f you’re here for a quick update, I’ll warn you now… this isn’t it.
This is a grab-a-cuppa, pull-up-a-chair, buckle-in kind of post. The sort that involves flu, pneumonia, bare floors, Christmas miracles, exhaustion, laughter-through-tears and the kind of help that only shows up when you’re too tired to pretend you’ve got it all together.
Are you ready?
Right then. Let’s begin.
A lot of change, very quickly
The last few months have felt like someone pressed fast forward on our lives.
The girls transitioned back to school.
I transitioned back to work.
Our rhythms shifted, our days changed shape and emotionally… well, it was a lot. Good things, necessary things… but still a lot.
And just as we were all adjusting to that, flu took out everyone except Mark.
Every single one of us-bar him-went down. And because life has a sense of humour, once everyone else started recovering, I decided to go one step further and landed myself with pneumonia.
Not the gentle, “take it easy for a week” kind.
The proper you will now be horizontal and useless kind.
And then… the house
Somewhere in the middle of illness, exhaustion and trying to keep life ticking over, we got the call.
A house.
A possible house.
A viewing.
We went to see it on 16th December, still not right, still coughing, still foggy and walked into a place with:
two carpets
no cooker
no shower
exposed carpet grips and tacks everywhere
It was… not love at first sight. It was gratitude and it was possibility. And it was a neutral colour scheme (seriously the lime green and pink in the house that we were not allowed to change anything in was migraine inducing!).
The maths, the fear and the stairs
Then came the practicalities. Quotes. Numbers. Reality.
We quickly realised that financially, we couldn’t do everything. So we made the hard but sensible decision:
If nothing else, we had to carpet the stairs.
They were dangerous. Underlay. Full of exposed grips. With kids coming and going constantly, animals, it just wasn’t an optional.
At the same time, our cooker situation was solved thanks to my eldest daughter’s interest-free account, a sentence that still makes me pause with gratitude.
A bonus… and a problem
Then something unexpected happened.
Mark received an unexpected Christmas bonus.
Enough that we could carpet all the upstairs, not just the stairs.
Relief flooded in, swiftly followed by disappointment when we were told:
“We can fit them on the 5th of January.”
Which was… not ideal when you’re moving in right before Christmas.
A joke. A conversation. A miracle.
Here’s where things turn.
I made a half-joking comment to someone at church. One of those throwaway remarks you don’t think twice about.
They replied, “You know, I think another member might know a carpet fitter.”
A few conversations later, I found myself on the phone saying:
“I don’t suppose by any chance you’d be free three days before Christmas to fit all the upstairs carpets… and the stairs?”
And the answer?
“Yes. I can help.”
Friends — Clive was a true, genuine Godsend.
Moving day, held together by other people
We got the keys at 1:30pm.
Clive met us there and started fitting carpets immediately.
Meanwhile:
two members of our church wired in our cooker
and fitted curtain poles
another family made us dinner so all we had to do was reheat it
All while I was still not well, still working and Mark was carrying not just his own load but the extra 40% I simply didn’t have.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that kindness.
Christmas… somehow
Then came the impossible task of:
unpacking
decorating
buying presents
figuring out how much money was actually left
I genuinely had no idea how much I could spend on Christmas after carpets, wardrobes and curtains.
So yes… I was still wrapping presents at 3:30am on Christmas Eve.
And yes… somehow, I still managed the food shop and cooked Christmas dinner for eight people the next day.
I don’t recommend this as a lifestyle choice but it happened. (I was so busy I didn’t even photograph our dinner – and this is the last time before Kiesha becomes a Mummy herself!, I did get one of our breakfast though).
Looking back, from the other side
When I step back now, what strikes me most isn’t how hard it was, though it was, but how held we were.
By community.
By provision at exactly the right moment.
By people who stepped in without needing to be asked twice.
And by a quiet reminder that sometimes, when everything changes all at once, you’re not meant to carry it alone.
This is why I’m sharing
I’m sharing this, not because we “made it” or because everything is suddenly sorted.
But because this is real life.
Change is messy.
Transitions overlap.
Exhaustion and gratitude can sit side by side.
And if you’re in a season where everything feels like too much at once, I want you to know, you’re not failing. You’re just human.
If you’ve read this far, truly, thank you.
If any part of this season sounds familiar… the exhaustion, the overwhelm, the feeling that everything has changed at once… please know you don’t have to carry it alone. I’m always happy to hear from you, whether that’s here on the blog or over on Instagram. Sometimes it helps just to say it out loud.
