Home Away from Home... Away from Home...

It took us a week to find a new home for our family. We decided we wanted to live in the suburbs and limited our search to the North Shore district. If you think of Auckland region as SF Bay Area, Auckland is San Francisco, Harbor Bridge is Golden Gate Bridge, and North Shore is Marin County... They even have their equivalent of Tiburon - Devonport... We finally found a brand new home with lots of space in a small but rapidly expanding suburb - Albany.

We waited till mid-May until our container arrived from the States. Once we unpacked all the boxes (it took us a week) and bought a few extra pieces, this is what our home away from home looks like.


The first floor holds the kitchen,

the dining room,

and the living room

(and E.'s play room)

The second floor holds E.'s bedroom,

the office / guest bedroom,

and the master bedroom


The house is spacious, light and comfortable enough but it is poorly insulated. Inside the house we were freezing in July and August (on a few occasions E.'s lips turned purple) and still paid outrageously high bills for electricity usage. Few houses is New Zealand have central heating... we figured it is because it never gets cold here...