New Zealand....Was it worth it????

So my final post of this blog. Our overseas travel (in that chapter) are over and we are now back home in New Zealand. Work has started, the kids are in daycare, and we are now living our new life. So was it all worth it... A good question. There are so many things I miss about England, as there were many things I missed about New Zealand, our life is different and our circumstances are different. Time will tell I guess but I think it was all worth it.

Moving countries is hard. Moving countries with two small kids is harder but also easier as they force you to get on with things. I think when we arrived we were in survival mode, surviving each day without losing the plot with each other or the kids. Sometimes it worked and we had nice days, sometimes it didn't and the days weren't so good. All the time we have the question of "have we made the right decision?"...

So the first few weeks here turned into months, we had some 'holiday' days but mostly time was spent looking for jobs and daycare. We had a lovely week away on a proper holiday up north and the sun shone (for most of it) lovely days on the beach, time with friends, and then a visit to Peter's old stomping grounds. I will remember it fondly as that week was what we moved back for, and it was just as I imagined. Other highlights were days spent at Brick Bay, fish and chips for dinner on the beach, countless beach trips, walking by the sea in the evening after work with the kids, walking to and from work, dinner out after work on a Friday, and finally catching up with my old friends where 5 had turned to 17 in ten years, husbands and kids collected.

My job is an VAST improvement on my last (sorry old colleagues who are still there). It will be a challenge but it is nice to finally say I am an engineer and not feel like a little bit of a fraud, next step is getting chartered (eek). The jury is out on Peter's job, the jury is out on the kids daycare when I picked them up on Friday and they were watching TV!!!! I miss Jubilee so much, but I'm not 100% convinced it's worth moving back to the UK for just that. We are missing two saucepan lids which is highly annoying. All of our boxes are finally unpacked all the cupboards are unpacked and the kids rooms are sorted, just waiting on a couple of sets of draws to put their clothes in. Big achievement for me, I have now done three whole days of looking after the kids on my own (I didn't do that in the UK as James went to nursery) so feeling a bit more like a proper mum. We have even managed to get our UK tax returns done, way easier then I thought and I'm very glad we didn't use an agent to do them.

So on to life here and lets see where it takes us, our next goal/challenge is deciding where to buy a house... hmm this could take a while.