Building: Week 19

In the trenches...

This week CJ and I got to help install the sprinkler system at house #5. RHDC had a company come out and trench for us so we thought it was going to go really fast. The trenching however was not as complete as we thought. We started out the day making sure the trenches were deep enough and taking out the huge rocks that seem to plague the ground. CJ helped tunnel the holes underneath the sidewalk to connect those sprinkler heads to the rest, while I dug the large hole for the control boxes. After that I shadowed the person putting the system together, handing him anything he needed for the pipes. I felt like he was the surgeon and I was the nurse. It was a lot of hard work but I loved every minute it. I have never really been a fan of the framing so to finally be able to do something else was a welcome activity. My arms and back are sore from all the digging and I have a big blister on my left hand but I can't wait to do it again. Also, while we were doing our jobs there was a professional crew there installing the vinyl fencing. This is good news because the whole group has been asking if there would be enough money in our budgets to have the fencing installed for us. The office of course has maintained the "no comment" answer every time. Seeing the first house get fencing gave everyone hope that they too would get a fence. I'm happy because that is a the first thing I wanted done after we moved in but I didn't want to have to install it myself. Now we can focus on something else...like grass in the back yard.

Our house is finally getting a driveway and stairs. No more climbing into the house! You don't know how much of a relief that is. You can see a black hose next the the house in this picture. CJ tells me that the hose will be connected to the drain pipes so that the rain water will be directed under ground and collected to water the lawn as well (or something to that affect.) That is really exciting to me. It is an added bonus that I wasn't expecting.

If the weather holds up we will have a completed driveway in a few days.

Here are the stairs on the inside of the garage. There are a lot more steps than I am used to but I am glad they will be concrete. If the door was two more inches higher than the garage floor they would have built a wooden staircase up to the door that looks more like a mini patio deck. While it may sound cool, it's not. Most of the houses in the previous build have them and they look terrible. Not to mention there are at least 9 steps in each of them which makes it a big climb every time you go into the house.

The door leading out of the garage into the backyard. We will most likely expand that spot with more concrete to hold the garbage cans as well.

Our house is finally secure. They have installed the key pad to the garage door so that only those who know the code can get in. See ya later neighborhood kids, and flyer leaving people.

It was supposed to rain off and on all day Saturday. We were optimistic that we could get our work done staying dry when the clouds were gray but there was no rain and the ground was dry. We did get a little rain around noon so we stopped work and had a safety meeting inside the garage. When the meeting was done the rain was gone and we went back to work. Our shoes were now caked in mud but we were dry. The good luck we felt we had didn't quite last all day though because 15 minutes before we were done for the day, the clouds let loose. It was so frustrating because we were so close to being done, and now we were completely drenched and frozen. It took me all night before I finally felt warm again. 15 more minutes and it could have rained all it wanted without a single complaint from me...at least for the rest of that day anyway. Oh well. We really did get a lot accomplished considering the fact that it was supposed to rain all day.

It's not my birthday...

but I woke to find a rainbow of balloons in my front yard. Elizabeth went out the door to go to school and quickly came back in to tell me that I should look outside. I was going to be upset if it was covered in snow again, but knowing that it was definitely too warm to snow this time I couldn't imagine why it was so urgent that I look outside. I was in complete shock to find my front lawn full of balloons. It was like being "heart attacked" but with balloons instead of paper hearts. I thought they were for the girls but I was shocked again to see that there was a note attached to a balloon that read "To Shelly, with love". The note also said there were notes inside the balloons too that I could retrieve when they began to loose their lift. I knew they were not from CJ. I love him, but he would never think of something like this, not to mention have the time to pull it off. Neither of us can figure out who would do this or why. I am completely touched that someone would do this for me.

This picture is kind of cool because you can't hardly see the strings and they look like floating balls.

They were tied to Blow-Pop suckers which the girls are ecstatic about.

Whoever you are, thank you so much!!! This was really special and it truly touched my heart.

Building: Week 18

Again nothing much happened on the home front with our home. The only new picture I have is of the curb being prepped for the driveway.

Since there wasn't that much new with our house I thought I would show you what has been going on at the other 6 houses. Again I apologize for the terrible pictures (I think I will take my real camera next time and get some better pictures.) They all look so much better than a cheap camera phone makes them look.

This is house #2. This is our next door neighbor. They are at the same point we are. They too are in the holding pattern.

This is house #3. They just barely got their stucco painted yesterday. They are officially in the hold pattern now too.

