With our city house going ‘Sale Agreed’, the lead up to today meant the past few weeks have been incredibly hectic! The house underwent a thorough cleaning, decluttering, and was painted, fixed, and more. On top of all that, we faced a roof leak just before the estate agents photographer was scheduled to take photos of the house for advertising. We also had to replace the rusted, beyond repair gas boiler. Amidst all these renovations and financial outpouring, we celebrated two significant birthdays for our dads: one at 70 and the other at 60. The latter necessitated a quick trip to England to celebrate. My husband, who’s just started learning to drive, needed to find his own car before we moved to the country house. So, in addition to our regular trips to the hardware store, we visited car dealerships and explored secondhand car websites to find the right car for him. After some disagreements, he finally bought the car he wanted and picked it up last Saturday. At least that ordeal won’t need to be repeated for a few years (^_^).

In the meantime, we’ve settled into our country house, but we’ll officially move down this weekend. We’ll move the rest of our belongings when we hire a moving van to transport the remaining furniture from our city house. While we wait for the sale of our city house to complete, we’ll start finishing that new house, which needs a lot of work, but at least we’re living there now. It’s so beautiful there! And I haven’t even mentioned how we’re progressing with our surrogacy journey, which we’ve also been quietly working on in the background. There’s some hope that it might soon come to fruition. Amidst all these changes, last week, we received devastating news from a close friend. Her sister, who was around my age, married with three young children, had been battling cancer for over a year, coinciding with my mother’s health struggles. Tragically, she passed away. The news came as a shock to my husband and me after the hectic few weeks we had endured. I held on for a bit longer when I hugged our devastated friend at her sister’s funeral. Since then, I can’t help but think about my mom every day, hoping that she’ll recover from her latest cancer diagnosis and pull through.