The House We Built

 Jeff and I had only been married for six months when we began building our first home.  We worked and learned together and built a beautiful home where we started our family.  After we had lived there for a few years, the lot right next door came up for sale and we bought it.  When we sold our home so Jeff could go back to school, we paid off the land next door planning to build on it when he graduated.  Well...graduation has come so now it's time to build!   

We spent months and months going over house plans and deciding what we wanted and what we could afford.  We hired a local drafter to draw our house and we are so excited to make it come to life!

When we finally got approval from the bank, our whole family was there for the official "groundbreaking" which was really just a "ground scraping."

We are ready to turn this patch of dirt into our home!

In order for us to make this happen, we all have to work together.  Jeff calls the shots and we all do our best to keep up.

We did a lot of measuring (with the help of Grandpa Craig) and staked out the house.

Titus is a trooper in this heat and dust!

We pulled some string lines and then it was time to spray the marking paint.

And we ended up spraying our boots a little bit too.

When the work gets too hot and sweaty, we just love on Titus for a minute.

The next weekend the city finally gave us the go-ahead and we started to dig.  Levi was in the sun and the dirt shooting grades while daddy was in the excavator.

The two of them make a pretty great team.

Only a short break for lunch and then back to work.

I traded Levi jobs for a while.

After the basement was all dug, it was time to dig the footings.  This meant more string lines and more shooting grades.  More sun, more sweat, more dirt.

The kids had swimming lessons, so Jeff and I would go work early in the morning while they were still asleep.  They would wake up and get ready for swimming.  I would go pick them up and look like the hottest mom on the planet at swimming lessons with my irrigation boots on and covered in dirt and sweat.  On this particular morning I also had concrete in my hair because we had just poured the footings.

A few days after we poured the footings, the foundation walls were up. 

As soon as the foundation forms were stripped, we got ready to seal the foundation so we could start backfilling.  Titus was a great helper, again.

Levi loves going to work on our house with his dad.

Grandpa Craig has been a great help lending his time and his knowledge to get this project off the ground.  He is always in the background when we're there working.

The entire house building project is a little overwhelming.  There is so much to be done on top of our already crazy lives.  It is all exciting, however, and we feel very blessed to be embarking on yet another journey.