This is house #4. This house is waiting for the rest of the shingles (the sub-contractors ran out last week and have yet to finish.) They are also ready for insulation, then drywall, finish carpentry, garage door, and finally stucco. It sounds like a lot but it really should be done in the next two weeks. The owner of this house, that is across the street from our new house, is our neighbor right now living across the street from our current house. Small world, eh?

This is house #5. This is the house being prepped for the Parade of Homes. They have painted the inside and are putting the rock on the outside. They will get their cabinets, finish plumbing, and finish hardware next week. Saturday they will get the sprinkler system and then the landscaping will be done. The last thing will be the appliances and flooring. This house will be completely finished in two weeks.

This is house #6. This is the house that most of us have been working on for the last two weeks. We finished most of the projects in this house today. There are a few final things that will be done Monday and Tuesday and then this house is ready for all the sub-contractors to get it to the same place that ours is in.

And finally we have house #7. The couple that owns this house have been building it all by themselves for the last two weeks (by their request.) Now that house #6 is done the rest of us can go over and help them. By the end of next week they should have all the walls up and one week after that it should be at the same point that house #6 is at right now.

Once the framing is complete on this house we will start the finish work on all the houses, unless our supervisor decides he wants us to start some of the finish work sooner. Which he may do because Rural Housing wants all of the yards and outside work to be completely done before the Parade of Homes so that our neighborhood does not look like a war zone.

Exciting times my friends.

For my family in Arizona and Nevada

I posted some pictures of our Wintry Spring yesterday, and I thought I would post again because it snowed all through the night and we woke up to a boat-load of snow this morning.

These were taken before the sunrise.

The city of Orem was hit the hardest with this Spring storm. I know we had at least 9 inches of snow at our house (probably more) but the news reported the official total in Orem was 12 inches. It's funny how all the cities next to Orem only got 1-2 inches but we got a foot. Kind of like a tornado that tears through a city destroying one house but leaving it's neighbor untouched. The groundhog saw his shadow on Feb. 2nd so that meant that we would have six more weeks of a harsh winter but the groundhog lied...we're going on 10 weeks now! I know that it will melt off super fast though so really I'm not too upset. I think the only reason that it bothers me at all is because of how miserable it makes the build for CJ. If it wasn't for the build I wouldn't mind at all. I went out to brush off CJ's car last night about midnight so that he wouldn't have to worry about it in the morning but I knew half way through that it was a lost cause. By the time I had finished there was already a layer so thick on the car that I felt the need to brush it a second time. I gave up after that though because the snow was just relentless. I just sat outside and watched the snow fall for about half an hour. It really wasn't cold so it was almost unreal. It was so bright that it looked like daytime, but it was so quiet and peaceful that I felt like I was inside a storybook. It really was beautiful. We are supposed to be in the 70's by Monday so I think our days of snow are over for the season but I think I will remember how beautiful and peaceful it was last night.

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Same pic but with the sun making the snow glitter.

Happy Spring!!

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!My street. Doesn't it make you want to go for a nice Spring walk and enjoy all the beautiful flowers I noticed yesterday.

Those are pink blossoms on the trees trying to bloom. Notice the 1-2 inches of snow on the truck.

My poor tulips.

Building: Week 17

Here are the pictures from last week. Our house is officially in the holding pattern most likely for two more weeks. They did finish painting the stucco and it looks nice for the most part. Remember the spot under a window where the trim color ran really bad onto the main color? They painted over it but it doesn't look as nice as I hoped it would. It looks like a bad patch job. I guess it will be okay because it's on the side of the house and most likely will not be noticed.





It has been raining a lot so CJ has been coming home soaked to the bone and I feel so bad for him. Last night was Tuesday and I try to go out on Tuesdays to give him a break but I had a house full of sick kids (including the little boy I babysit) so he said not to worry about it and he would go. I still feel bad that I wasn't able to help him out yet again. He is getting tired a lot more quickly than he used to and I know that the build is starting to weigh on him but he still has not complained. I am so grateful for my strong husband who sacrifices so much for his family.

Building: Week 16

I know some people were a little disappointed that I was not able to get any pictures posted of last week's build. I must say that it was disappointing to me too when I was going through all the pictures week by week and there weren't any there for week 15. I made sure to take the pictures this week that were meant for last week, so here are last week's pictures.

This is the underlayment in the kitchen.

This is the underlayment in the master bath. You don't think about all the little details that go into a house until you're asked to do the work. I wanted to tell my supervisor that underlayment is over-rated so let's just skip that step. It really gives me an appreciation for construction workers that have to do this type of frustrating work every day.

Here's what the garage door looks like closed. (The pictures aren't always that great because they are from my camera phone.)

The fascia under the roof was installed finally. It really makes a difference.

