have very large water tanks as we have, they would not be able to hear and see all the different birds, rabbits, foxes, frogs, etc.
It will be a whole new experience and learning curve for them.

Moving day is going to be a very sad one for both of us, (although we are trying to stay positive. ) I get a tad emotional when it comes to my children and grandchildren and am not looking forward to it at all, I keep telling my self that we are not moving overseas or to another state, just 300k,s down the road. ( Self is finding it hard to get the message)

I would not change Living as a Family one iota, It was a fabulous, wonderful and a very special time of my life.
Now it is 'us' time and all being well we hope to see more of our beautiful Country and we will be taking Oliver with us He is all decked out,ready to go.

So if any folks out there are thinking of living as or with your family just try it, it's great, more so if there are Grandchildren involved. :) :)