Moving House

I recently found out that my husband was being offered a job in a different city. This will be the 4th move for us since moving from Christchurch in January 2011 when we left our home at the foot of the hills to stay on a lifestyle block in the Manawatu so as to escape the aftershocks of the September 2010 earthquake. Soon after we left there was another major earthquake that destroyed more than the previous quake had and we were very lucky to be out of harm's way. My parents' house has since been fixed and in parts rebuilt around them.

We only stayed in the Manawatu for 9 months before needing to relocate to find work. The flat that we first moved into was damp and poky and I spent some dreadful and heavily pregnant and nauseated months there fearing that I would never be able to cope as the parent of three children. Thankfully everything worked a lot better for us when we moved to a new place that had sunlight and topsoil, so I could have a garden again.

However when we moved to the new flat my older son (then 4) asked me "when are we going to move to our new house?". It seems that people can adjust to any number of circumstances but it's probably not ideal for my sons to be moving from place to place. We have the security of having family with us but it does them (and me) no good to be uprooting and moving around. I fear that my elder boy will be much like me and have his roots fairly deep once he settles some place, and he does not like transitions much... but he seems to handle them a lot better than I did at his age. This is possibly because for all the moving that we have done he has always had the closeness and support of his family as the most important parts of his world. We are his home.

The place we will be moving into.

We may like having a home base, but it doesn't stop us from going on road-trips. Last Thursday we had to drive 140km to a different town to go and look at flats, and once we had found one we then had to drive back again. I may have to do the trip again on Wednesday to sign the tenancy agreement (but I'm hoping a fax will do the job). The Christmas before last we drove 250km to Waipukurau for a family lunch, and then came home via Granny's place (a round trip of 550km). I hope that we can eventually settle some place where we don't have to make ridiculous commutes, but for now thankfully my children are very forgiving, and at least they have each other for company and entertainment.

Exploring Google Earth - A. finds a picture of a humpback whale.
He's also been obsessively clock watching.

I have been showing A. some of the places we have visited on Google Earth. The thing he likes most is Street View, and how it wooshes around like you are flying. I would like to get a globe so that they have something concrete to manipulate when they find places. Recently, one of our best friends went to Sweden and we were fascinated to woosh around the Google Earth from New Zealand to Sweden to see how far it was. We aren't moving that far.

Thankfully we are moving back to a place where we know people. We will be back in the Manawatu, and surrounded by others who are also home-educating. The boys will be able to see other children of similar ages and catch up with old friends they may barely remember. It is also a larger house than the one we are currently in which will mean more room for making things and doing big...stuff! It's all a big adventure!

I have made up a calendar with pictures on it so that the boys can follow our progress and see how long we have to go and when things are happening. It is a continuation of the calendar I made for them when we went on holiday to see their grandparents in Christchurch in summer time. Through using the calendar, my older son recognises numbers, weekends, regularly scheduled events like his swimming lessons, and even my 3 year old can see pictures that remind him of past events like birthday parties and Christmas, and future events like trips, dentist appointments and... moving day.