We are moving!

The impossible has happened! We are moving out of our shoebox Highgate flat to a slightly larger shoebox in West London! I have the contract sitting in my inbox right now to review, and we should have it signed, sealed, and delivered by next week, then we move mid-September. I'll be about 32 weeks pregnant at our move.

Definitely one of the craziest decisions we ever made was to move to London, and we really had no idea what to expect other than - they speak English there, how hard can it be? Turns out, kind of difficult! It is hard to move to a different city, and even harder to move internationally and figure out how to do banking, grocery shop, navigate a new culture, and be a foreigner. We have grown to love it here. I think summer sealed the deal for us. 70 - 75 every day and the occasional rainstorm to keep it real. One thing that attracted me to our current Highgate flat was the natural light and white walls. It is something I realize that I need in my life: lots of light. I did the english basement thing for a year, and I was scratching the walls by the end of our year-lease. Side note: they call basement apartments "garden flat" here. Isn't that much more appealing than a dank basement? ;) While I'm happy to be moving on, I will miss the leafy quiet of Highgate and our first little flat here in London, with all its quirks (weird neighbors, foxes going through our garbage, middle of the night dance parties in the flat above ours (or clogging?! someone hates us upstairs).

Our new flat is just the next step I was hoping for. In terms of square footage, it's not too much bigger than our current place, but we have a huge front room/dining room combo, a nice big bedroom for us (a long narrow bedroom for the nursery), and most of all huge windows in every room on a second story terraced home. I cannot wait to move in and get settled before the arrival of baby girl.

I was talking to my sister in Virginia the other day (who is currently getting induced and should have her new baby here any minute now!) about how small our homes feel. She said to me: our place is just so tiny, I just wish we could move. Our place is only 950 square feet!
I just couldn't help but laugh. Our NEW place is 720 square feet and it feels like a palace to me! I think our current flat is somewhere around 600 square feet.
Funny how perspective can change your mind about something.

Anyway, this post is quite rambling, but I wanted to record my thoughts on how happy I am to be finding a new little spot in London, looking forward to exploring West London and finding our favorite parks, cafes, hidden gems, etc. that come along with a new neighborhood. It's hard to believe we've been here nearly a year.l