We are a family of five; Emma now 13, Danny 15 and Jamie 19, and me Sharon with my husband Paul have completely sold up in England and begun a new life here in the town of Albatera on the Costa Blanca.

Our Story so far: My husband Paul decided he wanted to live in France, but that was 20 years ago, no seriously he always dreamed of moving to France and was in fact going over there to work with his brother, had sold his house and everything, then he met me.......oops, anyway that was the end of that dream for a few years anyway.

15 years later he decided to start working on me, he was sick of working all hours and basically wanted to give the kids a better future, not really in monetary terms but quality of family life etc, anyway I eventually said if we must buy abroad then Spain not France, more accessible and more sunshine! (definitely got that right then).

At first we just wanted to buy a holiday home, which we did, down in Mazzaron on the notoriously slow at being built urbanization Camposol, however very soon after we had signed on the dotted line we were also sold on being here full time. Unfortunately, after a couple of holidays down there on Camposol itself, the place did not match up to our criteria for full time living, no international school for Jamie for a start, not good planning to be honest with hindsight, but if we all had that we would never learn by our mistakes would we!!!!

At that point anyway, we really thought it would be a while before we actually moved out full time so we had to look further a field which we did, traveling all over the Costa Blanca, up the coast and then in land and ended up here in Albatera, which is near enough to the coast and the cities but gives us the quiet country life as well. We bought our holiday home 3 years ago so it seems a long time ago but it isn't really is it?

It was quite a quick decision between the holiday home and moving permanently because of the kids ages really, if we didn't do it at that point then we would have to wait for Jamie to finish his education by which time he would probably not want to come with us at all. Also Danny & Emma would have been too old really for it to be fair to put them into Spanish state school and with hindsight this has worked really well for us, they are both able to hold a proper Spanish conversation and often have to help me out, I am ashamed to say!

Jamie has a girlfriend here now and although he does want to go back to the UK after his A levels, it looks like even if he does go back to University he will come back here. It's early days I know but all three are very happy and settled at the moment and I cannot tell you enough that if only one good thing were to come out of moving to Spain it would be the difference in lifestyle that our children have here.

Although I am often tied to this computer like you wouldn’t believe, we all spend a lot more time doing family things. I also notice that I seem to get a lot more help around the house now without everyone moaning about it! Well, sometimes....but that’s an improvement...Wow!!! We actually all enjoy working together in the sunshine, funny how the weather has that much of an effect on everyone’s well being and happiness. We also left in the UK a perfectly successful business which we helped run to our partner in the UK who now carries it on in our absence. This was a risk but one we felt important enough to take in order to better ours and our children’s lives for the future.

So there you are....sounds like a life story! But this is how we came to being here and this is how we did it………

We trawled the Internet looking at properties on many different websites or at least I did, Paul is not into computers at all, I found that unlike the UK most of the properties can be bought through many different agents!

We carefully considered many different areas, one of our main criteria being Schooling for our three children, two of whom would go to main stream Spanish school as they were young enough to cope with this and the eldest to go a private school which followed the English curriculum as he would be studying for his A levels, a bit too much to ask, we thought, to learn a completely new language at this important time of his education. Obviously this being so, narrowed our search down quite a bit as there are not so many International Schools in the part of Spain we preferred, we also had to consider the time and distance of travel that would be necessary on a daily basis. Consider too if you are contemplating the move that the school times here are very different form the UK and you can end up doing that many school runs you wont know where you are.

We found to our surprise after contacting lots of agents in Spain that we actually knew more about the schools and the whereabouts of them from our own investigations! Not very helpful really when this advice is just as necessary as that of the property and area you choose (still this came in handy later).

We are not saying that nobody knew anything just that the people we chose didn’t know as much as we had already found out!

Of the agents we chose, three of them had the property we eventually fell in love with and ended up buying on their books, but, at different prices! After having two offers refused through one agent found it was still over our budget. Unfortunately whilst we were very disappointed we had already decided under no circumstances could we go any higher and this meant we had to resume our search. Luckily we had already done our own research on the schools and health facilities in that particular area or I don’t think we could have even put an offer in on that basis.

This is where we got lucky we think so anyway! On the penultimate day of this particular trip we were lucky enough to be introduced, through some friends we had made on a previous visit to Spain to a local Spanish agent who by sheer luck took us to see the very same property which was destined to be our new home. Believe it or not this time it was within our budget! So we met up with the vendor and agreed a price and time scale in which to complete the sale.

Don’t get me wrong it is hard work living & working here in Spain even if you can get by with the language it is very difficult and even the simplest of tasks can be quite a challenge. I also found out that my Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer just after we had paid our second deposit and sold our house in the UK. Its times like this when you start to question your motives. Thankfully, after the upset of that and after surgery and chemo she is clear and well and has been out here four times a year since.

Also, despite being robbed twice in two days, losing all my jewellery, watches, my sons jewellery and all his leaving presents from his mates in the UK, TVs, cameras, kids Play stations and DVDs etc. We had given a Moroccan who had already worked on the house some work in the garden, and we and Jose (who employed him) were sure it was him and some accomplices; in fact they were chased off by our neighbour when they came back for more the very next day. Unfortunately he didn’t get the registration number of the car they used; did he turn up for work the next day for Jose or any other day after that? No! We are sure enough and there was another family reporting a similar crime when we ourselves reported this one.

What to do, that’s what ran through our minds it is horrible when this happens - you feel unsafe and it feels more terrible than I can put into words but then do you give up and let them win..........or not................ certainly not! We have now made some neighbourhood watch signs in Spanish and all our neighbours display them including the Spanish ones.

Since our arrival in Spain we have also lost a much loved cat called Tutan to a blood disorder and a beautiful Podenco bitch called Carmen was run over just outside our gate and killed outright a couple of months ago only to be found by my 12 year old son to whom she belonged and he was, as we all were, absolutely devastated by this.

Very unlucky and nothing really to do with Spain although at the time you do question your motives and wonder what you all did to deserve this bad luck, but bad luck is what it is! However we are fighters and we move on and hopefully we are stronger from our experiences. Bad luck is not confined to any one country so you get on with it and make the best of what you have and these experiences hopefully are life’s lessons!

Paul is now working for a firm in double glazing after doing a stint of the usual building work that a high percentage of expats often do when they move to Spain. This was not planned, as he had got enough work to do on our place for the first year at least, but as it happened he did it to help someone out, anyway it worked well and gave us a bit of extra income whilst I wrote my website, which was something I had planned to do ever since we moved over because of our own experiences and lack of help.

We have just applied for residencia for the five of us and await the lovely trip to Alicante to do finger prints etc, not because we have to by law but because we think it will make life easier and also for tax purposes and not paying extortionate bank fees for foreigners etc etc,.

Please forgive me as I am not now sure where we are up to and what I may have missed telling you. It's been such a long time and so much has happened I may get a little mixed up in what order it has actually happened now we have also had our ups and downs but we are still here to stay (as sure as anyone can be at this moment in time).