rough plumbing, foundation, and framing starts!!

Rough plumbing for the half bath



This is where the kitchen will be



More rough plumbing



Yay for a foundation! This is from the back of the house



This is our garage



This is our front porch


Yay for the first wall!! Framing begins.....

Most of the outside walls done

This is the dining room and kitchen

This is the front door and front window in the office

The first floor is basically done and sheeting (i think that's what it's called?) all around the outside

Other side of the house

This is jon standing in our half bath, which is just inside the garage door and by the kitchen

This is the kitchen

This is jon standing in our kitchen by our pantry

Elle, Pam, and Jon standing in our family room with the dining room and kitchen behind them

Another angle of the family room

Jon and Jack standing in our office looking out our front window

me and jon standing on our second floor!

Here's a view from the front.... WOO HOO!!! i can't believe how exciting this is! when we got up there last night and walked in our front door i just got so excited and started freaking out!! Now that our house actually has some shape and we can kind of tell where things are and how much space we'll have, it's so much fun!! YAY!!

Insulation, roads, backfill, and gravel

I almost posted these pictures with this purple insulation stuff by themselves but I decided to wait until I could just add them to the next step... I don't want to get too out of hand with posting every little thing :)

I guess this purple stuff insulates the foundation? who knows, that was our best guess...

Another view... and YAY! for the sunshine that day!

Here's a view from our street in front of our house! I was actually able to drive on our street for the first time!! First it was just a field and then there was always holes while they were putting pipes in the ground and now they have curb and gutter down the entire street! woo hoo!

This is our street! our house is on the left

And this is the street just to the north of our house, the one we'll probably use to get to our house. So you go down this street and then turn left and our house will be the second lot on the left. i don't think there are plans for a house to be built next to us yet, so it will be an empty lot then us, hope that makes sense.

Today they back filled it, which I think means they took all the extra dirt and filled in around the foundation, and then put gravel down!

Here's a different view... where did the sunshine go?! Hopefully it will be back soon because next step: POUR THE FLOORS!! and word on the street is they'll start framing by the end of the week!!! WOO HOO!!

walls without forms

this is proof that i get excited over every little change... they took down the forms! here are our foundation walls without the forms...

sorry about the blurry cell phone picture... this is our garage!

Foundation Walls

When I was up there the forms were still up so it looks like a big mess but we have foundation walls! I guess the next step is to pour the floors!

And it was REALLY muddy up there!!!

Footings

our hole!

It's official... they've started!! We have a HOLE!! Monday night we went up there and they had it all staked out.

Here's Jon standing on the front corner of our house!

I thought this was funny... it's our front porch!

Here's our curb and gutter!

WOO HOO!!!

Here we are Tuesday morning... Mr. Track Hoe going at it!

To our surprise Mr. Track Hoe said, "is this your house?" we nodded. then he said, "you wanna run the back hoe for a while?" Jon got a giant smile on his face and skipped on over there like a little school boy! he was SOOOO excited!! So Mr. Track Hoe gave Jon a quick lesson on the controls at let him at it!

Here he is hard at work digging OUR hole!!

Here it is... THE HOLE!!!

Here's an arial view.. kind of... i'm on top of a pile of dirt.

Well we're stoked!! We're on our way to having a new house! They were supposed to pour the footings on Wednesday but Mother Nature decided to intervene... so as soon as the weather is nice enough I guess that will happen... sometime next week I guess. WOO HOO FOR THE HOLE!!

the BEFORE

SO... our new house has not been started but we've been driving up to our lot at least once a week for about a month now!! Smithfield City wouldn't let Kartchner start on Phase II (which our house is part of) until they put in the water and sewer. So our original dig date was March 16. Then they told us it would either be March 16 or March 23. Then they told us it would be April 6 because the water and sewer wouldn't be done until the end of March. THEN they told us it would be March 30...which is tomorrow!! WOOHOO! so anyway we've just been driving up there every few days and taking pictures of their progress on the water and sewer. So most of these pictures won't be very exciting for anyone but us... we get pretty excited with every little change there is up there! But I just thought it would be interesting to post all these pictures now before our house is built and the road is paved and then see the difference after it's all done and we're moved in! (that time can't come fast enough!!) So enjoy these pictures of fields which will soon be our home!!!


This is the hole for the water pipes (this picture was taken from the south end of our soon-to-be street.. so we're facing north)
Our lot is behind the second house from the end CLEAR down there. (the one with the deck)

I think those big cement pipe things mean something cool is happening here...this is the street just north of our lot that will run east and west.

This is a view of our lot from the north side! The deck you see on the very far left of the picture is the one I pointed out earlier... see it's all coming together now huh..

This is a tractor digging the hole for the sewer pipes

and finally this is a view of our lot straight on, as if you were parked on the street in front of our house-to-be!! i LOVE the mountains up there!!!

I hope these pictures made some sense, it's probably confusing if you haven't been up there but maybe it kind of gives you an IDEA of how it looks... not very exciting at this point because it's just tractors and holes and dirt piles but I still get SO excited every time I go up there!!

