what i did today

Alrighty, the siding is DONE!  The front will have the stone on it.  It got delivered today but seeing that it’s supposed to rain the rest of the week, I doubt we get that up until next week sometime.

As we speak, Scott is off to pick up a fireplace I found on Craigslist.  This whole time we were thinking we’d need a ventless one and it would run about $600.  Come to find out you have to have a vented one in a bedroom. Well, of course, those are $1300.  Um, no thanks.  I want a fireplace but not that bad.  But Craigslist to the rescue.  This couple has the exact vented fireplace we need that (sadly) they had gotten free after their friend gave it to them when his house plans got canceled when his wife passed away.  I will be honored to take good care of the fireplace and enjoy it even more than I had planned. (Oh and I should mention it was only $75!)

Scott will be super busy tomorrow trying to get the fireplace in, the electrical and HVAC up to snuff for code and cross your fingers, we’ll have it inspected on Thursday.  Assuming we pass, the crew can start the drywall!  Whew, if I didn’t know any better, I might think we could be done by the end of April!

This weekend was not in the least everything I hoped it would be.  In some cases more, but in many, it well, just wasn’t anything I wanted.

The siding didn’t go in Thursday, Friday OR Saturday as I had hoped.  Scheduling issues and the rain really put us off.  Scott worked his tail off working on the electrical and HVAC though so it wasn’t a total loss of weekend as far as the house was concerned.  And in fact, we had a good friend give us LOTS of stuff needed for the HVAC so I’m so grateful for that.

Saturday we attended Dani’s son’s first birthday party that was themed in The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I hope she blogs about it because it was CUTE.  After that, I had many plans to go couponing and errand-running but I was plum exhausted.  This first full week of working completely knocked me off my feet.  I was lying around like  limp rag and was in bed by 8 right after the girls.

And Sunday, well, Sunday was a big pendulum.  It started out very low when our pastor announced his resignation.  Before anyone thinks something controversial happened, I need to clear up that he simply has some personal issues he needs to work on (again, nothing controversial!) and he needs to step away from full time ministry to do it.  I don’t want to be dramatic about this and make it all about me because it’s not.  But I’ll just say I’m sad.  Really sad.  I know God is doing a redeeming work in his life and I’m so grateful that he’s doing what he needs to do.  But I’m just sad.  He’s been on a sabbatical for a month and I was just telling Scott how much I was looking forward to hearing him speak again.  While we aren’t going to that church just for the pastor, I do believe that certain people are anointed to preach and he just has a gift of speaking that you can’t wait to hear again.  In the meantime, he’s planning to stay at the church as a member and I’m hoping and believing after a time, he will return as our pastor.

So from that, last night Dani and I attended Cirque du Soleil’s Totem in Charlotte.  It was fantastic being able to have a friend to talk through all that’s going on on the way and at dinner and watching the show is so awe-inspiring.  I’m always reminded how amazing God is to have created people capable and creative enough to perform what we saw.  I came away relaxed and thankful for His design.

So this rainy Monday morning I still feel a little like a dish rag.  So many emotions in one weekend.  It’s hard that nothing is happening at the house today or probably tomorrow.  Our front yard is a big mud hole at the moment.  Pretty sure we have a small moat around the addition.  But I sat in the driveway this morning and looked at all that had been accomplished, I just felt grateful at how much has been accomplished and that God is still good and He’s still in control and moving in all our lives.  What amazing grace.

Sorry.  I just had some chocolate covered espresso beans.

So if the title wasn’t quite clear enough, the shingles were put on the roof today.

And, here I panned back and you can see how it’s fitting in.  I think it looks fantastic all together and balances with the garage quite nicely!  I can not WAIT to see the stone on the front of the garage and new part!

Scott is doing more work inside like setting pot lights and electrical boxes, installing door handles and continuing to deconstruct for the hallway.  Plumber is coming in the morning and Scott still has plans to start the HVAC this weekend.

Also?  Isn’t that blue sky beautiful?  A gorgeous 70 degrees today!

Nothing new going on today unless you count the satellite and phone being fixed.  Sounded like the plumber couldn’t make it today and they’re starting the roof in the morning.  In the meantime, I’ll show you around a bit more.  Here are some daylight pictures of the outside with the windows and door.  I wish I would have shot it wide enough that you could see the shorter window that matches from the kitchen.

I love the way the French door looks.  Scott was pushing to save money and go for a single door but I have to say, I think it’s going to be worth it.

