This n That

On my last post I said that "today is the "last" day that contractors will be there to work" and true to the pattern they didn't get everything done. I have determined that in general people just don't do what they say they are going to do! It has been extremely frustrating. We are planning on today being the "last" day. They have to finish the back steps going from the top deck to the patio. We can not pass inspections without those. That is the finale' for inspection. But they do also need to finish the back screened in porch, we can pass inspection without that. They will finish the steps today and then the inspector can come tomorrow and we can get possession for Wed.


1/7/10-6/21/08 Lydia Yoder
My Great Aunt Lydia ( Aunt "Lydi" as we called her) died early Sunday morning. She was 98 years old and was very ready to go. She was like a 3rd grandma to me as she lived with my grandma for as long as I can remember. Some memories I have of her...

1. Black "grandma shoes."
2. White hair always up in a bun, but if we stayed over night we got of glimpse of it down and it was long!
3. Crocheting...she was always croteching. She made me some beautiful crotehed hangers for my wedding. I still cherish them. (I do not know how to spell that word so I spelled it 3 different ways...it is so wrong that spell check couldn't even figure out what I was trying to spell!)
4. She always treated us like her own grandchildren.
5. She and I my grandma took turns cooking the HUGE meals that were required when all the family came for supper, which seemed often.
6. Ice-cream and crackers for dessert.

Her funeral will be Wed. also and Jeff is preaching that. That is at 12:00, by the time the "festivities" are done it will be 5 (it is truly a great thing that she passed as she was ready to go a decade ago and she herself could never understand why God kept her here so long).

We are planning on a crew to meet us at our old house to help us move beginning at 6 Wed. night! We will move all week and then Jeff has to preach a wedding Sat. night, and we leave Sunday after church to go to Illinois for Jeff's parents 50Th wedding anniversary celebration. We will return sometime Tuesday. We will return to a house totally in boxes. Oh well, God has been so faithful throughout this process as I prayed ardently for timing in all this!!!! The timing had to be perfect in when we sold our house and when our new house would be done...I also prayed that we would have several weeks to move and not to have to get out in like a weekend...we do we have about 2 weeks...I even prayed that we would sell the girls' bunk beds with the right timing. We didn't want to sell them too early or the girls wouldn't have beds to sleep in, but we didn't want to buy new bedroom furniture until we sold them! They sold yesterday, so they will only have about 2 nights to sleep on the floor. God works out all of the details of our lives, even non important in the grand scheme of things ones.

My friend Rose, who is a reader of this blog on the east coast is going to lose her dad from cancer this week. He is in his last days. Rose and I were GREAT friends in high school and still remain great friends. Would all of you pray for her family as they say their good-byes. (Side note: Mom and Dad: that would be Harold Bender)

Have a great week!

Update!

Well my broken camera is even more broken so I can't download the pics to my computer. I had some of the flood and also of the girls swimming. Hopefully I can figure out how to download them soon, once again my camera needs to go in the trash but there is no money to replace it.

Today is the "last" day that contractors will be in the house working. I put last in "" because there will be little things that they will come in and out to do even after we move in. We will have to remember to change the garage code so they can't just come in uninvited! Today the plumber is there finishing up a few things and he was looking out my dining room window, turned around and hit his head on my chandelier and broke it!!!!! We are so sick of contractors! Why was he in my dining room, there is no plumbing there. Just get in and do your job and get out! He is going to have to go to Menards and find it, and maybe special order it. With my luck it will be discontinued!

The plan is that on Monday the inspectors will come and inspect, there will be a few minor piddly things that will have to be corrected and then we should be able to get possession Tuesday. We are going to start moving on Tuesday! If any of you want to drive here and help us, feel free! :)

House Update

As you can see things have changed a lot on the house this past week. All of the stone and the columns have gone up just last week. Actually the columns today. We are cleaning the inside this week and the carpet also goes in this week. My parents came over today and helped clean. There was so much dust and dirt that we felt like we were shoveling snow during in a snowstorm! The basement is spic and span and ready for carpet. The living room and sun room are done. We have to go and finish Haley and Mikayla's room and also our bedroom. I will meet Jeff up there tomorrow after the girls' swimming lessons tomorrow morning. We close on our house on July 11th. We are hoping to be totally moved into this house by the last week of this month. Yippee! The end is in sight!

Start of summer

The weather finally caught up with the calendar here in Iowa. It has been so rainy and it is flooding everywhere and now the humidity is like at a zillion percent! Yuck!

