Trenches

Over the last few months I've discovered something.  I am so much better at reading blogs than updating my own.  Oh well.

Over the last few months, we've had birthdays, made quilts, had fabulous weather (gotta love San Diego where we only know what season it is by the day on the calendar), and...oh yea, we're building a house.

So, the latter (along with motherhood in general) is a bit time-consuming.  The month of March we graded (yippee!).  Ok, so my Brother-in-law's excavation crew, my other brother-in-law and my husband did all the work.  I made lunches half the time and ran some errands in between.  The funniest errand was when my husband called and needed help while I was on my way to a Stake Primary meeting.  I walked in, played the opening song, walked out, drove home, took all the seats out of the van, drove to Costco, bought a generator (still in a skirt and high heals, mind you), drove it out to the lot, came home, put the kids to bed.  I'm sure those Costco guys see everything though.

April and May were spent finalizing our stuff for our building permit (The County wants to know EVERYTHING!!!) which we got Monday (huge HOORAY!), growing hydroseed on our cut slopes, and also lining up subcontractors, getting materials bids, and other fun stuff like that.

But last week, I feel like we started.  Check out these trenches! (sorry, I tried 3 times to get it the right way, the trees are at the top).  You can also see our hydroseed up on the hill.

 

It is so cool to see the outline of the house (this is where the foundation goes for those novices like me).   The trenches are all dug for underground plumbing too (hence all the little mounds in the middle of the pad)...which has since been finished.  By the end of the week we will have footings, hooray!

 

The funny thing is that the house doesn't look so big with just the outline dug out.   Maybe it's the fact that there are no buildings around to compare it to.  I keep reminding myself that the width of this house is more than our entire lot in Colorado.  I'm sure once it's framed and in 3-D, it will be huge ('cause it is!).

Every time I go up to the lot, I get so excited.  This is OUR spot!  There are so many amazing things about this property.  When we went up Sunday, we came home with a huge bag of avocados, oranges, and guavas.  These are from trees we haven't even watered!  Jeff also found a patch of wild raspberries down by the stream.  We each had a taste.  I can't wait for them to be ripe.

After footings and flat concrete...framing.  I think that's what I'm the most excited for--to see the walls just how they are going to be.

Other notweorthy things this week is that Hazel started walking!  14 months is about right ;)

 

 

Though she still prefers to crawl and use her "walker."  

 

You can't blame her too much, but she does love to stand up (after making sure we notice) and clap as we cheer her on for being a big girl.  Oh, how do these little ones grow so fast.

Upcoming family events include a 3-year old birthday, Braces and a new Violin teacher for Sarah, and (hopefully!) more sewing projects.  Here's to better blogging!

Valentines!

Valentine's Day is always fun!  Getting ideas from blogs this year made it even more fun :)   

I found an awesome tutorial for this charm pack garland...I figured it was a perfect project for my girls.  We made 2 of them, one for us and one for Grandma Becky.  Sarah and Eliza did it almost all by themselves! 

The day before Valentine's, I saw this idea.  I thought it would be perfect for Family Home Evening.

I changed it a bit.  I knew I didn't have time to dig through my scrapbooking boxes to find the cute paper, or to put the amazing hearts together.  And, no branches of our trees around here are dead to make a tree like theirs...(let alone having colored rocks laying around) so I did my own twist...

I cut out construction paper hearts (creative, I know--but very do-able).

For Family Home Evening, we watched this video, then everyone wrote on a heart something they liked about a person.  They wrote a heart to everyone in our family.

 

The cool thing about having a pretty big family is that when we were done, we had A LOT of hearts!  We heart-attacked our pantry door, where we can all read the fun notes--over and over again!  It was a great activity, and really  made us focus on what we really did love about each other.  I think it will be a yearly tradition. 

Hope you all had a great Valentine's day too!

Thursday Thoughts

A few things that make me smile today:

Evidence from my little man that he is learning...note the phonetic spelling (and it's crossed out because he decided I'm not so mean--though he does still need to do his schoolwork).

A finished project.  The tutorial was awesome :)

And the house/project/grading/plot plans are ready to turn into the County on Tuesday....it's been a process.  (Oh, and the exercise room...it's really our school room.  We had to change it as people at the County thought we were starting a school, we didn't want to deal with those kind of questions.)

Crawlin'

 
Last week, we entered one of my favorite baby stages...Crawling! 

Favorite? you may ask....OH YES!  By the time my babies are 9-10 months old, they are aware of so much and they want to be part of it.  They get so upset when they are stuck sitting.  They are so much happier when they can get to where they want to go.  Sure, there's the unloading of bookshelves, the endless sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming, but hey...happy babies are worth it!

Other happy 9-month tricks include clapping (hooray!)

And grabbing whatever she can.

Growing so big, so fast.  Here's to a happy Monday!