Right, I’m a day late. But it’s been a year (and a day) since we made the big move back to East Yorkshire. To village life. To family.

I went for a run this morning – no need to drive to the canal like I used to – I can run a perfect 5k route straight from the house. While I was being advised to Work Bitch by Britney, I was looking around and thinking about how much our lives have changed in the last year.

Moving from the suburbs, minutes from a city centre, to the country, was obviously going to be a game-changer. This garden is probably ten times bigger than our last one, and it takes a lot of time and money to care for. Not being near a shop is still annoying me, a year later, but I’m dealing. And the spiders. They’re everywhere. I’m still reeling from finding a big sac of spider eggs in my welly.

Of course, there’s also our not-so-little addition (yup, Jude is one), so we’ve been learning how to parent two children at the same time as learning how to live in this house. We’ve learned how to plant and grow vegetables from broad beans to tomatoes; how to get a fire going quickly; how to look after chickens.

The way we choose to spend our free time is very different. Instead of hours of TV, we have plants to water, a leaflet to design for the village fête or look up someone to chop down the massive tree at the bottom of the garden. We’re using our own eggs, rhubarb, spinach and beans in our cooking. We may not know the names of all the flowers, but we know what to expect in each season now.

And we have plans!… Lots of plans for the next year. It was a good move.