How we’re building a life we love

It’s been over a year since Hayden moved back to New Zealand, which means we’ve started to acknowledge silly little anniversaries. Like tonight, for example, when he came in amazed at how bad the traffic was, and I said it was March madness, setting off some intense déjà vû in him (apparently I said this last year too, and I expect I’ll say it next year).

This means it’s been just over a year since we started working on building the next stage of a life we love, with the first step being the purchase of some land in the country. Not that we knew that was the first step back then. We just knew we loved it and wanted it, and a day after seeing it we were putting in an offer. Some would say we bought it on impulse. In fact, I say that. We definitely did, and it was definitely a brilliant decision.

What this kicked off was a year of chat about exactly how we want our life to be – what we wanted to create, and what we could build together that would give us (more of) a life we love. We already loved our life, of course. I am so glad and grateful that I got to spend my 20s travelling, living in incredible places and putting together an awesome career. But this is the next step – the reason we’re living in New Zealand again, with all it can offer us.

I should add that the new life is not the only thing we started to build in 2015. We also built a new house that will let us enjoy that land even more. As step two in this life we love, it’s doing exactly what it says on the tin. We love it. We’ve spent a lot of this summer in the country already and I’m super-excited for many more summers just like this!