Waving goodbye to 2015 and getting excited about the New Year

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Christmas. We did apart from the kids taking turns to come down with severe tonsillitis, plus hubby working nights for the whole time. It feels great to have spent it in our new home though with (mostly) lots of sunshine.

The last twelve months have been pretty insane. This time last year we were settling down for our first Christmas in Brisbane. Our container had just arrived, and we were still busy unpacking. I was a mum to three pre-schoolers (as the boys didn’t begin prep until the end of January 2015). There was tonnes of admin left to do and hubby didn’t have a stable job. I had high hopes for our future life in Aus, but I really didn’t know where we’d be or how we’d be feeling by the time our second Christmas rolled around. I did know though that the move to Australia was exactly the right move for us, and I had faith that everything would settle down.

What a year!

The boys have adored their school this year. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that they’re getting to go to such an awesome school, and I can’t believe they’re going into grade one in a few weeks!

In July we bought our first Aussie home. I pinch myself every day that this is actually our home and not just a holiday home. We’re still pulling it all together and buying new things for it, so expect a blog post about it in the New Year!

Hubby has a job that will hopefully run for a year before they (fingers crossed) make him permanent. Either way, we don’t have to worry about jobs like we did this time last year.

We’ve taken two family holidays – one to the Sunshine Coast, the other to Moreton Island. I’ve also been on a girl’s holiday to Byron Bay (there will be a blog post about it in the New Year when the kids are all well again – or if you’re in the UK you can look out for the feature I’ve written about the trip in an upcoming issue of Australia and New Zealand magazine). Even without permanent jobs or annual leave we’ve been able to squeeze in plenty of family fun.

It has just been a fantastic year, and even though things have been a bit unsettled at times, I feel like we’ve really found our feet now and are living the life we dreamed of.

2016 is going to be awesome!

After spending most of the last year working as a freelance writer for other people, I’m really excited to be taking a step back from it to work on my own creative projects. The last 12 months have been a huge learning curve for me as I’ve discovered a mass of entrepreneurial blogs, podcasts, webinars, virtual summits and books. I’m all fired up about the future.

My book Don’t Panic! A Practical Guide to Twins, Triplets & More will be out very soon and is going to be the start of many new things to come from me. This first book has been five or six years in development, as I’ve always put other people’s work first. I’m a huge believer that things fall into place at exactly the right time – if I’d launched this book a year ago I’d have wasted the opportunity so I’m really excited that I waited until I was ready.

After that, my next focus is a new online business aimed at supporting people who want to move to Australia. I have loads of ideas in development for it, so 2016 is going to be all about product and content creation for me. It’s something I’m super excited about as it combines everything I’m passionate about – blogging, writing, travel and migration! I’ll still be blogging over on here too – hopefully a bit more often as I’m setting up some systems to help me be more organised with my content.

2016 is going to be all kinds of awesome

I LOVE this time of year as it’s the perfect opportunity to review the past year and look to your future goals. I’ve received some amazing planners for Christmas, so I’m working my way through those and plotting my digital empire.

Do you have awesome plans for 2016? If so, I’d love to hear all about them no matter how big or small!