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That sounds gory. This won’t be. The packing and storing is well underway and our home is beginning to feel a bit under furnished. This time next month we will be out and settled in at my parents’ house. Thinking about how this will be has made me feel very grateful. I know a lot of people would have limited enthusiasm about moving in with their parents for an indefinite number of months. I’m looking forward to it. There will be times when I’m embarrassed by my imperfect parenting and the parts of life that don’t shimmer but even that’s ok. They understand. I have wonderful parents.

As in the post about the guy who took ten years, this is part of our journey and it is a privilege to share it along the way. We get on really well with my mum and dad and I’m looking forward to enjoying spending parts of our life together that you don’t normally share. Evenings getting the kids to bed and then enjoying some moments in the calm. Bath times. That quiet moment when the baby goes down for a nap.

Speaking of that baby, he’s doing a lot of lying on the floor waggling his limbs. I don’t think it will be long before he’s crawling. Another moment to enjoy sharing, another adventure for him to embark on.

I’m aware that not everyone has the same experience with their parents as I do with mine. It is a rare and special thing. That might be a really good job when the baby breaks an ornament and we find out there is some problem with planning that at the moment we haven’t foreseen. Good job they don’t have a lot of ornaments. And that when he is asleep Birch is really beautiful.

There seem to be a lot of things to think about when planning to build a house. The thing currently occupying us is what to live in while we build. There are lots of options which doesn’t always make for an easy decision.

We’d really like to be living on our land as soon as we can. Partly so we can start planting and also to feel like we’ve really started our adventure. That rules out renting (for now, anyway; if it gets really bad we could come back to this option). That leaves some kind of temporary dwelling on site.

The obvious option is a static caravan. There are some advantages to this: essentially a partioned space with all the basics for what you need, something you can resell when you’re done, with little expense, relatively speaking. We aren’t very much static caravan kind of people although I can see why it works for a lot of people. Certainly it’s straightforward and inexpensive.

The idea we’ve had been sticking with for a while is a yurt. A big, circular space within which we can incorporate most of what we need, with a toilet and shower block located externally. A big yurt would feel like a good space, but it would be one space all together. Nowhere to escape to, although we could put up our bell tent as another space to use. Yurts are pretty, and can be well insulated and cosy. We had a holiday in a yurt. That won’t be like living in one for around a year. We could keep it afterwards as an extra space, a good place for guests although there would be maintenance costs associated with that. A more expensive option, but also prettier. The external toilet and shower, not so much.

Another option is a kind of shed, built under permitted development rights that would eventually be a workshop but in which we could live. Thinking we would live in a shed for a year doesn’t fill me with enthusiasm but maybe I have yet to perceive the vision.

I very much would like to be warm. Beyond that I like to think I’m flexible. I may need to be. Any great suggestions?!

Something exciting is happening. People are offering to help us. Others want to be involved and join us in the journey. People who can see what we are aiming to do and are keen to share the dream. I’m really amazed. It is so great to find we are not walking this path alone. What we are aiming to do is not the usual thing, it’s quite different and to some people kind of odd. But it turns out there are quite a few who want to help us. I didn’t expect this and it is extraordinary and lovely and really special. It also seems like such an opportunity, to share this part of our life, and to have what we build become a patchwork of the people who have had a part in it.

I’m also really grateful. I’ve been feeling a bit scared, a bit over whelmed. So much has changed, so much is still to change but we are not alone. To know there are people who will say “hang on, what about this…”, or “yes, this is good, keep going” just feels so much better.

I’m always amazed and moved when I find people care. I’m very introverted and spend too much time inside my soul, but to open the curtains and feel some love takes me by surprise every time. Thank you.

I don’t actually think we should build a patchwork house. I’d love to make some wall hangings though.

We are getting ready to move out. No fixed completion date yet but it’s looking like the end of the month. I’m feeling quite nervous. Life has changed over this last year, this makes that even more apparent.

It seems strange looking back. When we found out we were going to have Birch our reaction immediately included the thoughts “we’ll have to sell the campervan” and “we will have to move house”. I also thought that I wouldn’t get to swim much any more, that I wouldn’t be able to do as much work and that my freedom at home would be curtailed. All of these things have been true. What has been unexpected is how I feel about them. Some of them. I miss swimming and my work, I’m sad we had to sell the van. I’m aware that I’m not free like I was before Birch but somehow I don’t mind that at all. In fact, I find I love it. And we are moving house. Mostly that is very exciting. Partly it is scary.

I think it is probably true to say that planning laws are designed to put you off. They are long and obscure, details have to be hunted for, consultants have made a living out of making sense of them. I don’t think it needs to be that difficult. On the other hand I really don’t want our house to fall down. If I start looking too much into the details I start to feel anxious. Ben says I just have to trust him. He is confident and excited. Do I trust him to do this?

It’s a tricky thing building trust and confidence. On one hand I feel like I need my worries acknowledged, to feel like I’ve been heard and to be sure those worries will not become realities. On the other, it doesn’t help to sound like my worries are entirely legitimate and that there are cliff edges off which there is a reasonable chance we might fall.

If anyone can do this, and lots of people have, then Ben can. Yes, I trust him. I’m not going to read too much about details and building regs. And as with all the changes Birch has brought to us, it’s not always possible to know how you’ll feel when it comes to it. Maybe I won’t mind. In fact I think I might love it.

We were away at the weekend with friends. I thought I’d try to help in the kitchen. I was cutting an onion. It was a slithery one. I cut my finger.

Not a large or particularly deep cut, but there was some blood and that was too much for me. I turned grey (I’m told), went from hot, sweaty and nauseous to cold, shivery and sleepy in a few moments and did not help in the kitchen any more. I wonder if I’m going to be brave enough for this adventure.

