Hello East Belfast

Moved house - check
Re-connected to the interwebs - check
Settled in - ongoing but almost there.

I usually say it's been a mad couple of weeks when we've been busy but the best part of the last 3 weeks have been immensely hectic. Just saying we've moved house hides the fact we've actually moved into a different house to the one we were intending to move to. It also hides the fact that we started moving into the house we now rent the same day the lease, a house just hours before hand we didn't know existed.

The first week was a case of hanging on for things outside of our control to take shape and then jumping into action as soon as answers could be found. The last week has been a case of trying to get things sorted and organised, things that we'd usually do in advance or in a structured way - like getting the phone/TV/Internet installed so as not to leave a gap. To be honest, although stressful, it's been a pleasant enough change, usually we're quite sedentary beside the gym, but the last 2 weeks has had us very hands on and really valuing any downtime we've had. If it wasn't for family, vodka, wine and beer (to all of whom we're very thankful) I think we'd have been nervous wrecks by now - and we're well versed in moving house - 7 times in 10 years for me now - hopefully that figure will space out a bit from here on in. This move was just something else - almost as worrying as the time we moved to Northern Ireland when the van company decided last minute that we couldn't take the van over water even though they'd taken the booking with the destination listed.

Oddly though, as unexpected as events were, I think it's worked out pretty good. We quite like the new place, we've a bit more room and we moved to the area we were hoping for so that we're both close enough to work to not have to have any long commutes.

There is still plenty of hard work to do yet before we can fully relax and enjoy our new surroundings but so far so good. Belfast isn't the biggest city in the world and we know East Belfast a little already but it'll be fun finding out what makes it tick and getting to know our new neighbourhood... not that we'll be far from North Belfast as we'll be running back and fourth a lot, especially down to Seaview for the football.