New city, new country, new continent, new hemisphere. New furniture, new accounts, new school, new job. We’ve done this before, maybe not the hemisphere bit, but new for us is old. I think it’s time for something drastic.

Christmas is coming and it doesn’t feel quite right in the sun. I think we should take the opportunity to spice things up a bit. I’m picturing meeting Santa for a photo on the beach, a bright pink Christmas tree, and more importantly shifting our family’s focus to experience and not pressies. You know we tend do that in life anyway but Christmas has generally been more traditional for us. Not in the sense of celebrating the birth of Christ but in being together, fancy meals, lots of cookie baking, always seeing a xmas panto, a plethora of gifts, pj’s and play all day on the 25^th.

This year we won’t have our kitchenware as it’s on a boat somewhere, so not so much baking. We will not have any Christmas decorations so we will have to improvise. The gifts, my kids love receiving stuff. I loathe stuff but have always wanted them to enjoy the same experience that I did as a child. Every year it kind of makes me sick.

The timing is perfect really, presently we have nothing of our own and the whole family is very aware of the expense of moving. We are all focused on only buying what we truly need and making lists of the extra things. Furniture and decorations that are not necessary but that we would like maybe someday. It’s like the universe has given us this opportunity to learn that having less is more. That this crazy ride called life that we are experiencing in a very tactile way right now wants us to slow down and breathe it all in.

I think instead of trying to right ourselves into our “normal” life of cities past we should let things simmer. We will flavour ourselves with the richness of life that surrounds us rather than trying to create it independently, behind closed doors and with things. It’s definitely time to change things up, live simply, fully and gratefully.