Welcome, Year of the Ox
G’day & welcome
I like Ox years! I personally think it must be the Taurus influence as I wasn’t born in an Ox year. Still, I always find that by the end of the year I have made much more progress than in many of the “less domesticated” animal years, like the monkey year for example 
Our home sold very quickly and settled less than three weeks before Christmas. I no longer get to enjoy Kangaroos in my front yard but I can walk to the car without getting covered in dust/mud, cow poop, vicious ants and bindi’s. Suburbia is proving to have advantages for my working wardrobe.
Despite the cleanliness of the suburbs, they must be a very dirty bunch! The real estate advised us that if we go over the 60 thousand litres of water we would need to pay for it. No big deal, until she said that was the allowance per Quarter (every 3 months) At one stage we had an above ground pool, a Clydesdale horse, two cows, two dogs, a heap of chooks, a teenager and a baby and we still used less water than that in a year! I am still at a loss as to where I am not using the water suburbanites appear to require…
The house move itself actually went quite well. My cunning plan to send the family down to my mother’n'laws in Sydney worked perfectly. They left four days after settlement and remained gone until the end of December. By the time they returned nearly everything was neatly unpacked and where I wanted them to keep it. Not a single word about “I don’t know where to put it” has been able to be uttered. Much more blissful than when we moved over from Western Aussie. We actually found boxes that hadn’t been unpacked in six years while we were moving. My big tip for moving house is obviously “send them away”, no need to cook, iron, and no-one to say you can’t finish work and stay up until 2am unpacking. Ok, it may have been better if they’d gone for an extra week 
Update on the Hubby - seems he can’t go for a check-up on his eyes without being lasered but at least at the moment he still has a reasonable amount of vision. We’re off to the beach soon so he can have time away while he can still enjoy the scenery. (Apparently the time they spent at his mums wasn’t a ‘proper’ family break because I preferred to unpack…so looks like I still get to have a holiday as well as a smooth house move!)
Stay smiling,
Kerri RaLuna