Here comes the weekend.

This week has been a big one for us in lots of different ways. We have made some decisions.
October has always meant a lot, Laura and Carl have their birthdays (Laura will be 24 and Carl 19) But the biggie is we have finally finished our mortgage after 28 years of paying our monthly repayment, we have finished!! Whoopee!! Its such a relief to know that its one less thing to find money for.
When I think back over the years, I am amazed that we have got to the end. We started out with a shared ownership scheme because we couldn't afford the cost of buying a house outright on a mortgage, so we bought 50% and rented 50%. Looking back I am amazed that we couldn't afford to buy our first house. The paperwork from 1981 our first house was valued at £28,000 and we couldn't get a mortgage for that even with a deposit and both of us working full time! So we got a mortgage for £14,000 and started from there.
Times were quite hard because the repayments took up a huge part of our earnings and when Laura came along in 1985 it was even harder. Once we had Laura we knew that we would have to move on, a two bedroomed house was not going to be big enough so we took the decision to buy the rest of the house and look to move to a bigger property.

We soon found a place that we liked but it was during the time where the housing market was very volatile, people were being gazumped all over the place and the interest rates were moving upwards. At one point we reached a 16% interest rate which had a HUGE impact on repayments. We eventually exchanged contracts on our new house which was around the corner from our first house and waited to complete and move. The move turned out to be the move from hell, with the sellers demanding more money and threatening to back out of the contract. We moved on Friday the 13th of May 1987 into our present house, and due to the terrible move we had, we decided that it would be a cold day in hell before we would put ourselves through another move !! So we have been here ever since.

We have some great neighbours, Karen and Graham over the road have been here longer than us and I am pleased to count them as our friends. We have had different neighbours one is now my sister in law.

Over the years we have changed things, built a conservatory, new kitchen, double glazing and finally changing the bathroom, we waited 22 years for avocado to come back into fashion, but it wasn't to be!!!

To celebrate this momentous month Tom has also decided to take his retirement early and has given up his job to concentrate on becoming a house husband, so at last we may get dinners in the evening as he will have had some time to prepare during the day.

Finally Dad had his check up at Papworth and they have told him that they are happy with how he has recovered and that he can resume 'normal' life apart from heavy lifting, so thats good news as well!