This week we are spending at the house; cleaning, scrubbing, cleaning and scrubbing. The carpenters will finish up today and that means no more saw dust flying everywhere and our cleaning won't be in vain. We are doing this work ourselves. Normally house builders have someone come in for big bucks and clean for you but we want to save money so a lot of this kind of work we are doing ourselves. Jeff's dad and brother came again to help out. They arrived Tuesday night and worked 2 LONG days thinking they would be able to leave sometime today but they will not leave until tomorrow sometime now b/c of the work. Filling all those nail holes on all the baseboards and trim is tedious. It is finally beginning to look like a house now and not a construction zone. Yesterday the counter tops came in. They are beautiful! I was a little worried because we chose black with brown flecks (granite) but it matches the cupboards perfectly! Yesterday the stone on the front of the house was started. It looks great! The carpet will begin going in on Monday.

The new closing date for our house is July 11th so our goal to start moving out of this house is in 2 weeks. That will give us plenty of time to move and then come back and clean this house a little. It is going to be a really busy next couple of weeks, months for that matter.

New home update.

The view right outside our bedroom window. The dirt will be our backyard.

The cabinets are in! Here is Haley, Jenna and her friend, Kia, amidst the cabinets going in.

An upclose picture of the cabinets.

A cute picture of Haley all wrapped up sleeping with her "night-night."

Updated House Pictures

Top row: looking into the dining room/ kitchen window/ looking into our room/ looking into the living room and you can see the sunroom off of it

2nd row: looking into the sunroom/ Mikayla in her sunny room/ Jenna's room/ standing outside Jenna's room, looking into part of the basement.

3rd row: Another part of the basement, this is the tv room, that is a fireplace in the corner/ the kitchen island down in the basement/ Jenna standing right inside the front door in the living room/the front of the house.

*a note about that last peak that is not finished...after this picture was taken they finished that peak, BUT, they finished it in the wrong shade!!!! I was up there when they were completely it and I said to Steve our builder,,,"Steve, that isn't the right color! It's a tad off!" He was TICKED! (not at me.)

4th row: The girls standing on the front porch/ The view of the back of the house from the street over, soon we won't be able to see from this street, because of the trees filling in. The siding on the back is done/ They finally poured our driveway/ Steve, our builder, is also laying our tile. This is him laying the tile in our bathroom.

Snapshots

Yesterday I took my class on a field trip to visit an Amish farm. We have been studying the Amish. We had a great time. Here we all are up in the hay mow in the HUGE barn! The picture doesn't let you know how enormous this barn was!

House pictures

Here are some new pictures of the house. They have started the "dry walls", as Mikayla says. They have also started siding and you can see from the middle picture the one beside it the color we have chosen. It is kind of a yellowy, creamy color. The middle picture is a picture from the street behind us, looking at the back through the trees. Jeff's dad and brother are coming this next Thursday to start painting. The top right picture is taken from MIkayla's room looking through Haley and her adjoining bathroom. A week from Monday they are going to come in and do the wood flooring and then the tile will go in next. When the wood floors are done, the kitchen cabinets go in. Our target date for moving in is the first weekend in June. I get done with school earlier that week so it worked out good.

Have a good one!

House update

Here are a few more pictures from inside the house. These are the girls' window seats. The each will have one. The top picture is Haley's room, the second is Mikayla's-she has a Bay window, and the third is Jenna's room.

Today they were working on the plumbing and heating in the house, they also got my kitchen window in. The date stamp is wrong on these pictures, for some reason it keeps switching dates, we are using one of our old cameras, babying it along, so it doesn't surprise me that it keeps messing up. One of these days we will break down and buy another camera.

House Update

Here is an update of our house. From the top left- close up of the garage, close up of the front of house-there will be a porch there right in front of the front door. Haley's bedroom, it looks out into the back of the house. Middle left- This is Mikayla's room, she has a Bay Window that looks out the front of the house. Jeff is standing in the living room. The kitchen- there will be a window there eventually. Bottom left- Our bedroom, looks out into the back of the house.

A few pictures for you

Boy am I tired today! I in general don't like Fridays, although the weekend is coming it takes a lot of effort to get there. My Fridays are CRAZY without even a one second break in the day! I even eat lunch with my kids!!!

Here are a few pictures for you.(Double click on each one to make it bigger!) No, the first picture isn't our house!!! It is just to show the color of siding that we have chosem!!! The following pictures show the progress on the house, although they are already outdated as the rafters started going up yesterday Jeff said, I didn't get up there to see it.

