Christmas Cousins

Ashton was ice fishing at the children's museum with his cousins, Emma and Ava. Lucas love playing in the christmas kitchen.

Ava Lee with Santa.

Emma wasn't too sure about him.

And that's the closest that Ashton would get to Santa. One can never be too cautious.

First story framed

Here's a good view from the second story out the library window; I think? and you can see the insulated panels we're using instead of traditional framing. The SIPS company cut them to our specifications at their plant and the framers fit them together on site. They are pretty heavy so they needed a crane to start on the second story.

A view from the back. The windows starting closest to you are the master bedroom, the great room and dining room accordingly.

Air band

Building and more

This weekend we visited the building site and saw the improvements being made. Here is the view out the back of the house overlooking the woods and the septic field. A view of the newly poured basement. The framing crew came and framed the whole basement and put the floor on the main level in one day. Pretty fast!

The view of the backside where we can walk out of the basement.

From the front. The garage is on the left and you can see the beginnings of the stair case on the main level when you walk in the front door from the nonexistent porch.

And, here's us. We attended the hospital gala and had a kid free night out. Just to let you know how small and close his hometown is, at the table we were seated he went to church growing up with one girls ex-high school boyfriend, and the couple at our left went to high school with Cinnamon (his older sister). The other couple is in charge of finding couples who want to be the nights entertainment and do dancing with the stars to raise money for the hospital. I think we're on her list now. Overall, it was a fun night of dancing and eating.

Ashton sings the ABC's

Construction Update

Here are the first pics of our ICF basement. The blue you see are the styrofoam forms that are filled with cement which will make for a very insulated house. The black area will be the front porch. Here is the side shot of the garage.

Now we're down in the basement looking out the backside of the house towards the woods. The septic system is already put in and the only approved place by the soil engineer and the health dept. is in the woods. A couple friends cleared the trees and now we have a ten person capacity septic system. Why so big? Well, they count bedrooms and multiply by two not the actual number of people going to be there. "And what's that room over there?" "um, another study" " and that room over there?" "an exercise room?" Sure, we'll go with it or we would have had a septic system the size of the entire woods:) Rest assured that when you all come to visit there will be plenty of room for...whatever.
The other corner of the garage.

The garage straight on. You can see the pond and pier in the background which will be our view from the front porch.

After 8 months of planning, a couple builders, dozens of different plans, we're finally starting! It's been a whirlwind of architects, engineers, and government offices, but it will be worth it in about 6 months. To come: the SIPS on the main and upstairs levels. Those are also very high energy 6 in. thick solid foam panels that are precut for the house. It's like putting together a puzzle and gluing all the seams.

Trunk or Treat

We missed our ward's Trunk or Treat because we went to see our dug out basement (pics of the home construction coming soon). On Sat. we arrived home at five and needed to leave at 5:30. We actually weren't planning on going until friends from this ward invited us to go. Oh, and it's a chili cookoff. Right, we need a pot of chili, four kids dressed in costumes, and the dirt and grime from being out in the country overnight off in the next 25 mins. Luckily, the church is 5 mins. away. Well, I ended up making vegetarian chili since meat would take too long to defrost. I threw in some zucchini and corn, etc. When my back was turned Ashton dumped in some ginger. I tried to scoop it out; add a little tabasco sauce and some more cumin. Done, call it good. The boys had a great time and we got to see friends that we don't normally see and their candy I will say was much bigger and better than our wards. Also, the funniest part is I ended up winning the chili contest. I didn't see that one coming:)