Darren,
Good looking place... love the shop. Don't know if possible, but think I would try to pave the gravel portion and get it all on concrete. I like the size of it too..
Don't know if I would want to mow 2.5 acres... I have just over an acre and mow about 3/4 of it... the rest is under woods and has a gully in it and a number of very large rocks, so not possible to mow. The back yard starts 5 feet behind the house and goes up hill to the back side of the lot... by the time you get there, the lot line is about 25 feet higher than the ridgeline on the house.... hopefully yours is flat.. a good riding mower and you're all set.
I don't envy you the pool though.. I've had two and a couple of hot tubs in the various places I've lived.... to and my opinion only, they are a big hole in the ground, full of water that you toss money into every few days.
My last pool was black when we moved in, took 40 pounds of shock to clear, then had to scoop pine needles, trash etc out of the pool, wound up putting a new pump on the line, only to discover it wasn't the pump, the return lines had collapsed... put in new lines, then needed new filter vanes 'cause kept getting DE back in the pool... then just before we moved discoved the wall was beginning to crack in two places - it was fiber glass, so would have been easy fix, but would have always looked patched. Living in Houston area, we had lots of pine trees around... the closest one was about 60 or 70 feet tall, about 30 inches at the base and about 20 or 30 yards from the pool, but every needle that fell off that tree landed in the pool. It was a daily chore - year round - to dip the pool and get the needles out.
If you use them a lot, they're worth the effort... we didn't. Mostly when the grand daughter was over.
Didn't mean to sound so negative.... I do like the place and know you and the missus will enjoy it for years to come... Congratulations.