Townies take on the Maungatapere

Brace yourself Maungatapere, your peace is about to be shattered for we are coming to town!

It’s a long and complicated story but the simplified version is that, without anywhere permanent lined up to go, we listed our house and it sold for asking price before the Property Guide even came out.

When the real estate agent came around, beaming, to tell us, we sat there like stunned mullets before eventually accepting. It would’ve been rude not to really.

Our lovely home has been good to us for the past nine years. It’s seen hens’ parties, baby showers, kids’ birthdays and of course many a bbq and party BC (before children). It’s also where I brought my babies home to from the hospital, where we blearily trapsed up and down the hall all night whether it was to carry out a tandem feed, deal with a night terror or to stuff a dummy back in a mouth. Did I just say that? Let me re-phrase: to place a dummy back in a baby’s mouth for the 30^th time that night. (Obviously this method wasn’t working – I wouldn’t advise it – but that’s an entirely different topic.)

I look at the nursery I so lovingly decorated with my first baby bump and wonder if it will all be painted over and torn down. Not knowing whether we were having a boy or a girl, I painted the bottom half yellow and the top, bright blue punctuated with stars, moons and suns. I wasn’t sure at the time how it would sit with the older “Pepe”, however, Cadeyn, now five, asked me if he could take it all with him.

But the multi-levels, harbour views and extensive decking is no longer required for our lifestyle. We need space.

So although it is on the market, my late father’s lovely new lifestyle property is the perfect, albeit, temporary solution. We have become townie farmers “working the land” over recent months and we love it. There’s fruit to pick, a new black lamb down the paddock and the kids could spend all day on their dad’s lap mowing the orchard on the ride-on.

With two weeks to go I really ought to begin the packing.

But first I need to stop procrastinating and finish packing up the place we are moving into. This is something I have been chipping away at for the last few months but how do you reduce one’s whole life practically into a box? Obviously this has been slow going.

When this, sadly, has to sell, whether we end up buying in the country or not, the kids will still end up having had a taste of the good life.