We won’t be having onions.

It’s strange, feeling like on one hand I should be careful what I share publicly about our family life and the sense that I’m not being entirely honest. Although our dirty washing basket sometimes overflows I won’t be airing our dirty laundry here.

Here I will redress the balance slightly in the interests of honesty. Our children are sometimes naughty. They usually argue. They are sometimes sullen and rude. Except Birch, he’s lovely although perhaps not at night. I don’t know about that. Ben, having gone back to work, still gets up in the night to feed him. I don’t know how he became this selfless man, or how I got to be the one married to him.

I am not the human I would like to be, much less the wife I should be, or the mother I once thought I could be. I have plenty more work to do on developing patience. Sometimes it goes wrong. Then it’s an opportunity to say sorry. I’m glad there is that word, sorry.

I suspect this is just our version of normal life.

My blog doesn’t read quite that way. Even though I’m forecasting difficult moments still it reads like the idyll we long to create. So here is my confession. Just like yours, our life isn’t perfect. But we are trying really hard and sticking together anyway. It is worth it.

We watched an episode of Grand Designs the other night. As you might expect we are doing quite a bit of that. In this episode the guy spent ten years building his house. Ten years! His children were grown by the time he was finished. They had become builders and makers too, in different ways. It was an extraordinary and lovely thing.

Which is not to say that it will be ten years before we move into our houze. I hope it won’t be. It really won’t be. I know, unfortunately that I don’t have that kind of sticking power.

I do hope our project is a bit like that man’s though. He was relishing every moment, enjoying the process and not dashing to the finish line. I suspect his house will never be finished. Perhaps in a sense ours won’t be either. After all, really we are the house. I think that’s why Ben had wanted so much to do this. To make a house that reflects us, grows and ages with us, shows some strength as it weathers the storms that come our way. At the end of it all, is still standing.

The Man who Took Ten Years had a lot really right. He invested love and care in the building of his house, paid great attention to the detail and enjoyed the journey. We hope to build our physical house within one year but hope to give love and attention to detail to the building of our family. That will take more than ten years, but building our house together will be part of that journey.

There are moments in life which put everything into perspective. We are healthy, fed and warm. There is so much we haven’t had to go through. I’m not sure I would be the same good example that others have been going through trials that I have not looked in the face. I watch others endure with grace and beauty and I will try to remember that when challenges come. I suppose we are given these extraordinary examples to show how it is possible to keep going, to keep giving God glory and to do what is right despite great and continuing suffering. To spur us on to do better, to endure when our time comes, to keep going.

Also to remember to be thankful. There is such a very lot to be thankful for and it is so easy not to notice. Blessings come in a torrent every day but until there is an existential challenge I take them for granted, not even perceiving what is being done for me. Every moment. And what was already done. So many moments, each laced with myriad blessings that I skated over, enjoying without really appreciating. Today I stop to notice.

Ben asked me what I would like in the house, if I could have anything. My answer, after I thought about this, surprised me and then didn’t surprise me. What I’d really like in our house is a big bedroom. Big enough to have space for our bed, and then space and then somewhere to sit looking out of a big window. I love my bedroom. Not that I actually currently love my bedroom but I tend to want to be in a bedroom. It’s an improvement though. This time last year, stuck in bed our bedroom was the box room with a super king size mattress taking up the whole floor, on the floor. Functional but not pretty. When I’m not ill the thing I like about a bedroom is that it’s a place to go to take a minute. To find calm in the chaos, to retreat for a moment to somewhere that is most intimately mine (and Ben’s, although he’s not one for fleeing to a quiet place).

Now it’s also a different place to be with Birch, a private place for cooing and gurgling together. Sometimes a place to listen to the bustle of the house, extracted from it for a moment. I’d really like a beautiful bedroom with space to stand and stare. What is life without that moment?

I’d also consider putting a standing bath in the window. I do love a bath. Just about every night, in fact it’s where I often write. I conceive of luxury quite well. I don’t think that’s what this is about. We won’t have a bath while we live in a yurt.

I asked Myrtle what she would like if she could have anything. Her answer was humbling. If only she always felt like this :

“Well, I have everything I want so I don’t want anything. Except maybe a fluffy notebook. And a Harry Potter wand”.

Another week thinking nothing would change but expecting perhaps something might and then two pieces of news within a couple of days of each other. News that arrived in the right order.

There are two access tracks leading onto the field. One in the bottom right hand corner, and the other leading up to the top left corner. The current derelict house is in the top left corner but we had made our offer with the understanding that we wouldn’t be allowed to use the track that leads almost to the house. This would mean that the access track would need to be laid, and it would be long. And expensive. Also if there are services to be found they will be under the other access track. The news: maybe our new neighbours are pleased about us and what, if anything they have heard about our plans. They have agreed through the solicitors that we can use the sort, direct access track. This is great news! We are really pleased. It’ll be a much nicer way to come up to the house and will mean we don’t need to lay a track through the land. It will also save us a lot of money.

A couple of days after receiving this news we heard back from the pre-planning application. I guess not being the full planning application perhaps they can’t be as specific and clear as we had hoped, but in general they seem favorable to our idea. Not too keen on the access track though. The one we don’t need to build any more.

It’s nearly time to get our plans to the architects and decide finally on the company we would like to work with. Lots of fun evenings by the fire drawing plans of what we’d like to build, imagining sitting in front of a different fire, looking out on a different view.

In other news I’ve started making bread again. It is one of my favourite things to do but it must be about 2 years since I last made any,what with life, pregnancy and baby. This feels like a really happy thing 🙂