So why the Waikato? {MNM's on the move}

Hopefully if you didn't already know our news, you've read yesterday's post here about the journey of selling our house in Wellington and our plan to move to the Waikato.

So now that the house is sold....what's the actual plan for the MNM's?!

We are going to live in Cambridge(which is about 25 minutes drive from Hamilton and about 20 minutes drive from where my parents live out in the country. Cambridge is such a lovely town and I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about it - Hamilton on the other hand..... lol! When we first had the idea of moving we thought that inevitably we would live in Hamilton but neither of us could really get terribly excited at the prospect - although it's changed a lot in the twenty years since I last lived there at university and has much more going for it now I will admit despite the rep it has!

But Cambridge also held a lot of appeal for us from the various visits we've had there over the past year or so visiting the kids bike park and also walking around the lovely lake in the centre of town (the pictures below are from our afternoon spent here before Christmas) so we figured why not experience smaller town life in a lovely leafy setting, with cycleways and greenbelt galore and a good football club to boot. The only thing that could initially be frustrating is the volume of state highway 1 traffic that goes through town - but with the expressway due to open in a year and a half hopefully that will be resolved in the near future.

We spent some time looking around Cambridge on our recent holiday over Easter. We were meant to be spending this time in Ohope but because I'd been so ill, we decided to cancel it and go straight to mum and dads for a couple of nights. This actually proved to be a wise move as it gave us two good days to look around and get a feel for the different housing areas and schools there.

With all the enrolment zones in place, we're still not 100% sure which school the boys will go to yet - there are 3 primary schools in the town all of which seem to have good facilities and are a similar size so at this stage we think any of them would be OK - but if anyone knows anything helpful that might distinguish between them - do tell! The big sticking point is that we can't actually enrol them until we have either a rental contract or house contract signed but we're working on that part of course and want to be able to get them settled in as soon as possible.

Work wise, we are both going to be working for my brother Sam's very successful and growing bike business - Evolution Cycles. It had always been the plan from the start that Mark would join the business if we moved north - the basic gist of his role to be out and about managing the 4 stores and up to 30 staff. I'd initially wondered if I might be able to keep doing my current role remotely but when I raised the idea with my boss he wasn't very keen - I understand why to a certain extent but that meant I then had to think about plan B.  Then a few conversations later with Sam, we worked out that actually there are a number of areas where my accounting and commercial skills can add real value to Evolution Cycles in its current phase of growth, so I'm really excited at the prospect of helping him grow the business bringing the skills I have to the table. So for us, this made the prospect of the move up an easier equation, knowing we didn't have to worry about looking for work once we got here.

Settlement day on our place is Friday 5 June - which is just over 7 weeks away. But we also have a trip to Rarotonga for my brother Sam and his fiancé Alesha's wedding on the 25 May for a week to try and fit around packing up our lives here as well. We arrive back from Rarotonga on Tuesday 2 June and move out 3 days later on the Friday so it's going to be busy times - we haven't yet decided exactly when we will finish up work, when the kids will finish school or any of that stuff but we know the details will work themselves out along the way. We are trusting God that He has a great plan in store for us on this next exciting adventure in our lives.

Don't get me wrong it is going to be VERY hard for us all to say goodbye to the life we have here in Wellington. Thirteen years is a long time to live in one place, and we have a very well established life here with so many friends made over the years from different workplaces, churches, school and sporting groups. We know it is going to be an emotional roller-coaster over the next few weeks, but we are also believing that what God has lined up for us is equally awesome...

There's been a lot of times I'd like to have shared more along the way about where our heads were at and what was happening, but it really wasn't the right timing to be able to do so, so instead you've got it all in one big bad brain dump! So if you've made it to the end of these very long posts explaining what we are up to...well done for hanging in there!

And I'll try not to bore you silly with posts about packing up and saying our goodbyes but that's going to be our reality for the next few weeks at least....