This is the front window. They have prepped the stucco for the rock that will be on the front of the house. The only options they give you for the rock are, "rock or no rock". We chose to have rock because it gives the house character. We were told that the rock only goes half way up the wall and that is fine by me. I don't think that I like it going all the way up on only one wall anyway. It makes the house look out of proportion to me. Well I guess they changed their minds because this wall is prepped and the rock will be going all the way up. I sure hope it looks good that way because I wasn't even given a choice.

Those are all the pictures of last weeks progress.

Remember this? It has been a really tough winter.

I'm so glad that spring is here because I really got tired of shoveling snow off the floor, out of the walls, and off of the lumber so that we could build walls. Well, I guess Mother Nature decided that we haven't had enough snow yet because that picture is of last Saturday. We got there and had to shovel off two inches of snow before we could start, then three of us were constantly sweeping the freshly falling snow trying to keep it from accumulating while the others tried to get the walls up. Will winter never end!?

Even though the weather was not all that good last week they painted the stucco anyway. I'm sure they regret it now because if you look close enough you can see the paint around the window streaked really bad. The main stucco color seemed to hold up well, it was just the trim that streaked. Luckily they had only done a small amount of the trim.
These are the quoins that were an option for the trim (unpainted, of course.) I picked them for the same reason as the rock, to give character. It seems that so far we are one of three houses in the entire neighborhood that picked the quoins.

Again, not a great picture but you can see the progress. Hopefully soon the scaffolding will come down and you will get a better picture of the color. Isn't it cute? CJ was told that the color choice made the house look "girly". What do you think?

We got a present when we went in to look around this week. An advertisement hung on the inside of the house! This may be common practice for these companies but I feel it is an invasion of privacy. I would never order work from someone who comes in uninvited. I can't wait until the garage is locked and then no one can go in unless they are supposed to be in there.

I want to give a special shout out and much, much thanks to our friend Ken Roberts. He has come out and volunteered with us on the house a few times. It was especially appreciated when he came out the last time. CJ went to a Daddy-Daughter Dinner activity for the girl's Activity Days program at church. The dinner was on a Thursday night so that meant that he would not be able to go to the build that night and in result would loose 5 hours for that week. We stood to be really short on hours that week but thanks to Ken for coming out that Saturday. We ended up with more than enough hours. It was such a blessing because it was the first time in months that CJ was able to focus on just the girls and let them know that even though he is gone all the time he still loves them and will make time for them. If Ken hadn't volunteered for us CJ wouldn't have been able to go to the dinner and that would have broke the girl's hearts. So thank you so much Ken, you are a life saver!!!!!

Rare Picture

I know I have posted a lot today. I am making up for last week and doing all of this week's posts too. I probably won't have time for the rest of the week to post so I'm getting it all in now. I get asked why there are no pictures of me on the blog, facebook page, photo albums etc. I use the excuse that I am always behind the camera, not in front of it, so there are just no pictures of me. Actually, while that is true, it's also because I always manage to leave the room when a camera comes out. Well CJ's Aunt was sitting at the table talking to us one night and decided to sneak her camera out and point it at me. I didn't have a chance to run and hide. I figure since I can't erase the picture from existence I might as well share it. This is a rare picture. It also won't happen again for a long time so this will have to do.

One scheduled visit, and one surprise visit.

The last weekend in March was a busy one. We were expecting a visit from CJ's Aunt and Uncle from Washington for a visit on Thursday. They were on their way to Colorado and wanted to stop by for a few days to visit with us. They brought their two dogs Maddy and Gunner with them. It was a very nice visit. I wish we had more time with them because they like to do a lot of activities out doors and it would have been a great chance to get out and play. Unfortunately because of the build we just didn't have the time I wish we could have. They do plan on visiting again in the fall after the build. We also want to go to Washington and visit them.

Wednesday night (just before CJ's family got to town) I get a call from my little brother and he asks me what I'm doing for Thursday night. He wanted to come over for dinner. "Sure Aaron, it's only a quick 900 miles. Dinner sounds great." I forgot that he has free flights on Southwest because my Sis-in-Law worked for them. He got on a flight the next morning with his two girls and was here by noon. He rested up a little, we went to dinner, had a good visit, went to bed, and he left the next morning. It was a quick surprise visit. I so wish we had more time too. The girls had so much fun with their cousins. He said that he plans to do that more often before the flight benefits run out. I sure hope he does because it is so much fun when he comes to visit.

CJ wants a dog.

