Other news

The last few days have been eventful for me. Today I got a job offer for a position at the school in which I am working. I'm going to think about it very carefully this weekend.

I also received my graduation announcements in the mail. Although graduation isn't for almost two months, it is great to have something tangible. The most valuable lesson that I've learned by returning to college is that every goal starts with some small step. I remember the first steps feeling almost overwhelming. Once I got a few of them behind me, the rest seemed easy. Registering for classes, buying books, and attending classes with teenagers turned out to be mostly fun. Oh, and I never thought that I'd make it through Spanish I and II, but of course I did.

This is the first of many times that I will thank my family and friends for encouraging me, supporting me and believing in me. Most importantly, thanks to Brad for being patient and generous enough to give me this time.

Boiling Water

If you've been regularly checking on the progress of this house, it must seem like watching a pot of water boil. We've been simmering without a lot of action for a long time. Today, we've just started getting all of those little bubbles shooting to the top right before the rolling boil starts to happen. The steam is getting thicker because we are just on the verge of something big!






Look, we have rebar and plastic! The foundation is supposed to be poured either tomorrow or the next day.


Here you are standing at the corner of the garage looking toward the living room on the left. The stairs will rise between the dent and the garage wall.













This is the back porch. See how it runs the entire length of the house? The bay window is in the kitchen. If you can see the horizontal boards, those are where the back sliding glass door and the pool door are going.









This is the front porch. It will have a sidewalk that runs from the driveway. Those get cement much later.



The whole crew made the treck to the dirt- can I call it that anymore? They knew we'd be going out to dinner afterwards so they agreed to pose for one picture.

Birthday Luck

Charlie's birthday, Friday, October 14th, is also our official start date. Charlie got a nice dinner out with just Mom and Dad at Olive Garden and then a trip to ToysRUs to spend his birthday money.



The house got some pipes. The grey pipes furthest to the right mark the spot of our future kitchen island.


Most of these pipes are the downstairs bathroom.

This is the view from the front to the back. Don't the trees in the back look nice? See all the space above the dirt? That will soon be filled with house. That's what we're hoping for anyway.

Oh, did I tell you about the meeting with the builder? We reviewed the plans to make sure that all the outlets and light fixtures and such are in the right places. The plans show that the top of the stairs has bannister instead of a 1/2 wall. They were quick to say that the plans were not completely accurate, but I hope the banister stays.

Pipes!

Although we have only been able to see them in the dark, we have trenches filled with pipes. The sun is going down sooner, and we are having a hard time getting to the lot with enough daylight to get a good look at things.

Friday we finally get to have the sit down meeting with the builder to go over all of the plans. I'd be more excited if I wasn't so tired.

Charlie's birthday countdown: 2 MORE DAYS!!!

Trenches

Today we went to Keystone to celebrate my grandmother's 85th birthday. All of Ollie's kids were there! Happy 85th, to the birthday QUEEN!

Happy Hockey Day!

The long awaited night has arrived! The official Hockey season begins tonight, and both the Islanders and the Avalanche are playing and being broadcast on DirectTV. Brad is a happy man. He's managed to stay awake all night. Usually he falls asleep while watching a game.

We didn't get any pipes because of Tammy. Not much to do about the weather. Luckily we don't have trusses sitting out and getting warped and soaked right now like some other houses we've seen.

Happy Hockey Day!

Plumbing

We got a call from our sales agent. We are supposed to get plumbing tomorrow. The rain could delay the pipes, but maybe not.

Did you do your homework in school? Fewer than 1/2 of my students turn in their homework on time. What is that all about?

Form pictures

It doesn't look like much, but from this humble beginning our new home will grow. We're just a few weeks from getting framed.

Next week we should get pipes and then a foundation. We're very excited to be on our way!

Good FORM!

After my whine, I am here now to meekly report that they did something! We only got to see it in the dark, but tonight we saw something tangible- the form that outlines our house. Eventually it will be filled in with concrete to form the foundation, but first they have to put in the pipes that go under the house.

Our first impressions are that the house is big, and very close to the neighbors.

Tomorrow we are going back to take pictures. Yippee!

One step forward, Two steps back

We remain frustrated about the seeming lack of coordination and progress at our lot, but there has been another change. We got dirt.





