How will Santa know we have moved?

Good grief, is that October already? I feel like I've lost a few days because I dived into the big pile of Harlan Coben novels that I ordered off the Book People, and I've not been able to stop reading until they're all done. I'm on my last one. And Stevie has just broken me from my reading marathon with a phone call to say the removal team will be visiting later this week, and I need to have the apartment fully inventoried before they arrive. And by that I don't mean "Living room: curtains, light fixtures, wood flooring, phone/braodband/power sockets", oh no..... what it means is documenting all our belongings room by room complete with a value for them if we needed to replace them as new. Fun, fun, fun!

To give you an example of how horrific a task this is, I wrote about it here when we were preparing for the move out to Berlin. Let me just say, I have tried really hard not to buy *stuff* that might take us beyond the limits of the container that we must fit it all into, but I have not tried very hard at getting rid of things that we possibly don't need, and haven't needed for a very long time. Things like the highchair which admittedly has performed a really useful role as a coat rack should not be returning to the UK with us. There are other things which looking back at my old post probably should be got rid of. That hurricane lamp is still sitting stuffed with letters that I haven't looked at since before we came here...ugh.

Anyway, I am setting off now, armed with Excel, bin bags, and a strong cup of tea, and I am going to go through this apartment room by room, ruthlessly pricing and tidying, or chucking out or ebaying, and I will not stop until I get bored!

In other news, we finally told the kids that we are moving back to England. After the cheers of "Yay! We're going back to our old house!" subsided we were able to explain that in fact, no we would be going to a different house as we have to find a house near to a school that we can get them into, they were still very happy. Orla in fact couldn't be happier. She asked about her new school, but mostly wanted to know that she would be able to visit her cousins more. Hamish, had one concern, which was "How will Santa know we have moved?", to which I said that when we write to him we can pop in a change of address card, which seemed to satisfy Hamish.

We also told them that we are planning a trip back a few weeks before we move to find a house. I am thoroughly looking forward to this trip as there is nothing I enjoy more than looking round houses. The downside though is that according to Righmove there are very few houses that suit our requirements in the right areas. Hamish asked whether he can choose the house. I think he may struggle to find what he's after even more than I will as he says he wants either a blue house or a black one.


Links: Get ready for a rush of activity!