So, when CJ's family came to visit they brought their dogs and CJ was way excited. He has been wanting a dog for so long and now that we are getting closer to our own home, you know a place that we don't have to move from in two years, a place where the landlord can't say "no pets allowed", we are that much closer to actually getting one. CJ wants one right away and I am very reluctant to getting one at all. A little back story to my reluctance at getting a dog. We did have two dogs back in Arizona. We had a German Shepherd mix. She was a good dog that we got when she was a puppy. I carried her everywhere for a few months and then she got too big for me to carry. She also never really potty trained and had more energy and more fur than I could handle at the time (I was very depressed and thought a dog would help me feel better.) When she was about 1 1/2 yr. old I convinced CJ that I couldn't handle her any more and he agreed to let me find her a new home. I am so glad that my brother's family took her. I did love her and wanted her to have a good home. She is super happy and I get to see her when I visit. I still had a desire to have a dog as a companion so I started looking for a small lap dog like the one I had as a child right away. I found one that a family had rescued from a vet (someone had abandoned it there) and were giving away for free to a good home. She was the same breed as my childhood dog so I jumped at the chance to get her. It didn't take long to realize why she had been abandoned. We only had her for two or three months before we found her a new home too. Since then I have felt so guilty for wanting another dog. I had two chances and failed at both. I know that some of those feelings that made me give the dogs away are still there, ie: shedding, potty training, chewing, slobber, tons of energy, and the one that I absolutely hate the most, disobedience. I don't want to be afraid to open the door for fear the dog may get out, and then I have to chase it for an hour before I finally catch it. That happened waaaaay too many times with the other two dogs and I know I can't handle that! Anyway, back to our current dog dilemma. Like I said we had dogs here for a few days last week and it was kind of like a trial run for me. I wanted to see how the kids would handle it, how the dogs behaved, and so forth. Here are a few pics.Megan was outnumbered.

Megan's writing was interrupted.

Gunner was OBSESSED with Dakota's rear end.

Megan found a cool new water toy and snack bar.

Rebecca stayed under a blanket the whole first day. Can you see a pattern here? Our biggest concern was that we had to hold them back when the door was opened because they would get out and chase the neighborhood dogs and cats (remember, my biggest fear in getting a dog.) Plus we are moving into a brand new house and it sure won't look new once we get a dog. I must say though the dogs were pretty well behaved. CJ was hoping that this would help to convince me to get a dog. I want to be open minded about getting a dog so I told him that maybe we'll get a small dog first. They offered to give CJ one of the puppies from the next litter and he keeps asking me if I want a male or female one. Labs are NOT small dogs! What am I to do?

Okay, okay, it wasn't all that bad.

Megan realized that the cool snack bar, and water toy were not meant for her.

She did get lots of lovin'.

And CJ looks pretty good with a dog.

Maybe with some good training a dog might not be so bad. Don't tell him, but I think I might let him have one of those puppies when they're born. I still want my little dog though. Only time will tell what happens.

He finally got a haircut!!

Most of you know that I babysit a little boy Megan's age everyday while his mom is at work. I've had him since he was 5 months old. His name is Gavin. When he was about 7 months old he started pulling on his hair to help him fall asleep. Back then it was just a few thin strips of hair on the top of his head but they were long and so he would pull on them. His mom and I thought he would grow out of this strange habit but we were wrong. As time went on his hair began to fill out nice and thick, so his habit of pulling on his hair to fall asleep turned in to his comfort mechanism. Some kids have a binky, some kids have a blanky, some kids suck their thumb, but not Gavin, he pulls his hair (with a binky in his mouth too.) Because his mom didn't want to take away his comfort mechanism she refused to cut his hair. He has had two bang trims since he was born but that was it. I know it sounds like no big deal since most kids don't have that much hair at this age but not Gavin. He must have Italian in him somewhere because he has been blessed with a TON of hair. Everyone that saw him asked if he was a boy or girl because he had so much hair. Sometimes when I was feeding him I would pull it back just to see what he would look like with a "little boy" haircut. I never said anything to his mom because that is not my place. When she was ready she would cut his hair. Imagine my surprise last week when she dropped him off and he had short(er) hair! It took a while to get used to because he looked so different to me. She said that she went to visit her mom over the weekend and her mom said, it was time, and convinced her to cut his hair.

This is Gavin before. You can see why she did at least trim his bangs. The pictures don't really give you a good idea of how thick his hair is because it is so much thicker than it looks here.

Here is a view from the back. It used to be a lot more curly. The longer it got the straighter it got though and his mom was sad to see the curls go because she used to put gel in his hair to keep it curly, (maybe she secretly wanted a girl.)

You can see his ears now. He looks so much thinner and older too.

Here is the back. He still has enough hair on top to grab so his mom is okay with it. Thank you Gavin's Grandma, he looks really good. lol