I took pictures last night of Jenna cheering, on the gym floor she is the first one in the back row. I didn't get any good ones of her playing basketball, maybe next time!

House update

Happy Thursday! Boy this week has gone fast. Time flies when you're having fun!

The actual name of the color of siding that we have chosen is "Heritage Cream", we have done A LOT more driving around and walking up to houses and putting siding samples up to test colors. Now we have to move on to driving around and looking at stone colors- we are putting some stone on the front of the house. Today they are putting the rafters on.

It is so muddy here! Last night we couldn't even get up to the house to walk around, they have it all framed out and I wanted to walk around and check it out. Jeff was up in it, he braved the mud. He said that there might be some things that we might want changed and so I NEED to get up in there. I am hoping since it is colder today maybe the ground would be frozen enough to walk up there. Even with boots on, we all sink several inches down. Haley about lost a boot in the mud, at that point she Mikki and I turned around and walked back.(Jenna was at basketball practice.) Today after school, before Jenna's basketball game, I am going to go give it another try.

We did take some pictures, I wil post those tonight, as I am at school right now.

Hope you all have a great day!

Back to the Grind!

Well, my first day back from break wasn't sooooo bad. It was really hard to get up and get going though. I hit my snooze quite a bit. My friend Kris has never hit the snooze button in her life!!! Can you believe that?!? It is unfathomable to me!
So I got out of bed with about 20 minutes to sit and drink some coffee in peace and gather my thoughts for the day. I actually left the girls at home for Jeff to bring in later. I decided I wanted to get to school early so I left my house at 6:30 instead of the normal 7:15. I knew Jenna and Mikayla wouldn't be very happy. For some strange reason they like to get up early at 6:15 and go to school with me rather than sleep until 7:15 and come to school at 8:15. THAT is unfathomable to me too. Once I got to school and got going I was fine. The day went quickly. The girls had dance so that kept us busy in the evening. Haley was so tired that I thought she would fall asleep on the dance floor, but she made it through and I drove her straight home and straight to bed at 7:15. She got used to the extra sleep and lazy days over Christmas break also!

Well, we have finally decided on a siding color for our house. My family will be totally surprised because we showed them so many samples and were leaning towards a dark blue, then we went to a gray, decided on a gray for the longest time, and then went to a light blue, but have finally DECIDED on a light yellow. It is called Harvest yellow or something. It is very pale and will look beautiful! We have scoured every neighborhood in our area and beyond looking at siding with our little siding samples. I even convinced Jeff to walk up to one and hold up our sample to see if it was the same. I have given him the "assignment" to do the same today to a beautiful yellow house that we saw. I want to make sure that our sample is the same, so I know what we are getting. I do not want to live in a house that looks like a lemon! We won't for sure, its not even close. Leah- it is similar to your house color, but a little yellower maybe. I told Jeff that if it is the same color to go to Menards and ORDER it so we can't change our minds. I can only equate that decision to the one of choosing a baby name. They are both so permanent! (Yes, you can change your siding, but to the tune of thousands of dollars!)

Jeff was going to try and borrow a camera from our builder today to take some shots of the house. Mine is still not working from being dropped on the floor of the indoor waterpark over Christmas break! I am going through major withdrawal. I don't know what I'm going to do. I take a picture of one of my students every week to put into the class newsletter and I don't have a camera to do that!

Well, should get back to my kiddos who are working very quietly on a reading assignment. Anna and Luke are getting chatty today though, I might have to seperate them! :)

Have a good one!

Hello from cold Iowa!

Hello all- this week has gone by in a whirlwind. I can't believe it is already Thursday. Our life is full, busy, but fun. Jenna is the busiest these days with sax and guitar lessons, cheerleading practice and basketball practice. She really loves to be busy. Her first basketball practice on Tuesday night she sprained her finger really bad, it is blue and as fat as a sausage. She is still trudging on though, playing guitar and sax with it all wrapped up. The best she can anyway. Tonight she is determined to go to b-ball practice. She says she can learn to dribble and shoot lay-ups with her left hand this way! At least she is not a quitter!

