On Friday afternoon, just after our buyers' surveyor left, I called a guy who was privately advertising a house for rent near where we currently live.  He told me it's furnished, which we didn't want but we decded to go view it just to kinda get a feel for what's about.

Anyway, we viewied it yesterady afternoon and it's just perfect for us.  It's clean (newly decorated, new carpets) and fresh.  It even has brand new mattresses on the beds (still in wrapping) and all new cutlery and crockery (again, still wrapped).  The reason for all this newness is that the couple who own it only just put it up for rent and we will be the first tenants.  It's 3 bedrooms with a small garden.  It's got about 4 parks within moments walking distance, is very close to the train station and Becca's playgroup.  And is only a 5 min walk to Ellie's nursery.  We shook on it there and then. 

We were all a bit shocked really.  The owners have never done this before so were unsure of what to do.  They were saying they'd had a stream of DSS types through that morning and had been shocked at the thought of some of the people they'd seen having their house.  They had forgotten to put no DSS on their ad.   I guess after all that, a family of normal looking people was fantastic.

They know we only want a 6 month lease and so we shook hands on it and have agreed to send them a deposit by cheque tomorrow.

Mike is still in shock!  He's been at work all week and been mega busy so I've kinda made all the decisions alone.  He left for work on Monday with a house to sell, and by last night. the house was sold, we'd arranged a rental and I'm talking about calling shippers next week to get our stuff packed into storage until the visa comes.

It's really has all fallen into place.  With the rental being furnished, we can get our stuff all packed off and as soon as we get visas, we 'll advise it can be shipped and then it should arrive in Oz around the same time as us.  We decided if we were going to be without our stuff, then it's better to be without it here whilst everything else is still familiar.

After viewing the house, we treated the girls to a trip to Deep Sea World which Ellie LOVED.  We then took them to Beancross Farm for dinner to celbrate.  I've gotta say, this has been one of the most crazy weeks of my entire life - I susepct there are a few more coming though.

We also got a huge pile of stuff cleared from our garage yesterday.  Because we'll be packing up much earlier than anticipated, we need to sort out and clean all the camping equipment, tools etc.  Not a small job by any means!!!!!

Mike's brother is coming over for lunch in a while, then we're going over to my parents to return some tools we borrowed, and give them some of our outdoor Xmas stuff which we can't take over.

Did I say - my brain is mince!!!!!  I feel like there are 10 people in there all shouting at me and all I can hear is noise.