THE HOUSE IS A HOME

These are perfect Autumnal days, beginning close to freezing and ending with warm afternoons where a heavenly light bathes everything in a warm yellow. The afternoon sun illuminates the hillsides where goats graze to the melodic ringing of their bells and poplars stretch up like brush strokes of a golden tumeric.

There are moments when the light is so perfect that the scene before me appears so fragile that if I reached out into it all it might crumble to a fine dust. Moments where the girls look up to the sky, delighted by aeroplane trails or peer down to the ground to examine an acorn in their path. This ephereal light catches in their hair or eyelashes, casts shadows across half of their faces or dances in the leaves in the trees behind them.

 

We carved two small pumpkins for Halloween and then, as a necessary sacrifice for our frugality, cooked them the next day in a soup. I suspect this will be a trauma that Little L rebukes us for in later life. How she had to bear parents so cruel and financially inept that a lovingly created decoration had to be eaten the next day...

I realised the other day that I hadn't posted for over a month. This is in part because we finally moved into the house (!) and also because I returned to England for a visit with the girls. So we have been really busy and the ever promised 'day-for-myself-without-the-girls' has been postponed continuously.

Moving into the house felt like such a celebration. Despite the lack of comfort, the sense of satisfaction of finally being able to live here is immense. We're slowly getting through our 'Absolute Priority' list, almost as fast as we are adding new tasks to it. We are living on one floor in the bedroom with a soon-to-be bathroom with the landing hosting a temporary kitchen. We have heating, running water, a toilet (flushes with a bucket), a bath and the trusty camping stove is back in the game. Perfect!

Returning to Somerset to see family and friends felt really special and equally left us excited to return here. The trip put a helpful perspective on what I am missing and what is, in fact, pretty good here. Perhaps these returns home are always a part of building something new elsewhere as we are able to shake off some of our rose-tinted pinings as well as dose up on time with much missed loved ones.
 

So, as the nights draw in, we're all holed up in our little house ready for what the winter has in store for us and it feels great.