The Hole

It's official, ground has been broken. It was supposed to be on July 14th and we were eagerly watching the weather forecast. Here it has been a complete scorcher all summer with water restrictions rampant due to the lack of rain and what does the forecast call for on the 14th?! Rain.

However, we spoke to Steve (the foreman) on Wed. and learned that they had already broken ground. Guess perhaps Tuesday....Anyway, we said that we'd be out that weekend to check it all out. I was actually quite surprised to see the hole, as I had expected this massive thing. It really wasn't all that large. The perspective is very odd. Looking at it all, it seems the house is tiny when in reality we know it isn't. We finally figured out the placement of where the garage, front porch, etc. are and again it's just really strange. Seems like there's no driveway and the garage will be right up close to the road, yet when I stood on the road and Andy on where the porch would be we felt far apart.

We'll be back out the next few weekends to get our fill before Andy leaves again for Afghanistan. Until he comes back I'll probably only go out once or twice as the girls and I will be busy keeping ourselves occupied. This weekend they should have the basement walls in and possibly the concrete footing. According to Ed, one of the land developers, there's a chance (probably slim) that it will be under roof before Andy leaves. That would be neat for him to see, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. Hopefully the weather cooperates - come on no rain!!

Heat Wave

Since when has it been triple digits for multiple days in a row at the beginning of July???!!!

Ok, with that out of the way, we managed to successfully close on our construction loan on June 30th. Little did we even realize that it was the last day for the tax incentives as they didn't apply to us. However, the mortgage industry was apparently crazy busy and just generally out of control. We took the 2 1/2 hr drive to the settlement company without even knowing if we would close as they still did not have any of our paperwork from the bank. Thankfully, 3 hrs after we were supposed to, the paperwork arrived and we were able to seal the deal. Nothing like handing over an insanely large check and getting nothing but papers. So we took the pens. That'll have to last us till we get the keys.

Spent the holiday weekend relaxing (finally!!!) and taking in some fireworks. I even had a moment of weakness and asked Andy about hitting up the beach. To which he promptly gave me a stunned look wondering who the impostor was that had replaced his wife. Instead he satisfied my desire to get out of the house and "do something" by heading to Pottery Barn and Ethan Allen to look at furniture. Several hours and several thousand dollars later we were the proud future owners of a leather couch, a leather recliner (a.k.a. "the man chair"), and 2 fancy chairs with a cool green print fabric.

I sense a trend in that many of our recent purchases make us the "future owners". I look forward to the future...

Coming next week......the official ground breaking!!!