House plans are moving on,,,going slow. There just seems to be one thing after the other. They finally got the backyard all dug up, trash and asphalt out and put back together. Then they had to redig the "footings" for the concrete to be poured. So...that got done, but then the land developer forgot to give the city inspectors some document saying that all the trash got dug up, so the concrete couldn't be poured. They went around and around with that all day yesterday until 4:00, and by then it was too late to start pouring. Because they couldn't pour the concrete yesterday they had to go and buy "pads" to lay down so the ground wouldn't get too cold and freeze. So...those cost like $600!!! Guess who has to pay for those?! That's right, us! We are going to see if the developer will split the cost with us. (He really should have to pay for ALL of it because it was his fault, but we aren't going to push it since they did dig up the whole lot for us at their cost.) They are supposedly pouring the footings today, then the plumber will come in and do his thing, and then they can pour the basement concrete. We are hoping to begin framing sometime next week! We are only about 1 month behind "schedule!" It is supposed to freeze rain this weekend, so that will probably slow things down again.

I am sure that is WAY more than you ever wanted to know. Oh well! :)

House Update!

PRAISE THE LORD!!! Does that give you any indication how the meeting went today! Well, God's hand was certainly at work today as one big-wig was there before the other big-wig. The first big-wig agreed to everything that Jeff wanted! The second big-wig, when he came late, was not happy with the first big-wig and they got into a big argument. But when it was all said and done, here is what we got.

Basically prayer option #1. They are going to totally clean out the backyard and pay for it all!!! They are going to finish it tomorrow or Wed.! So the building process can go on! Hopefully by next Friday the concrete guys can come back and finish pouring the basement!

I found this all out from our builder. Steve and Amy are the parents of "my" Mollie. When they came in for their teacher's conference tonight he gave me the good news. Jeff hadn't even had time to call me yet. We were giving each other hugs, we were all so happy. Amy said that she drove by the property today and prayed over it. I told Jeff when we were selecting a builder that we needed to support a Christian builder. Not only does he awesome work, but he is ethical and deeply concerned for our well-being.

Oh...ALSO...more good news!!! We got a second bid back on our lumber package: shingles, siding, frame, windows. It is 17K cheaper than the first bid!

Thanks for all your prayers. I'll let you know if we find another car in our backyard! Hey, does anybody need a car, you can have the first one! FREE!

Can you give me 3 minutes?

We really need 3 minutes of your time today, at least!!! Jeff and I are really in a fight. To back up, but make the story short, the farther they dug on our property the more they found. Our house would have been literally sitting on a dump!!! They found a car buried!!!!!!! Jeff and I are under a great deal of stress and very burdened about this. On Friday afternoon the diggers said they weren't going to dig anymore because they got everything out of where the actual house would stand, BUT, they left exposed a HUGE amount of stuff buried in the ground where out backyard would be. You can see other junk and literally an asphalt road that was dumped there. The road is about 3 feet under the top of the yard and is 4 feet thick. The land developer was stupid and said to our builder, "We are going to stop digging now because I don't want to open up a can of worms." (of what would be under the back yard!) So they are refusing to dig anymore! We just don't feel right having a back yard with junk buried under it. We paid way too much money to accept that!!!!

Jeff, the land developer and his cohorts, Steve (our builder) and hopefully our lawyer (which Jeff has consulted- and is very confident that they are in the wrong) are going to meeti today, probably at 3:00. We really need your prayer for that meeting!!! Here are the 3 options that we feel we can accept: Rated from best to worst.

1- They will say that they will dig the backyard and clean it out! (They have already put 25k into just cleaning up what they have done so far, it would probably be another 25k to do the backyard.

2- If they refuse to do this, Jeff is going to offer this as a option- would they clean out the backyard, haul away the junk, but they can dump the asphalt down farther in to the ravine behind our house and bury it. This isn't usable/livable space anyway. This way they don't have to pay money to haul away the HUGE amount of asphalt that is buried there!

3- As a last resort, if they refuse both of these we are going to get our money back. But here is the hitch. We are confident they will pay us back for the lot price, BUT will they pay us back for the work that has already been done to our property. The excavators have already dug the basement, and the concrete workers have already prepped everything to pour the basement. Plus our builder would have to be paid for all his work so far! So already we have done 20k or so work to the property. We are afraid that they will refuse to pay for this work already done!

Ok-so there are the prayer requests, obviously the best option is #1 but Jeff and I are willing to accept any, as long as all expenses are paid. As Jenna said to Jeff as they were talking, "Dad, we don't we a new house to make us happy, we are happy right where we are!" And that is very true.

I will post pictures of the car they uncovered. But I don't have my usb cord at school today.
It was funny, our builder was there when they uncovered the car. He said to the "digger", "Is that really a car?" (a rhetorical question- in disbelief) and the "digger" said, "Yep, that's a chevy!!!" Kind of humorous...but not really.

