Construction Week 1

We have made a lot of progress in just the first week! First, we got the excavator out there to level an area for the workshop and the house. Then we had him bring rock in for a temporary driveway and parking area in case it rains. Next we met with the workshop guy to get that all squared away and pick out our colors and options. He should be able to start building it in two weeks which Shannon is VERY excited about! We also got a port-a-potty delivered. Sorry I don’t have a picture of that but you can use your imagination =P.  Lastly, we got in touch with the foundation company and got on their schedule. They already came out today to get started on placing all the forms. So exciting to see it coming together! I think we did a lot for just the first 4 days!

The boys loved watching the bulldozer and dump trucks.

Next week we will have the piers put in for the foundation (we have a ton of those), rough in the plumbing and floor electrical and get a form survey. After that, we will be ready to pour the slab!

Read Full Post »

New Chicken Coop and Chickens!

We decided to upgrade our chicken coop because we haven’t been letting the girls free range as much as we used to since we lost one of them to who knows what (we are guessing a hawk??). So now they only get to roam when we are there to watch them. I wanted to give them more space and a little more shade because it has been so hot here so I found this adorable coop on craigslist and fixed it up to work for us. We tied the old coop in to the back with a little tunnel so now they have lots of room to explore and nest. They seem to be happier with all their space. We also got 4 new chickens so we could add some different types. We wrapped chicken wire underneath to prevent anything for trying to dig in and get them.

They LOVE to get watermelon treats!

 

The boys posing in front of the new chicken coop. We had to add a little decor =)

Here are our new girls!

Read Full Post »

New playground and end of school year!

Last week our new community park opened! The boys were so excited to go by and play on the new park and check out their hand print tiles they made. I can’t believe how much bigger Tristan’s hand was since the beginning of the year! What an awesome town we have!

Today was the last day of first grade! =( It’s crazy how fast the school years go by. I can’t believe he will be a big 2nd grader next year! I am so proud of him for working so hard this year and getting the Honor Roll. He is a math whiz but Reading and Writing did not come easy for him so he really had to work hard this year. He has improved so much! Here he is with his honor roll certificate and his awesome teacher Mrs. Nichols!

Read Full Post »

Nana and Papa came to visit!

A few weekends ago we were lucky enough to have Nana and Papa (Shannon’s parents) come visit us. They brought their camper and pulled it up next to our cabin. We had so much fun hosting them! We went to Tristan’s baseball game and had a campfire. We even cooked our yummy dinner over the coals. It was a fun time!

 

Here we are waiting for Nana and Papa to arrive. Tristan was SO excited he kept asking every 5 minutes what time they were getting here.

Nana and Papa got to watch Tristan play baseball on a very hot day!

We came back home for relaxing!

Tristan made us an awesome campfire. I can’t believe at 7 years old he can stack the bonfire and light it using only the flint and steel on the knife. He is always so proud of himself afterwards.

Logan enjoying a yummy smore!

Eating the foil dinners!

Maggie enjoyed hanging out and visiting with everyone too. 

Logan doing some more relaxing!

I love this picture because all of my guys are busy doing something. They are in their element when they are surrounded by sticks, dirt, and fire!

 

The week after Nana and Papa left Tristan finished up his baseball season. He had so much fun playing baseball!

 

Read Full Post »

Final Plans and Spec Meeting

Last week we received the final draft of our plans and we approved it! Yay! Our architect was able to finish them up by the end of the week and then we got to have our long spec meeting on Friday. We are one step closer! More about the spec meeting later but first looks at our pretty house!

It is an L shape so that front stone/brick area to the left is the garage sticking out towards you. It has a nice big front porch and a huge back porch/screen room. I can’t wait to sit out and relax on my porches! haha! I am not sharing the inside of the floor plan online for multiple reasons so if you are a friend or family member that wants to see it message me and I will e-mail it to you! Some awesome features include a huge kitchen island, over-sized pantry, stone fireplace with wood burning stove, tornado shelter/safe room, bonus room over the garage, and a big vaulted great room with wood beams. So we had our spec meeting on Friday which is where we basically sit down and pick out every detail of our house so we can get a ballpark budget. The nice thing is we are not locked in to any of our choices since we will be the ones actually ordering everything we can just change our orders as we go if needed. We picked everything from type of insulation, stone, siding, all the way to the floors and style of the cabinets. So exciting! Now we send all the options out to bid and when we get all the bids back we will make sure we are within our budget and submit it all to the bank to get the construction loan closed. Hopefully everything will come back good there and we won’t have to change anything with the plan. We will see! Since the planning stage took a little longer than expected we are looking at possible July for ground-breaking unless the bank just closes extra fast. The construction loan can take 30-60 days to close. It’s so awesome to be able to see our actual plans and be able to visualize it!

