It's All Ours :)

The mortgage was finally paid off today and now it's all ours. It's a great feeling.
This is our fourth house. We have been here since June 11th 1999. As it's a grade two listed building we weren't able to put a proper second floor on. We had to go for a loft conversion instead. It's changed quite a lot since we have lived here. When we first came the kitchen I have now was a hallway, kitchen and study until we knocked it into one big kitchen. The previous owners were two guys. One worked for The Lonely Planet and many of the guides he wrote were written in my now kitchen...the then study. We still buy Lonely Planet books to see if Steve has written about anywhere we are taking off to.
We had four stables in the back garden and a paddock in the front. Having no desire to ever own a horse the paddock was turned into the boys football pitch and the stables were a room each for the boys as the bedroom space was so small at the time.
Along came the first flood we had and ruined everything the boys owned which were in the stables plus a lot of our own personal things. We were on holiday when the flood hit and couldn't save anything. It was heartbreaking throwing all our DVDs, CDs, kids toys, etc, etc, etc away. The stables were on what I call ground level...our house is built up higher.
We decided to get rid of the stables and have one big room the boys could use and we would build it higher off the ground than the house is. This developed and more decking was added and the pool and bar/ BBQ area were added too.
We have since added the shelter which was blipped recently and another area at the front of the house where we can also BBQ plus sit and let the world go by.
Over the years we have had a lot of fun in this house with the boys growing up.
We even had a whole group of Nicks friends holiday here for the week. They were 16 at the time and all us mums said no to them going on their own somewhere so they camped here.
Fun times.
Well I can't see us moving in the near future so hopefully more fun times ahead.
Andy and I will celebrate tomorrow. He's off to watch Ipswich tonight...hopefully win.
We will raise a glass to our two dads, who without them backing us all those years ago when we were first starting out.....today would probably have not happened.