Home Ownership...

There's a certain pride that comes when you buy your own place. You know it's yours, and that you've worked hard to own it. We now have a basement rec room for Tim to play in and the toys can be all over and I'm not scrambling to pick them up every 5 minutes. We have our upstairs bedrooms that people don't even have to see when they come over. We have room to escape from eachother, because everyone knows - no matter how wonderful your marriage is or your children are....you need your own space now and then. It truly is great.
But there's a lot of responsibilities and surprises that come along too -- and I think we've had every single one imaginable!
The week before Christmas our whole kitchen was ripped apart to make room for our fridge. There was mess everywhere. I went to work one morning and told my boss I thought I had a chunk of drywall in my coffee....he laughed, until I found it and pulled it out to show him. We spent Christmas eve cleaning the drywall dust and mud off everything imaginable.
New years eve Garnet spent hanging over the toilet -- no, not from drinking too much -- but rather from trying to repair a 'leak'. By the time he had realized it was just condensation it was too late - the screws had been tightened too much and the tank cracked.
And of course because my husband is a complete obsessive compulsive perfectionist -- he has found a million other things to 'fix' that haven't been done to his ideal standard.
But even with all of these wonderful 'surprises' and interruptions in our plans - it's not even comparable to the little apartments that we've had. Sure, they were easy. If something was broken we called someone to come and fix it and never saw the bill, we weren't concerned if the lights were on in the middle of the day or if we had a 25 minute shower.....but it wasn't ours.

And so we laugh about all of this and all the many other experiences we've had. Because of the wonderful feeling that comes with knowing our money every month is going into our "bigger-better-house-fund" instead of into some rich apartment building owner's pocket!
We still want to paint every room and fix up the basement, bathrooms and the kitchen.....all in due time. But for now we shrug our shoulders and laugh about the stories we'll have about our first house together!

xo J