Proudly presenting our very own square meters of… well, for now just mud and dirt 😉 But it’s OUR mud and dirt 😉

Pictures were taken Sunday June 29th. It was raining quite a bit. All of our shoes were full of mud and stones. Washing them off in the tub was not my best or most glorious idea. Not to self: Once the house is build install a water hose at the yard right away! No mud in my bathtub 😉

Here’s a map of the land we bought. Bakery, strawberry field and swimming lake are approximately that far away.

The land is in a brand new built (some houses not yet build) subdivision. The fun part is that it is not actually part of the subdivision. If you look at the picture you’ll see that the dotted line does not include our land. This means we get all the pro’s of a subdivision (brand new houses, streets, young families, lots of kids,…) but none of the craziness. For example the people in the actual subdivision have certain rules about what is and isn’t allowed. Some plants might be ok to plant in your yard, others might not be. Also where you see the green circles they HAVE TO  build a tree and they even tell them which kind. None of this we have to worry about even though we are their neighbors. The reason for this is that the land we bought and the one south of it didn’t belong to the city, like the others do, but to 3 sisters who inherited it but didn’t need it. So they sold it. Without any of the ridiculous rules.
We’re also pretty happy about getting the north one and not the one to the south because our neighbors have to build their house basically in the middle of the land so they have some yard in front, some in back. Ours is closer to the street making our backyard quiet a bit bigger. I am thinking, trampoline, sandbox, fireplace, herb garden,…. 😉
Land itself is in a tiny little village with even less people than the one we live in now, which is the way we wanted it. I am a “Bullerbü“-person. 3 houses would be big enough of a town for me 😉 So the smaller the better.  It’s a 10 minutes drive from our current  house, so really close by. The kids will be able to still see their friends, go the the same sports club, same kindergarten etc.

Only downside is that this town has their own elementary school, so Lillian wouldn’t be able to go to the one where we live now, meaning she couldn’t go with her 3 best friends and would be the only kid at the new school not knowing anyone. Before we even bought land we decided as a family that no one would be in tears about this, no one would get hurt, since it’s supposed to be such a fun and exciting time for everyone. When we found out this land was available we checked our options on how to get her into the school where we live. They said there was some kind of application we could fill out, but it’s basically very hard to have her go to the school we want instead of the one she is supposed to go to when we move into the new house.  (I could write down all the details of this here but am pretty sure that would bore you all to death 😉 ) .
So we decided to just get the land for now (even though financing for the house with Ing-DiBa is already through). We didn’t want to start building this year anyways since it’s already July and school starts in September. I did not want Lillian to start school and get used to all this new stuff that comes with it in between running from one hardware store to the next. I want to be there for her, at least in the beginning to help with questions, homework, get to know her teacher, etc.
We also found out that after elementary school (which is 4 years) all the kids from the village where we build have to go to middle school, high school, collage, etc. back in our current town anyways, since the new village only has and elementary school due to so little people.

So the plan now is let Lillian start school in piece and quiet. In spring 2015 we are going to apply for her to be able to still go to her school even when we move into the new house. If it’s approved we start building, if not we’ll try again the following year, and so on. Worst case we will start building when she is in 3rd grade (since it will take a while till we can actually move in and by then she’ll be in 4th grade anyway) so that would be September 2016, so 2 years from now. (Because we bought the land from a private person, not from the city we are not forced to build at any time – with land from the city you usually have to build within 3 or 5 years – so we have all the time in the world) Believe me, considering we didn’t know if we were ever even going to be able to get land, that doesn’t sound long at all 😉 But hopefully it will already be next year. The important part however is that everyone in this family will be happy, no one will be sad about the move. Some people may not understand this, some will call us crazy to wait with building because of a child, but to us our kids are members of this family just like we are and a material thing would never be put above them. That’s what we’ll do because WE are happy with it. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. 😉
(When we talked to our friends about this, several of them have asked about Lavinia and Ryan and wouldn’t it be unfair to wait for Lillian so she can go to school with her friends, but not for the other to – because Lavinia already has a best friend too. We usually jokingly answer that we don’t like them as much so we won’t wait for them 😉 Truth is though that we found out from the city, that as soon as a sibling is already going to a school in a certain village the siblings can automatically go there too. They do this so parents don’t have to have kids in 5 different cities. So – of course we thought about them too 😉 )

So that’s that, we are extremely happy with the land we got, we are having a great time exploring the new village, finding out new stuff every time we go there.  We are especially thrilled about having a swimming lake this close to the house. It is fenced in so kids can’t just run in and drown. If you live in the village you can get a chip to open the gates and go in for free whenever you please. In winter the lake is used for skating and hockey which I am sure we’ll all do a lot.

Couldn’t be happier 🙂