Read Full Post »

The Chickens are finally giving us EGGS!!

It felt like the longest wait ever but on Thursday when I got home I checked the coop and we had our first egg! I was so excited! I couldn’t believe it. The next day we had 3 more and then every day since then we have had 3-4 new eggs. It hasn’t even been week yet and we have already gotten 15 eggs! Crazy! I can’t believe just 4 chickens can lay that many! We are planning to get a bigger coop after our new house is built so we will really be in business then! The boys enjoy looking every day for the eggs and also giving the chickens special treats like mealworms and blueberries which seem to be their favorite so far. We let them out to free range a lot and they enjoy that!

We have had some beautiful weather to do lots of yard work and Shannon finally got a water system in place for the fruit and nut trees which he has been wanting to do for awhile. Here are a few pretty pictures:
The orchard:

One of my favorite spots… the back woods:
Pretty clouds during sunset

Read Full Post »

Spring Baseball

Baseball season has begun! Tristan is on a really great team with some awesome kids and great coaches. He is having a blast and looks so cute doing it! Go Tigers!

 

Read Full Post »

Easter Fun

Easter has turned in to one of my favorite holidays! We have so much fun having the Easter egg hunt at our land and next year we will have a big house to host even more people. The weather this year was so beautiful. We did Easter lunch at my mom’s house and then all came to the land to do the hunt. The boys had fun finding eggs, blowing bubbles, and breaking confetti eggs on everyone. Nanaw was even a great sport and suffered through three confetti eggs busting over her head! Tristan thought that was the best! LOL! Such great memories!

My poor mom had to work so that is why she is wearing scrubs! The next day the boys and I decorated some eggs. It was so much more fun this year because Logan is getting a lot more interested in doing this his own way. They had a blast!

Can’t wait for next Easter when we can host everyone in our brand new house!

Read Full Post »

First Draft of Plans

This week we got our first draft of our plans! We were trying to go with an open L layout for the house with the garage in the front but the plan ending up being too wide (since we want all the bedrooms on the first level). So the plans are back with the architect and he is working on a closed L design that hopefully will fit a lot better on the land. It is looking awesome so far though! I can’t wait to see the final draft! We can’t go forward with anything else until we have the plans finished so right now we are just waiting…

We did lots and lots of yard work this weekend! It crazy how long it takes to mow 5 acres =P. I might need to trade my riding lawnmower in for a tractor. haha! It looks so pretty mowed though! Here are a few pictures:

This was pre-mow. Look how pretty and green everything is! It’s so awesome when we are not in a drought.

This was after mowing the orchard area. Our fruit and nut trees are really taking off!

The trampoline area. Down the hill behind the trampoline is where the picnic table and fire pit are.

And here are a few pictures of the house site all mowed and pretty! Shannon was laughing at my stripes and said my type A personality really shows when I mow. LOL!

Read Full Post »

Planning phase has officially started!

Well here we go… we are officially building a house now! Eeeek! The first step was to apply for the construction loan which turned out to be pretty easy. We had already paid off our land completely from when we sold our former house so we are using that as a down payment. When you build on your own land you usually have to put close to 20-25% down so that can be a big problem. We had our first meeting with UbuildIt on Friday to sign the contract and get our first binder. It is basically a big binder of all the steps we need to take care of in order to get to the construction phase. I can already tell the planning phase is going to be a beating but hopefully if we put the hard work in now the construction will go smoothly. So now that we are squared away there the next step is to get with the architect to design our plans! Our Ubuild It consultant is coming to our land tomorrow to do a Site Review where he will take a look at the house site and see what all needs to be done to get ready to build. We are excited and nervous about this journey. I think we will have a lot of fun along the way though!

We also designed our workshop which will get built at the same time as our house. Our Ubuild It consultant is already working on getting bids for the building. Shannon is more excited about the workshop then the house, lol!

I will try to keep the blog updated as much as possible while we are building. It will be fun to look back on the blog and see all the steps that we went through. If everything goes well we should have a completed house by the end of the year!

 

Read Full Post »