Please pray today!

The Saga continues!

Here are pictures of "Digging Day!" Excitement filled the air!!!

Our excitement came to a Screeching halt!!!

WELL, to make a LONG story short and "sweet". They found a DUMP under our property. An old farm dump. It used to be farm land and the farmer just took all his stuff; water heaters, other appliances, old carpet, pipes etc. etc. etc. and just threw it into a ravine (at that time) and buried it!!! He must have done it over and over again, as there was layers of junk-fill dirt, layers of junk-more fill dirt!! Well obviously you can't build on top of stuff like that. Our builder was very upset and video taped everything in case there was a problem with the land developer. They contacted the land developer and surprisingly he came right over to the site. He said to our builder, Steve, "What do they want, do they want a new lot, their money back, do they want us to clean this site up. We can have a crew over here tomorrow to clean this up." So after deliberation, we decided to have them clean it up. It will set us back probably another 2 weeks, but it is the best lot to build on. So that is where we are at. They will have to have huge equipment to get all the stuff out of there. Jeff said there is layer upon layer of stuff. (Sigh!)

Jeff and I aren't losing any sleep over it. In fact, last night, the house was locked up tight, lights were out, and everyone sleeping at 8 p.m.!!! Even Jeff, that is a miracle! It has been such a busy week that we decided to call it a night very early. I sure felt good this morning! :) Which is good because I have parent-teacher conferences late tonight.

Update

I won't be able to post any pictures today as Jeff has the camera for Real Estate.

We have been very busy, here is a short recap.

School continues to keep me very busy, we just finished the first trimester so last night I was up late formulating grades, report cards go home today. Starting Friday-Tues. there are Parent Teacher conferences so I have to figure out what I am going to say to these parents.

This past weekend Jeff's parents came. They came Thurs. night. On Friday the girls school had their annual Veteran's Day program, it is quite good! The choir sings and the band plays; Jenna with her saxaphone, her first concert! She also played her guitar for one of the choir songs. Jeff's dad was in the Navy so he came for that. They show pictures of all the vets up on the screen and also their relation to the school. So my girls had a picture of their grandpa up there, but they also had a picture of their Great, Great, Great Grandpa. Jeff's mom's Great Great grandpa fought in the civil war. It was a neat picture and the crowd ooh'd and ahh'd. We had a nice weekend with them. Besides the fact that his mom was recovering from a sprained ankle and had trouble walking, and THEN she was sitting on our kitchen stool and it broke! (the stools fault, no reflection on her!) She went sprawling to the floor and hit her head. Not good!

Leah and her family were also home for the weekend for the Iowa Game. They came over, with my parents on Sat. night and we all ate pizza together.

Update on the building process. Well, they have finally dug the basement. We were ready several weeks ago and then we changed a bunch of last minute stuff with the plans, so that set us back. So finally they went and staked everything out and then Jeff went up to the site and discovered that the house was in the wrong spot, so they had to move everything over 15 feet. Which doesn't seem like a huge deal, but part of our house would have been in the woods! So that set us back. They finally dug the basement and yesterday were prepping it to pour concrete. I guess the soil tech guy has to come out before they can pour and he flunked our soil!!!! He said that he detected top soil in it! Sooooo....we have to see now if there really is top soil, how much, do we need to bring in rock to dump in the hole etc. I don't know, I don't get it all, but I do know you can't pour concrete in top soil. We are trying to figure out why there would have been top soil there as this used to be all woods. This could set us back a couple weeks, but at least they caught it. We are not stressing out. It's all good. God knows when our house should be done, in relation to when we are going to sell our current house. Each set back will only work into His plan.

I should go, I am at work, so I should work.

Pictures of our "lot" on Poplar Lane

A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SISTER, LEAH!! Her birthday was yesterday, the 26th, wish we were together to celebrate!


Here are 2 pictures of our new "lot". The first picture is from the street. The second picture is looking out our future backyard. The flat brown area would be the backyard. We have had 2 very interested couples look at our house. On Sat. we had a man look and then on Sunday he brought his family back, we found out today from their realtor that they are very serious and would like to put in an offer. Jeff also got an email from a lady this afternoon who wanted to see it today. So she and her husband came at 4:30 and REALLY liked it and are going to bring their teenage daughter back to look and probably want to put an offer on it. So, we'll see.