Unfortunately, we also got the next lot's dumpster, and two of our pins are gone. This, we are assured, is no big deal, happens all the time, and they'll move the dumpster when they need to get to our lot. I was hoping that by now we'd have a form- the outline of the house they use to put in the plumbing. The lot that we were supposed to be ahead of already has a foundation.



I know that I'm whining! WHINE! WHINE! WHINE!

He's a Senior!

I thought y'all might like to see Bishop's senior pictures. I offer this as proof that time flies.

We've Been Pinned!

I guess this means we are going steady. They've put stakes in the ground on our lot with measurements that show where the dirt should be made level. They call this "pinning." The back of the lot doesn't need much to reach the mark, but the front of the lot does.

Located sort of in the middle of the lot is a pile of dirt that has grown grass and weeds over the months of sitting idle. There is a nest of mud daubers in the side of the hill. Hopefully, nobody gets stung when they flatten it out. We tried to clean up as much trash as possible to keep it from becoming part of the landscape.

So far tonight, Brad has suggested that we drive out twice to see if they dumped our dirt and leveled the lot.

We have some exciting blog news. Ned and Stephen have started a blog, too! Go and see, go and see! http://www.stephened.blogspot.com/Now you'll be able to see two houses being built. Our advice: patience is a virtue. Of course, we can't seem to take our own advice, so take that with a grain of salt.

Today was my first day as the teacher. I taught an introductory lesson about Media Literacy in a build up to persuasive advertising techniques. It went well, but I was tired. I spent so much time last night needlessly stressing and worrying that I didn't sleep. I'm sure this will get easier the more I do it.

In other news, everybody seems to have settled into school just fine. Charlie likes a lot of things about middle school, like having chorus twice a day and changing classes, but he doesn't like middle school gym. Who can blame him?

Bishop's job at Publix is going well. He's working just enough so that he doesn't feel overwhelmed. Most of his shifts are short- just three hours. This is the perfect teen job. After he finishes paying us back for the door that he broke, (yes, he broke the front door), he can start to save for his insurance payments and get his driver's license.

Mitchell is digs art, but hates drama. He's the kid who is never happy with his electives, but usually likes his academic classes. Did I tell you that he got a perfect score on the reading FCAT last year? That's pretty amazing.

Fourth grade is going well for Olivia. She's enjoying being the only one in the family at her school. For once she is not somebody's little sister- except that Charlie had all of her teachers before she did. She has learned how to do a front flip at gymnastics. She can nearly fly.

Hopefully, next weekend we'll have pictures of a form- the outline of our house in wood. Maybe it will even be plumbed and ready for the foundation to be poured!

A Start Date

It seems frivolous, of course, to fret over the start date of our house considering the many people left homeless by the hurricane. Now people are being re-evacuated from Texas ahead of Rita.

Last year, Florida was not so lucky. This year it seems that the storms are just brushing us. In this image the lines all split to form a storm-free zone over the state of Florida.



Crown Weather is the best place to get hurricane updates.










Now for the frivolous: Our sales agent called with the first of his weekly updates. They are supposed to pin our site and begin leveling it with dirt starting next Monday, September 26. Yeah! Ten days or so after that, they should pour the foundation.

Monday happens to be the same day that I take over full time in my internship. I teach from then until December 2nd. We have several students at our school who lived in the hurricane zone. One student was trapped in her attic and then air lifted out of N.O. Another student's uncle was in N.O. after the storm when the bottom floor of his two story (luckily) town house flooded within a matter of 15 minutes. He was lucky to have a car parked in a garage a few blocks away that was not flooded, but he had to swim back through the contaminated water for several blocks to retreive his keys to the car from his flooded house. Of course it is devasting to lose a home, but it is the everyday relationships and routines that are the real loss.

It is raining Rita here. That's a big storm.

More Delay

The good news is that we don't need to worry about putting the house on the market until January. The disappointing news is that the start has been delayed because the site survey had to be redone. Ergh, grumble, moan and scream! September 23rd has been offered as a possible date that things might get started.

For those of you who said that this would take at least a year, it looks like you were right. But that does not make us happy. It would be faster to buy an existing house at this point!

If 9/11 made us examine what it means to be an American, then Hurricane Katrina makes us examine the meaning of home. Nobody knows more about the new meaning of home than Slate writer, Blake Bailey, who lost his brand new home in New Orleans just days after moving in.