And here are all the interior walls finished.  I tried to label everything and then show you a few extra pictures so you could see it all from different angles.  The only thing missing is part of the closet wall and the shower wall still needs built out.

These past two days have been huge.  Exciting.  Stressful.  Successful.  Depressing.  Energizing.  Busy.  Exhausting.  Whew.  Another two full days in the office (I know people that do it 5 days a week are rolling their eyes.  You are my heroes, just so you know.) and then FULL evenings have completely wiped me.  I should probably be asleep right now.

• I didn’t get a chance to explain but yesterday we had to make a few floor plan changes on the fly. 
• We moved the bedroom/bathroom dividing wall. 
• The windows on the front of the house were changed to shorter windows to account for the toilet that would be in front of one of them. 
• The bedroom windows were framed in the wrong place and had to be moved. 
• We decided on the fireplace measurements/placement.

That is A LOT especially when many questions were being fielded my way during phone calls as I sat in my cube at work.  I’m actually pretty happy with how things are turning out.  I like the shorter windows on the front. I think it balances out with our kitchen window and gives the front a little character.  The windows in the bedroom were a NIGHTMARE to place.  All we knew is they would NOT work where they put them.  Thank goodness my sister came over and with a flashlight, started moving the actual window up and down the wall to find the right place.  Thanks to Mom for consulting on the phone while out of town too!  Anyway, yesterday felt like an eternity of decisions which we all know I’m not good at.

Today I managed to get home a few minutes early after an afternoon meeting uptown and get dinner ready.    The framers were still around and said they had to be in another city tomorrow morning so they stayed around until NINE after being here since SEVEN this morning.  We fed them dinner about 8 after we realized they weren’t going anywhere and we started feeling bad.  But I’m so thankful they stuck around and finished tonight because I was able to field questions and make decisions on the fly about what walls and doors should go where.  Did I mention we didn’t have an exact plan in place?

OK so as I’m writing this is 9:30 at night and the French door and front windows are in.  Shots of those will have to wait until the next update.  Here’s what we have as of earlier this evening.  As I mentioned the house is properly wrapped and windows are in. Also?  Awesome cart wheel, Emma!

Here’s a shot of the inside.  I’m standing in our bedroom in the far corner of the house. You can see the guy in the green is standing in my closet.  Look how big it is!  The opening to our bathroom is to the left there and that ladder is standing where our sinks will be.  The opening from the new hallway is where that logo is in the black beside the window.  Tonight they framed the fireplace.  Out of everything, I think I’m most excited about that!

Scott was also busy at work inside the house yesterday and today.  He framed the new hallway/bedroom wall and put some sheet rock up.  Pictures are becoming more difficult as the spaces are tighter.  This is a shot of the new hallway from the existing hallway.

Here it is from inside our room.  His next job will be to move the door over to the new wall.  It cracks me up that we turn on the light to our room from the hallway now.

And this is the smaller set of closet doors he put on my closet. You can see how big the opening used to be through the studs.  It’s a bummer we had to close that in but it still works.

OK, that’s this week’s updates so far.  I have absolutely no clue what is happening the rest of the week as I’ve been out of the loop.  Roof maybe? Who knows, I’m just trying to keep up, but I did heard that they hired a company for spray foam insulation near San Diego at http://www.asifoam.com/, to do some projects!

Throwing these pictures up. Little stressed as windows need repositioned and trying to figure out the fireplace and I’ll be at the office today. But yeah, super excited we have walls!!

Golly, this weekend had a lot packed in.  I probably could write a small essay on just 8-12pm Saturday.  So what was up?  In short:

• Implemented a huge project Friday night/Saturday morning
• Ran over a dog Saturday morning
• Went to our first adoption training
• Watched Lexi in her first Tae Kwon Do exhibition
• Shopped for more house stuff

Want to know more?  Read on.

Work

So the work thing was a little stressful and yeah, in a small way emotional.  Things didn’t go exactly right on Friday night so we started at 7 and expected to be done by 10 but didn’t get done until 11:30 with the expectation we still had work to do Saturday.  Saturday at 7:30am I hopped on my laptop hoping to read an email that everything was fine but no, huge show-stopper issue had come up.  So I’m making changes on the fly but we had to get to this adoption training.  It only happens once a month and gets filled up fast so I didn’t want to miss it.  I just told my team that I had to go and I’d be back at 12.  Thankfully my manager had baseball games to attend too so I wasn’t the only one with immovable plans. 

