We Have Walls and Soon a Roof

Things are moving along quickly with the house. We haven't been able to take any pictures except for our drive by today, because they are working from sun up to sun down these days. I know the crew knows the minivan by now since I'm stalking the 'hood so much, checking up on the progress. I'm glad they are working so efficiently to get us under roof before it rains. We lucked out to have our framing week on such a beautiful week. I've got my fingers crossed that we will be shingled in by the end of Saturday.

The crane putting some of our final pieces of the roof on

The house on the left in this pic is the Holby's. They are all wrapped, windowed in and shingled.

Nice Porta Potty.. huh?

Here's a shot of the side with our garage.. .on top of Brandon's wish list, a 3 car garage

Now, no rain until our shingles are on please!!!

Look What I Did!

Ok. I have been a closet sewing/embroidery machine owner for three months now. I've been meaning to blog about my trials and tribulations with my new toy, but have never seemed to find the time to. Well, now I'm ready. My grandmother was a seamstress her entire life and I always watched her sew, but never really wanted to learn how to. I got interested in making things for Aubree about a month ago, and made her a pillowcase dress, which turned out really cute. I will have to take a pic of her in it and post it as well. I really think my "Maynor" is smiling down on me with every stitch I sew and every outfit I create for Aubree. I bet she is saying "Finally, she is learning how to sew..." I have monogrammed several things for Aubree, friends, and for Blueberry Buckle and I finally learned how to sew a pair of pants this weekend after one failed attempt! Thanks mom for coming up Saturday for my personal sewing lesson. Another fun thing is appliques which mom also walked me through over the phone... What would I do without her???
Anyway, I finished one of the three Appliqued shirt/capri pant outfits that I have planned for Aubree for the spring/summer and she was MORE than happy to model it for the camera a little while ago. Check her out... I think it turned out cute!

House Update

They are working right along on our house. Mom and Dad wanted me to post pics of what's been happening, so here they are if you are interested as well. Last week after they cleared they poured the footers for the foundation and over the weekend they set up. Today they were super busy starting to lay our blocks for the foundation. They are almost done with that, and will start putting our brick on the foundation soon. Our lumber is supposed to show up at the end of the week, so hopefully the forcasted rain for the week won't slow them down too much!

This is a view from the backyard

Brandon was taking a picture of the huge pine tree in the middle that we are going to have them remove. He's scared lighting may want to pick that one out one day.


Our Foundation

The Brick is waiting patiently for it's turn.

This will be the crawl space door. We also met our neighbors that live in the blue house across the street and they were very nice. They did say it had been a little noisy in the neighborhood the last few weeks...

We've Broken Ground!

We are SOOOO excited to report the we have broken ground on our house!!! Snow and all on Tuesday, they started to clear our trees. We had our lot walk and pre-construction meeting on Monday to iron out all of the details of our new home and to determine what trees were going and which ones were staying. We are going to have a nice treed (is that a word) backyard since our lot backs up to a natural area. Ryan works quick to build a house, so we are estimating to be in at the end of May/early June. We're pretty excited too since we've heard we're getting some really cool neighbors across the street!!! :)

Our VERY good friends (The Holby's) are building in the 'hood too! Of course, Anderson is pretty excited as well! More pictures to come as things progress.

You Don't Wanna Know...

what I woke up to this morning!.... Two more mice stuck (alive) on sticky traps....... and then shortly thereafter.... a panic attack!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so done!

Snakes eat Mice Right????

Well, first of all Daddy is out of surgery and he did well. Thanks to all who thought about him or prayed for him.
Now, on to my title.................
Yep, we now have MICE........... ICKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good dinner for snakes, huh? Brandon saw our first little friend about a week ago. We set traps and called the landlords (whom we are not happy with.. but that's another post for another day). We caught one and found another one stuck in the trash can. When we called the owners we told them about the problem and they sent out the neighborhood handyman to try to get rid of our visitors. i'm guessing his rates are cheaper than the Pest Control!!!??? They made us feel pretty stupid, saying that in 12 years they never had mice... Well, we now had two dead ones to prove that we DO in fact have mice. Ughhh... Poor Tom (the handyman) is just the nicest guy! We are getting to know each other quite well, as this house has all sorts of issues! He came over yesterday morning and patched up SEVERAL holes that they could be getting through and set several traps. He was COMPLETELY overwhelmed when he saw just all the places that they could be getting in. The ones that we have caught have been babies, but this morning as Tom was making his daily visit he found a BIG one that got caught down in the storage closet (crawl space). He set more traps today and patched more holes and told me he would back tomorrow to check traps and check out if they are in the duct work......... So my week has consisted of spending the day with Tom and Our Jerry's .... Get it! I'm counting down the hours until our house is completed!!

Prayers Needed for my Daddy

My daddy will be having surgery tomorrow morning on both of his knees. Up until his MRI today he was having both knees partially replaced. The doctor just called to let him know that the left one is so bad that it would need to be a total replacement and they were going to stick with the partial for the right one. As anyone who knows my daddy well, knows he doesn't like to sit still for long so this is going to be a real challenge for him. Please just remember him tomorrow and pray for a successful surgery and a quick recovery... Oh yeah, my mom will need all the prayers she can get as well as she will be taking care of him!!!

More posts to come soon... one about our new visitors in the rental house......you won't believe what kind of creatures we have now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!