OK, so where to start?  Basically, Landlord refused to sort out jobs we asked him to do.  Some were promises he made when we moved in, some were obvious things that needed to be fixed, such as all bathrooms in the house are blocked, the master en suite is particularly bad, flooding real bad.  We wrote letters, no reply.  It was recommended I call the tenancy advisory service, and I was told that he was making some serious breaches of the tenancy act.  Its such a great service here, they are really helpful.  Following their advice we issued a '10 day working order' which means by the law he has that long to 'remedy' the bad things.  He was furious, angryily telling Steve, 'Thats not how we do business here.'  He said he didn't have the time to sort out the issues and out right refused.  None of us want a court session, so we agreed to end the tenancy.  I'd already got the ball rolling by calling the council, a Health and Safety Officer inspected the problem areas and told us that if Mike refused to fix the problems, he could close down the house and there would be no more renting out the house.  Its pretty serious stuff.  We've since had Mike sign a letter to agree terminating the contract on June 6, that gives us three weeks to pack up and find another house to move into.  There are lots out there at the moment, so we're quite lucky and all within our price range.  Its just a really stressful time for us right now, we thought we'd found a perfect home, one we were planning on buying.  The girls are really settled here, Moons loves all the space.  But its not meant to be.  Glad we found out sooner rather than later.  I can't believe we've got to pack up and move again.  We're both feeling really drained from it all, we want this time in our lives to be over.  Fortunatly, a new friend I made on my counselling course has been really helpful, she knows loads of real estate agents, so they're all working for me and there are  a lot of people I can trust.  I just hope I never experience anything like this again.  I hope we can settle in our new home and actually relax and have nothing to worry about.  I know this situation will impact the girls, but no more so than staying here with flooded bathrooms and a lousy landlord.  Can't wait to reflect back on this blog when we're finally settled.  Obviously we must have done something really bad in a past life to warrant all of these hassles!

God, I hope we get sorted out soon.