By the end of last week this is where we were. The framer's were working away. Scroll down to see the progress.

This is our view out the breakfast room window.

This is what we looked like this afternoon. They've started putting ceiling rafters up and sheating the outside walls. The bonus room joists are in place and the floor is decked. We even have the beginnings of stairs!

Gabe standing in the garage

This picture is taken of the kitchen. The door to the right leads to the half bath and stairs that lead to the bonus room (Scott and Jason are standing in the bonus room. The door to the left takes you to the boys end of the house by passing the laundry room, pantry, garage, and mudroom/hunting room. Jared is standing in the laundry room.

Day two of framing. We arrived to find the entire floor decked and two walls in place. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Scott is back from Orlando which means my internet conection is back. Yea Scott!! Our garage floor was poured and finished yesterday and part of our lumber package was delivered. They started framing today, but it was too dark to take pictures. They got the framing of the floor joists done today and ready to start decking tomorrow.

I've had a request for pictures of our rental house, so here they are. Before you scroll down, let me say that we feel very fortunate to have four solid walls and a roof over our head. We were one step away from living in a camper on our land while we built the house. That being said, we are more than ready to get in our new house.
Jared relaxing in his (and Jacob & Gabe's) room.
Here's our kitchen. Notice the lack of a dishwasher or microwave. We've gone retro! The rental house didn't have a refrigerator, so we bought just your basic top freezer fridge. Gabe went to get a drink and said perplexed, "How am I supposed to get water and ice out of this thing?"

Here's our living room. We've piled extra boxes and our dining room table on one end. Scott says it feels like we're hoarders with boxes piled up and pathways though the room. Decorating was done compliments of Scott.
We're storing our entertainment center in our kitchen. It's doubling as a pantry/storage. This house has great "bones", but not set up for 5 people. It's in need of some updating a.k.a paneled walls in every room.

Dad, I'm going to be without internet connectivity until Wednesday evening. We waterproofed the foundation on the new house today. Our backs are killing us. Tomorrow they are prepping the garage floor and laying it on Tuesday. Lumber is being delivered on Tuesday and framing starts on Wednesday. Scott and Jason have done an incredible job lining everything up! I should have lots of pictures when my internet comes back up.

It finally happened. We have our foundation. Blockers showed up this morning (23 of them to be exact) and put up our foundation in one day. Eight hours and 2200 blocks later they were finished. Here are pictures from each direction.

Front of the house.

Left side with crawl space door.

Back of house.
Garage side of house.
We're back on track and ready to start framing next week!!!!

We hit a slight roadblock this week. The block guy bailed on us. Now we have block sitting waiting to be used and no one to put them up. Scott's been out of town Monday and Tuesday evening (sorry no post while he was away--we use his cell phone for our internet).

We did have a little action on the building site. A porta-potty was delivered. Now that's exciting!

An Adult for the WHOLE Day

There hasn't been much action at the building site this weekend...they finished digging the water line trench and Scott and Jason installed the water line. Okay, maybe there was a lot of action, but nothing that the camera could really capture.

We were all going different directions yesterday. Scott working at the farm with the assistance of Gabe and Jared, Gabe and I going to his baseball practice, Jacob working, and Scott & I attending a business dinner. We all met up at home around 10pm last night. We were all re-hashing the day, when Jacob says in partial disbelief, partial wonder, "Huh, I was pretty much an adult all day today!" We all laughed and he said, "No really, I got myself up, fed myself all three meals, went to work, and even bought my own socks."

Welcome to a WHOLE day of adulthood son! :)

They brought the rock saw in today to cut the trench for the water line. Pretty impressive piece of machinery.

Good sign...Jason is still speaking to us. :)

They also poured the footers today. Exciting...we're really doing this!

Jared couldn't resist riding over the dirt hills on the 4-wheeler.

They cleared our building site today. Leveling the area in prep for the footers to go in tomorrow. The water company was back today with a brand new $5000.00 tool to finish our water tap. Yea!

Here's a picture of Jacob's car. You can see in this picture that the drive branches off to go to the shed. Scott can't wait until the construction dumpster is delivered, so he can throw the pile of junk next to the shed in it.

Where the gravel meets the dirt (middle of the picture) is where the concrete begins (in front of the garage door)

We made prooogresss! Yep, the drive went in today. The water company will finish setting the water tap tomorrow. They started on it yesterday, but while digging underneath the road, they hit good 'ol Wilson County rock. Surprise, surprise! They brought out a fancy, schmancy $5000.00 tool to break through the rock and...oops, they lose it. They told Scott, "That's alright, that's only the second one we've lost in eight years". I sure hope they don't pass that 5000 large onto us.

On a side note (dad you'll like this) Scott spent some time this evening discing up his food plots. I'll be sure to take some pictures for you dad.

Our progress was a little disappointing today. We spent the day at work struggling to keep our attention focused on the task at hand, all the while wondering what are they were doing at the farm....what does our drive-way look like, have they taken the tree down yet? The dismissal bell rang and we ran to the car in great anticipation, struggling not to run over innocent children or break the speed limit as we reached our destination. We arrived anxious to see a little progress. Nothing! That's right...nada. It's alright, we are a little over eager. Today was just one of many exercises in patience that I'm sure we'll be forced to experience over the next few months. We really need to chill, huh?

We spent the weekend putting up our new mailbox, marking the location of our driveway, mowing, and basically playing. Here are some pictures of Gabe on the 4-wheeler and Scott and Jared on the tractor. Jacob was either working or out with Kendall.

Much Needed Update

I decided to dust the 'ol blog off to use it to track and share the building of our new home. I thought we needed a new blog design to freshen things up a bit.

To catch everyone up: we sold our house, have moved to a 2 bedroom rental house, and are building a new house. We moved to our rental last weekend and started school on Monday. Busy weekend! We spent this week jumping through hoops to secure our building permit. It seems like every goverment agency had their hand out...septic permit, storm water permit, water tap fee, temporary electric hook-up, etc. Next week the real action begins with running the water line, electric, and cutting the drive. I can't wait!!