Blenheim Estate

The Rollercoaster

that is my emotions about leaving......

One minute I am sooooo excited, and then suddenly, after meeting a friend or looking out over the rolling countryside on my way to get the kids from their tiny village school, I get all emotional and don't see how I can leave - or wonder if we are doing the right thing.

Witney was somewhere that, although I was excited about moving to, I had never heard of it before. It felt like landing in the middle of nowhere and I didn't know a soul.  I said quite adamantly that we'd only stay for two years tops.  Well, 4 years later I am really sad to say goodbye.  It's only really in the last 8 months or so that I have really begun to feel like it is 'home'.  Something I never thought, or wanted to think of it as.  Now when I think about leaving it makes me sad.  It is such a beautiful, historic place to live.  Everwhere you look there is beauty and history - the ancient Wychwood forest, the hundreds-of-years-old churches dotted around (still in use), the undulating hills and valleys, the River Windrush bubbling through the Main streets - oh ok, I know I am looking at things emotionally.  It sure doesn't feel so great during long, wet, grey winters........ but I realise that I actually LOVE living here.  And I think my feelings of home are reinforced by the fact that I have given birth here to (you mothers will understand that I'm sure). But changes are afoot and I am, beneath it all, excited about what is yet to come.......

The Allen's are leaving......

.....Witney.

In fact, we are leaving Oxfordshire.

To be more precise, we are leaving England.

Yes, that's right, we are emigrating.

What?! Where?! When?! How?!  I hear you all ask (well, those of you who don't already know of our plans!).  To make a short, but quite complex story simpler, Nick has been offered a job in Toronto.  It was going to be New York, but he accepted the Toronto offer instead.  And so we are now faced with ever so complicated visa applications, selling up our entire lives and starting a new chapter of Life with the Allens*

Witney, it has been soooooo good knowin' ya!

St Mary's Church on the green

Ducklington Lake

The Buttercross - over 400 years old

Toronto, (or rather GTA, cause we don't know exactly where we'll end up yet) you better watch out!

(I took this photo almost 5 years ago to the day!)

* This is not general FB knowledge so please don't out us on there yet! 

Enjoying our garden

Some pics to remind me, now that the good weather is on the wane, of the glorious weather we have had this spring so far.....

(Sofia likes to give kisses!)

Adventures in weaning

"Hey Sofia, would you like to try some itty, bitty, chopped up pieces of BLW-friendly blueberries and strawberries?"

"Errr, no thanks, I'll just take my chances with this whopping great strawberry....."

How grown up.....

do these two look?!?!  Oh my, I look at them sometimes and wonder where the last 9 years went....... and did I really make those big children?!?!

May. Already....!

So, Ben has finally caught up - indeed overtaken Jasmine - in the tooth loss race :-)

Ben and Jasmine making a 'flower pie' in what could possibly be described as one of their favourite places on earth....Pippi's garden

My girls in the early hours of the morning.....