How did we get here?

in 2003, my husband and I (whilst still not married) were on holiday in the Gironde, and bought a house - as you do, intending to use it as a holiday home and to rent it out.  Five months later we moved into our "Coup de Coeur" and started the long process of bringing it up to a decent standard.  By that I mean having more than one plug in each room.

Since then, we've got married, had 2 chilren, moved house, had jobs, gone back to school and become integrated members of a small community of about 1,200 people in the north of France, and are now building a house in a 500 strong rural community.

It's been hard, but then again what we've done would have been hard anywhere, fustrating at times, joyful at others. We've faced challenges - like bilingual dyslexia, hit our head against the brick wall that is the french banking system but, I wouldn't swap it for the world. The hardest thing is missing family and friends.  We are just a family trying to make a living and enjoy a reasonable work/life balance, and this is how we have faced the challenges and  our ramblings...