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Living Next Door...to Mammy

Being the couple that we are, we always have to go about our relationship back to front, well that's the family joke anyway. So John had the child before the relationship, we got engaged before the house, the house before the wedding���� Well you get my drift.

As with most Irish couples, the Irish Mammy has a big oar in our life, not least because John's mother chose our first house together. It's a cause for great slagging and great celebration in our household so I thought I would share our madcap house buying escapades with you!

We got engaged on Christmas Eve, and decided that we would stay in our rented house for a while and save as much as we could for a really special house close to both our families. Roll on the following February and John's brother was looking at houses to buy. His mother was also looking to move herself so while we were all at work she was surfing a certain well known property site with half an eye out for his brother.

John had a Friday off and got a call from his brother, Anto, who asked him to drop down to his mother's house and grab a deposit and run over to an estate agents in Swords as there were only 2 more houses left to be bought off plans in a new estate in Balbriggan. John went down to the house and his mother handed him the deposit and then with a glint in her eye asked him did he want one for himself.

So I'm walking back to work after lunch and my phone rings and himself is on the other end telling me he's off to buy a house.

The following morning, the three of us (John, anto and I) piled into the car and trekked up to the site to see our new, sight unseen houses. I was stunned they were massive, and we wouldn't have been able to buy a one bedroom apartment in my home town for the price they were going for.

So 2 years on and we're in our not-so-new home and haven't looked back since. John's brother lives next door, and wait for it, my sister and her fiance live 3 doors down. It's become a real family affair, especially as his parents moved not too far away from us within the following six months of us buying the house.

Things are always go in our household - as you can tell, the next 18 months or so are going to be very interesting ;)