I know it has been a long time! We were a little bit busy with all of the final details. We are LOVING our new house and location. We were really blessed throughout the process because we had only minor things not go our way. Yesterday Schmitz came up for the final grading. It looks so great to have a majority of the big dirt piles out of the way. We could see the kitties sitting in the barn last night. Mark took today off so he could farm and we are going to put down some grass seed. They are calling for rain tomorrow, so this is good for us. I was picking up sticks last night. Before I would grab a stick I would kick it to make sure Iwasn't picking up something that I didn't want to pick up. I was glad when Lucy the cat decided to come and watch me. I think she would go postal on anything that moved.

We are slowly getting things put away. Slowly. Emmy's b-day party is next week, so we are going to have to ramp it up a few notches to have our house presentable for our guests. The little gals are really happy here. A few times Sydney has told me that "this is a really nice house." Very important. Emmy plays in her room a lot by herself. She seems to love having her own space too. We DO NOT miss the rental. It did make us appreciate our new house though. I love our washer/dryer and the dishwasher! Overall, we are happy with our choices and would only tweak a few things. Mark came to me when I was pregnant with Emmy and worked on me to make this dream of his happen. I held him off because I had no interest in building a house pregnant or with a newborn. We drew up a plan and stewed over it and made changes over the course of a year. It worked really well for us.

"Have nothing in your home you don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." I am TRYING to strive for this. Obviously this does not include the girls' toys.

You know you are warped when you think that 23 degrees and the sun out is a beautiful day! We went out to our place today and Sydney built this crazy-looking snowman.





The drywall guy, Kirby, came down by himself to finish the mudding/taping/texturing. A lot of work for one guy! He hopes to be done on Saturday. THEN, as soon as things dry, then we can get started on the primer and painting!


Mark the builder finished the siding last week! We love it! I am wondering how many times I am going to hit the green box...

Here is a shot from the lane going up to the house. Anyone need any fill? We have a lot to push out of our yard.

It is actually feeling like the end is near. A good thing for us since the rental is getting a bit old. Okay, it got old a long time ago, but don't want to complain too much. It has been a long winter and the groundhog says we have 6 more weeks of this. Someone should fire him. And, I never want to do dishes by hand again! I was not cut out for life in the olden days. Mark likes to point that out to me when I talk about the modern conveniences.

It is only 10 degrees out as I type. What a winter! And, what a winter to build a house! Who had this great idea? The drywall crew was supposed to come last week, but was deterred due to the ice storm. When it was finally nice for them to come on Friday...they didn't want to just come for one day and have to go back. So, when there was a blizzard warning yesterday we were not surprised when they were not there when Dave checked at 9 and noon. Mark went out after work to lock the gate and they WERE there! They arrived a little after noon! 3 guys down to business. They said that if they didn't get down yesterday...then it would be 2 weeks until they could get down again. We are thankful they made the trip (from Blue Earth, MN--just over the border). Here are some pictures of what they accomplished in just a few hours.

Kitching/Dining towards mud room and our bedroom.

Front door--kitchen and office

Back door/dining


Living room

Our closet and bathroom from our bedroom

Traci Ludwig came up on Sunday and helped me pick out the colors for the rooms. AND, Mark even liked them! We are very motivated to paint and do our part to get out of the rental. Normalcy is going to do everyone some good at our house. A cold week this week, so they probably will not be back to finish the siding.

Work, Work, Work...

Our cabinets came yesterday...a day early. The guys wanted to come early so they could miss the ice storm that is heading our way. They dropped off 71 boxes! Mark came home to help them unload the truck, so then we didn't feel too badly asking them to carry the boxes to the basement. HOPEFULLY, they will start to hang drywall today.


Mark the builder has been busy with hanging the siding (by himself!). This is a view from the west side of the house.

Here is a view from the east side.

Still the east side and making LOTS of progress!

Here it is completed.

Moving to the front of the house now...

A nice surprise today...I left a message for the concrete guy last week to see if he could do the concrete on the porch now so it would be easier for the guys to side the house. A long shot, I thought. They showed up today!

Here is a shot of the back of the house this morning. Mark the builder worked alone today. We love our Pacific Blue siding! We got the house measured for carpet today! We are seeing a glimmer of light in the distance...there will be an end to this at some point in time!

These first pictures are from about 1:15 today. They are working on the soffits and fascia. From the pictures it doesn't look like much has been done, but we can see things moving in the right direction!

Here is a picture of Sydney on a dirt pile covered in snow! She went to the barn and pulled out her sled! It was WARM up there yesterday...32 degrees or so. Warm is a relative term! Better than the negative temperatures of the previous week.

These are a couple of shots of MidAmerican hooking us up to electricity this week! YEAH! The basics are so exciting! The ground was pretty solid, so they were working at it quite a long time.

Here are a couple of shots of the insulation...we have added more since this shot. With the winds we are going to catch, we insulated, caulked, and foamed every nook and cranny! We had an insulator come out and tell us points on some key places to plug up. VERY worth our time. Our builder was very good about telling us what to plug up too.

We are very excited to see 2010! We are hopeful that we WILL get into our house SOMETIME this year! Things have been slow due to the weather and holidays. As I write it is 5 degrees out! It started at -10 degrees this morning! Too cold to put siding up! The game plan is that MidAmerican gets our electricity hooked up to the house, the geo system gets fired up, we get our soffits in to close in the house, then we can drywall!

This picture is a different shot than the one we posted a few months ago because we made them move the door over 6"! We have a desk area where the window on the right is and the door was too close to the cabinets we ordered. We are happy that we have more room...even if it is only 6"!

Our two water heaters...they recommend it with the heating/cooling system.

The geo system...thanks for our wonderful tax break and $$ back on this baby!


A MESS of wires! I took an after picture, but the before picture is so much more exciting!

Pacific Blue siding and the electrical box on the side of our house! It is 400 amp--they recommend it with the geo system and all electric house. My parents can easily run their motorhome off of our house too!