Our new home is still in our heads and, hopefully, on some papers in an office someplace. We hope that those papers will soon move to the front seat of the builder’s truck, but if not, that is alright. Even if our house is delayed by the needs of those affected by the hurricane, we will be fine because we already know the meaning of home. Our current digs are crowded at times, yes, but home because it is filled with our favorite people.

Tonight we went to the lot to cleanse it of bad mojo (Brad’s word) by walking the perimeter of the lot with a lit smudge stick given to me by a brave woman who is redefining her personal definition of home. While we were there we met two neighbor cats. Also, we found four shiny, lucky pennies on the back of the lot. Those we buried at the four corners of where the house will be so that the builders and workers will have luck as they work on our house. Of course it is all nonsense, but it made us feel better.

Book Recommendation: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Nothing Nothing Nothing

Nothing. That is exactly what happened to the lot last week. We are the next house to be started in the neighborhood. There are actually two lots behind us, and every other house is already started. As usual, our sales agent was vague, vague, vague. Of course we know that he knows just exactly WHEN they are supposed to start, but he will only say, "two or three weeks."

Actually it would be better if they didn't start for two or three weeks. Then we'd have more time after the first of the year to sell this house. The when-to-sell question is complicated by December. The holidays make it a less than opportune time to list a house, so do we do it early or wait until January? And what about the bubble? Will it burst? OY.

But at least we aren't in Louisiana tonight. Those folks are in for a rough time.

A SIGN

We have a sign- both literally and figuratively. They put up the sign that will hold all of the papers about the house, which is a sign that our foundation should be framed up in the next week or so! We've driven around the neighborhood so often that we are familar with all of the homes being built by Mercedes. Right now they have four houses that have just had the foundation framed, three houses with the pipes in the framing, and two lots (ours included) that are just about to be started.





We are becoming home improvers. Before we went to visit the dirt today, we cut quarter round molding to replace what we removed when we redid the floor in the old house. Brad has a new workbench that came in very handy.It is nice to have this house to practice on before we get to the new house, and we have a lot of practice ahead of us. Once the new house begins to go up we should be in full panic mode, getting this house ready to sell.

Bishop's Birthday Blowout

Bishop is 17! Unbelievable. He requested a steak dinner for his birthday meal along with the traditional Lafer family ice box cake.

Happy Birthday, Bishop!
















He combined all his birthday money into one present- a 20 gig Ipod so that he can put all of his music on one device- not surprising, since he has always been a huge music fan.

Belated Birthday Blowout

Since Olivia was too sick to eat cake on her actual birthday, she made a crumb cake today.



She chose the candles that relight after you blow them out. We sang "Happy Birthday," she made a wish, and blew out her candles. And then she blew them out again, and again, and again...

Buying under pressure

Thank goodness we spent so much time obsessing over cabinet and flooring choices before we went to the design center. We spent two, packed hours making expensive choices. If we hadn't been so prepared, there is no way we would have been able to get it all done in our alloted time.

Here are the highlights: The back/pool side of the house, including the family room and kitchen will all be tiled. This is to prevent my spontaneous combustion when a wet, screaming child enters the back of the house, dripping all over my beautiful hardwood floors.

The hardwood floors have been reserved for the living and dining room, including the foyer. The stair rails will be stained to match the floor. Although you may open the front door into an empty room, at least the view will be nice.

Speaking of the front door, we picked a simple, glass door that should let in a lot of light.

The kitchen took half of the budget. We picked a dark, maple cabinet (Heritage/Cordovan) and added several upgrades including 42" of height, corner cabinet with a lazy susan, drawers, shelves, molding and a cabinet that will be almost flush with the fridge. The appliances will be stainless steel and the stove is a flat top.

Oh, I nearly forgot the most important upgrade. We went for the Corian counter in black- called Anthracite. It has a bit of a sparkle that should go with the stainless steel appliances. We also got the drop in seamless sink.

The master bathroom is getting high vanities and tile on the floor, on the walls around the garden tub and in the showers. We also upgraded the padding, but not the carpet for all of upstairs and Mitchell's downstairs bedroom.

I'm sure that there is more, but I can't remember everything. Luckily, the design center is sending a samples of our choices.