TOMORROW IS DIG DAY!!!!!!!!!!

I'll definitely be posting pictures of our HOLE!!!!

PS... we found a home for Maya!

Free to a GOOD home...

Hey everyone, for those of you who don't know, Jon and I have sold our house and are in the process of building a new one. We're set to close on our current house on May 14th. However, our new house won't be finished until the end of June. So for about 6 weeks we will most likely have to move in with the folks. The only problem is none of them want our sweet, loving dog to move in with them.

Maya has seriously become a part of our family over the past two years and it breaks my heart to have to do this, but we've decided to put her up for adoption. She is a Beagle, and as I mentioned before, she really is a sweet dog. She loves to be where ever the people are and likes to be a part of everything. She loves to cuddle up and takes naps with you, but also likes to play tug, fetch, etc. She has been an AWESOME family dog. She is SO mellow with kids and puts up with Elle tugging on her ears and fur. The only thing she doesn't like is when kids pull her tail, but even then she just whines and pulls away. She has never once nipped at a kid. She is spayed.

I could go on and on about her, we really REALLY love Maya. So as I stated in the title, she is free to a good home. If any of you are interested or know someone who may be interested, we'd really like to see her go to someone that can give her the same love and attention we have. So please spread the word!! Thanks!

let's try this again...

ok i guess i'll try blogging again. i took the music player thing off my page. hopefully that was the culprit making it slow... we'll see. well i'm gonna start off slow and easy and keep to the basics, so here's what we've been up to:

Jon got a new job! He just did not want to be in law enforcement for the rest of his career (15 more years could have been a really long, miserable time). So now he works for Spillman Technologies. He LOVES it!! he works with a bunch of really amazing people who are upbeat, positive, and REALLY nice. For those of you who don't know, Spillman provides software for law enforcement and other public safety agencies. Jon is in Customer Education, so he travels around to different law enforcement agencies and trains them on how to use the software. So it is somewhat related to what he was doing because he used Spillman software for six years himself, which makes it a lot easier to teach other people how to use it!

We put our house up for sale and 8 days later we were under contract! We are set to close May 14! By the way, this is an old picture... I should really take a new one but I just haven't... just so ya know, the windows sills are no longer TEAL.... blah! We have loved this little house and there are so many memories here (our first date, bringing elle home from the hospital, etc) but we are just ready for a NEW house and more space, a dishwasher, carpet, an attached garage, a laundry room sans cobwebs... i could go on and on about the things i'm just SO excited about!!!

We are building a new house with Kartchner Homes! This is a watered-down version of what ours will look like. If you want to go to their website and get more details on it, it's a "Beaumont". Anyway, we've picked our colors for everything and they are supposed to dig on March 16 or 23...? Hopefully it really ends up being the 16th!! Also on the website you can see the neighborhood we're building in, it's called Ridgeview and it's in Smithfield. Hopefully we'll still have friends when we move clear out there. Jon thinks no one will come visit us because it's too far north. I hope our friends don't just like us for where we live but you never know... at least we'll be close to our parents!

As for an update on me, I'm still working part time for the Sheriff's Office. Jon was always home at night so I could go in and work and then be at home all day with Elle, but when he started travelling I started trading babysitting with my sister in law. That only lasted for a month because I am supposed to be able to start working from home any time now... the computer guy that's working on all the details is easily distracted and is taking his time, so hopefully it will actually happen next week...we'll see. Anyway, here's a cute picture of elle & mckaylee!

Elle is now 10 months old... I can't even believe it. I have a hard time even saying that out loud because it breaks my heart that she is growing up. I'll probably be saying that her whole life, but I really can't believe how fast time goes. She is so much fun! She's crawling all over and getting into everything! She loves Maya's dishes and the DVD player... she also loves to stand next to things as seen below:

She finally started getting a little bit of hair... just barely enough to get into a little clip. We still pray daily that she'll get some REAL hair sometime soon!! :)

Anyway, that's basically what's new with us!! We have been so busy with everything new in our life but it has been SO much fun! We couldn't be happier!!! We're so blessed!!

i'm thinking about coming back...

... i know i said goodbye forever, but i'm sure you've all missed me terribly.


HA more like... probably not.


well we FINALLY got internet. YAY!!


and i have a lot of other good news too!


SoOo... i'm still trying to decide.


i'll get back to ya.

goodbye...FOREVER

....i think. I've decided to say goodbye to the blogging world. I might be back if I start to miss it, but I've pretty much had it with Blogger. It is SO slow. It takes like 15 minutes to load anyone else page so I can't even see what everyone else is up to. Then when I try to go to another website from Blogger it takes so long that I just close the screen and open up a new one. Plus it's too hard to keep up on my blog and Facebook in the 15 minute break I have at work. So if you want to see what we're up to check us out on Facebook, give us a call, or come visit us!! Hopefully one way or another we'll be able to stay in touch...LOVE YOU ALL & THANKS FOR YOUR FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE!!!

elle's first encounter with santa was a success!!

she wouldn't smile but at least she didn't scream!!!