Sometimes walls are a good thing...

Well, it's only been a week since we last met, but we have a house - or at least what is definitely beginning to look like a house!!! Finally!

I'm sure our neighbors that live out there think we're crazy, but since there's been so much progress and I want a picture of everything, we've been out there every night this week. I love seeing the progress and it's so exciting to see our house coming up right before our eyes! We're so excited!!!

Also(!!!), we finally met our other new neighbors this week. Johnny and Alex are building a house next to ours, and it should get started pretty soon. That makes us happy bc all of the construction will be done at about the same time. And they seemed like fun people, so hopefully good neighbor times to come!!!

Below is a progression of the house over the past 4 days...enjoy!

How about a nice big slab of...SLAB!!!!

That's right folks - despite Tropical Storm Claudette's best efforts - somehow we got a slab this week!!! I don't know too much about slabs, other than the fact that ours is very pretty, so I'll just let the pictures do the talking...and, I know, it is breathtaking.

Before the pour...

Here's a continuation of last time's post. The gravel is smoothed out and the plumbing is all tied off (I don't know if that's the correct terminology), and supposedly, they're going to pour the slab tomorrow or Tuesday, so things should start moving pretty quickly now!!! Super exciting!

And tonight we packed our first box!!! I know this may sound a bit crazy since we're not moving til November, but we have a ton of crap in this apartment - I'm a pack rat, and Patrick doesn't object enough, so there's a lot to get through - and since neither of us are taking much time off work for this move, we've decided to attack it early and often...one box at a time, hopefully about one a day. This should help us get through everything and lots of time to get rid of the crap - instead of just throwing it all in boxes the day before closing and moving all the stuff we don't need to the new house. So here's box one (don't worry, I won't chronicle each box...) - and we did throw away one shot glass toothpick holder (I forgot my Baylor roots there for a minute) that had most of the printing scratched off, so success on on the clean-out process!!!

Hopefully there will be pics of the slab to come soon!

Forms!!!!

I never thought I would be so excited to see little pieces of wood in the ground!!! More to come soon...

And baby bro got all marriaged-up!!! I know crazy, huh??? He's not supposed to be old enough to get married!!! But it was a very pretty wedding, and I guess we'll keep her ;o)

Travis and Morgan Helm

...and the beautiful bride...

SOLD!

So its been awhile...and not too much has actually happened.

Its been a frustrating couple of weeks! I know we've never gone through the process of building a house, but you would think these people would have known what to expect - and how to avoid it!!! It seems that one thing after another has popped up with getting the prep stuff ready for the house, and we're tired of not seeing any progress. After yesterday, things might be finally getting straightened out (for what feels like the ump-teenth time), and the dirt work on out house might actually be starting - who would've thought?!?!?!?

But we did finally get a picture with our SOLD sign (a dumpster crushed our first one), so here's that...


and now we're off to Texas for baby bro's wedding!!!

(Maybe they'll have a house pad by the time we get back...)

Sheesh - that's a lot of choices...

So we went and picked out the options for our house today! Quite a bit overwhelming, but we just went with our first thought in most cases, and we think its going to turn out awesome - very much us! And we didn't even argue about anything really - good thing we have the same tastes...

The brick is a little more brownish red in person than in the pics - it's definitely not a uniform color though, which we really liked - and we're doing "full" brick, so there will only be siding on the dormer off of "Patrick's Room" and on the outside of the fireplace in the back.

Went for a walk...

For the first time this week, I didn't have to work til 1am, so we decided to go for a walk on the Greenway out in our new neighborhood yesterday evening!! Nashville has this awesome Greenway system that is basically a series of trails all over town. The one directly behind where our house will be is the furthest west one, and there are plans to connect it with other ones in Bellevue and then eventualy more towards downtown, which is an awesome concept - not that I would ever actually run/walk/bike that far, but its a good thought...

This greenway is almost a mile and a half long, and since our place will be right at the trailhead, I have grand illusions of walking 3 miles a day - we'll see how that goes, but we're excited about it. Last night we walked a mile down the trail (it's marked) and back, so two miles is a good start! There were quite a few "neighbors" out there - and everyone was so friendly! And so many dogs(!!), so that is definitely in our near future - Mom and Dad, you'll have to settle for a grand-puppy for a bit ;o)

And here are some pics from our walk...all of these are from within the first 1/4 mile of the trail, so these are all a very short distance from our place - which is freakin' awesome!

And I'm so glad we turned around when we did, bc we found this awesome "beach" down a little trail in our area, and we saw this deer!! I swear, it was no more than 10 yards from us!!! Sorry the pictures are all fuzzy - I was shaking while trying to take the pic and whispering at Patrick to pay attention and see the deer! He was huge!!