Our minds at the moment are buzzing with the variety of different options for moving to Spain. Do we sell both cars and buy a van? Sell one car and buy a van? Sell one car and buy a trailer? Do we rent furnished or unfurnished in Spain? I think we've reached a point now where we will be unable to move forward on these decisions until we've made our preliminary visit to the area at the end of May. Only three weeks away from being able to make some concrete decisions but in the meantime, so much more to do.

Jason completed the bathroom floor but then we had to wait a couple more days for the next team to do the kitchen ceiling. The bathroom floor and kitchen ceiling are now complete though so that is one more significant task out of the way. Alongside that, the insurance company now don't seem to want me as a customer which is a financial advantage. Prudential have offered a figure for the coming year of over £500 which is bizarre considering Tesco offer a similar buildings and contents insurance for a third of that. Not that any of it matters too much as we will only be paying about three months of insurance and then we'll be switching to a landlord's insurance when we leave for Spain.

In amongst this we have been trying to downscale on the rubbish we have accumulated by taking cars full of junk to the tip. The attic and the shed have been the biggest hit and some items from the attic were placed there when we first moved in seven years ago.

The house decorating is moving on apace now. We have so far decorated one of the bedrooms. (The other main bedroom is reasonably decorated and may not need painting, but Emily's lilac princess room may well need at least two coats of magnolia to hide the colour.) The bathroom is decorated, the downstairs cloakroom, the stairs and landing, the front room and the dining room. The only rooms left to decorate now are the conservatory, Emily's bedroom and the kitchen. When the carpets got laid earlier in the week the house looked so good there was a brief and fleeting feeling of 'why are we leaving?'. The answer to this came in the form of a telephone conversation with the head of the school in Spain. I phoned to thank her for sending a copy of the local newspaper and some paperwork about the school. I asked how much work I needed to put into finding the rental property and how much help the school would provide. Fortunately the school have an arrangement with a local agent who keeps properties back for the school. They currently have two properties overlooking the school that we will be able to look at when we go out in three weeks time. Both are 3/4 bedroom properties and on the mountain overlooking the school. Both located therefore, five minutes from work, ten minutes from the main town of Alzira, and about fifteen minutes from the beaches. The first is offered unfurnished and described as an older style villa with its own garden and swimming pool. At five hundred Euros a month it sounds a bargain. The second is a brand new villa with a mosaic swimming pool and is offered fully furnished to a high standard and with all white goods. That one is available for 800 Euros per month. I have also had an email from another contact in the area who has a villa for us to look at that sounds like a compromise between the two described above. At 650 Euros per month I'm assuming it is unfurnished. It has four bedrooms and a garden and swimming pool. It also has UK television and mainline telephone and internet connectivity which isn't always easy to acquire and would certainly help us stay in touch with family and friends back in the UK.

The property though wasn't the answer to the feeling of doing the right thing by moving. That certainty came from a discussion about planning requirements in the new school. Currently I am required to plan a termly plan in each subject and in addition a detailed literacy and numeracy plan running often to more than ten sides of A4 paper each week. The new school has the planning ready. No re-planning is required, just a little tinkering to ensure the planning provided matches the current class. That is a gift of at least three hours a week back to my own life. In addition much of the other paperwork that I have to complete in the United Kingdom will be non-existent in Spain. My time at the end of the day and the weekends really will be my time and consequently as a family we have so much to gain from this move.

So, I'm off now to write the Individual Education Plans required for my current class. That is twenty sides of A4 paper on top of the usual weekly planning. The move to Spain can't come soon enough and I'm sure will seem like a breath of fresh air compared to the UK systems we endure.