The dog

So I take off to meet my mom a little frazzled about work and a little fluffy white dog shoots out right in front of me.  I wasn’t going more than 35 and thankfully he took off back into his yard.  I kind of froze in the middle of the road.  Scott’s friend happened to be passing by in a large group of bike riders and it woke me out of my frozen state.  I turned the van around and checked on the dog.  It looked like he was ok except maybe a hurt/fractured/maybe broken front leg.  The owners were very gracious and insisted on not taking my name or number and said they should have had him on a leash and he just got away.  I was still shaken as it was my first time doing that.  Scott’s friend thankfully had stopped and was hanging out with the girls who he knows well.  I think that really helped calm them down and me as well as I knew the girls were being watched over while I figured things out with the owners. 

The adoption meeting

So after finally  getting the kids settled with my mom, I had to wake a very sleepy Scott up to get to the adoption training.  He had worked all night and with only 4 hours of sleep you can imagine what kind of mood he was in.  Honestly, it wasn’t bad, poor guy was just sleepy.

The meeting was basically an introductory meeting to foster care and adoption through DSS.  They went through all the paperwork, which was a nice big stack and the process.  For those wondering, this is basically the steps:

1. We fill out the initial application for background checks.  (which we turned in at the meeting)
2. We get signed up for the 14 hours of required training (next one is scheduled for last weekend in April/first of May)
3. We turn in all our paperwork which includes a 10 page autobiography of each of us, fire safety plan and the almighty check list of things you are willing or are not willing to accept in a child.  They said it’s the most important 4 pages of paperwork you will fill out.  There is everything from cheating, stealing, ADHD to HIV and sexual abuse on there.  Four. pages.  I can’t tell you how much we covet prayers on how to fill that out.
4. Home study is scheduled.
5. We are considered by a board on whether we are a good fit for a child.
6. If they pick us, they present all the info on the kid to us.
7. We meet the child at DSS
8. We have weekends with the child in our home
9. We spend 3-6 months with the child in our home with the knowledge that if it’s not a good fit, we are able to “give them back”.  I hate to put it that way, but that’s basically it. 
10. After that time, we would work to finalize the adoption.

Whew.  So see?  It’s not an easy thing.  They said just to get approved to find a match would probably be at the least 6 months.

They were very upfront about the situations they deal with at DSS.  There was no sugar coating.  They talked about kids drowning in pools, bio children shooting the foster children, kids disappearing during natural disasters.  I mean, it ran the gamut and they were not afraid to be frank with us.  Which is good.  Yeah, it’s a little scary but I kept telling myself that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle and he had clearly led us to this so I turned in our application with peace and excitement.

Back to work

Because I’m sure you were wondering, it was after the adoption meeting we got things working with our project at work.  I only mention it at all because it’s our last application that we worked on when I first came to the bank 10 years ago.  We shut it down and started up the new and improved one this weekend.  It’s always a little sad for me to sunset applications and I thought it was pretty appropriate that we closed out our last old/original application and I started my new full-time position in the same week.  It wasn’t plan and I guess I found it a little poetic.

Lexi’s exhibition

Look at her out there with all those boys!  Get it, girl!  Also?  Please notice the Great Dane with the green bow on her head.  Good stuff.

House stuff

We bought the French door for the bedroom this weekend, picked out the fireplace and started looking for lighting.  The guys were supposed to start the framing this weekend but they flaked.  However, they’re supposed to be here 7:30 tomorrow and walls ARE going up this week.  Next weekend will be super busy as they said Scott could put in the HVAC and him and his friend could do the electrical.  Whew!

Also, this week I’m in the office THREE days.  I haven’t done that in forever.  Definitely going to be a whirlwind of a week!

So aside from the work changes, the house has continued to change as well.  Where did we leave off on here?  Oh yes, the concrete was poured. 

Well, the foundation was started on Wednesday. 

It was completed yesterday.  We’re pretty happy that we were able to do a crawl space instead of a slab and you can see, it’s a good 2 feet opening on the far left where Emma is standing.

And today, the wood for the framing showed up!  I wish there was a video camera in the kitchen when I heard this truck outside.  We didn’t know that our builder had ordered it.  I heard the engine but couldn’t see out our kitchen window where they were because of a bush we have there so I was literally jumping up and down trying to see what truck was outside.  I spotted the blue Lowe’s sign on the front of the truck and dashed outside to see this:

It’s all the roof for the framing that starts next week!  Word from the builder is we should have a roof by Friday!