First Days of School

School is back in session. I am really liking my new school. All of my students seem great... I can't say there aren't a few challenging ones, but that's what makes it exciting! We are on A/B block scheduling, so there are four 90 minute classes each day and you only see your students every other day. I have a 90 minute conference period each day and 3 math classes. The schedule is great because I have a lot more time during the day to get my work done so I don't have to take as much work home.

Not much has happened with our house in the last couple of days. They delivered the wood for the frame of our house today. I think they are going to start putting it up tomorrow. They are almost done with the framing of our neighbors' house. It's amazing how fast they can do it! Hopefully I'll have pictures of our frame tomorrow!

It's the weekend!

The builder sends us periodic update emails whenever major steps in the building process are done. The one I got yesterday had this chart in it:

CONSTRUCTION STATUS (Date of Most Recent Milestone Completion: 8/23/2007)

Milestone Completed 1. Start construction (site and foundation preparation) 2. Foundation complete 3. Frame started 4. Frame complete (frame, windows, and roof) 5. Plumbing pipes, heating/air conditioning ducts, and electrical wiring complete 6. Drywall complete 7. Cabinets and interior woodwork installed 8. Plumbing fixtures, heating/air conditioning equipment, and electrical fixtures installed 9. Flooring installed 10. Ready for buyer orientation

Pretty cool huh? Our house is basically 1/5th of the way done! :) Here are some pictures of what our house looked like yesterday. They took off the framing for the foundation and started the framing on the houses behind ours. These pictures are taken from the street in front of our house. There are two houses directly behind ours. The house on the left will be the last house on that side of the street. Next to it will be a greenbelt and a little park.

This is the house behind ours to the left.
This is the one behind ours to the right.
Do you see the man standing on the top of the framing? There is no way I could do that job! Scary!

We have a foundation!

That's right folks! We have a foundation for our house now! That means we have cement! It was layed sometime this morning, because this is what it looked like when I drove by after school at 4:30. I have started back to work now, so I will be driving by the house everyday to check on it. The house is so close from my work... 1.5 miles! :)

Can you see the big pile of wood behind the house? That is the wood for the frame of the house behind us. They will always be one step ahead of us.
As cement sets it gets stronger and stronger with time. I think they will be on this step for a while because they will have to give the foundation some time to get strong. They will do things to it to help it like watering it and putting pressure on the steel framing inside.

I changed the options for commenting, so everyone should be able to comment now if you want. I would love to hear from you if you are checking this blog!

Andrea's Baby Shower

Yesterday we had a Baby Shower for Andrea. Below is a picture of Andrea in the middle and all of the hostesses around her. I met all of these girls at church and most of them are in our young marrieds Bible study. I just found out that another good friend is 7 weeks pregnant! Yeah! I'm so excited for her! I'm going to learn what to do with a baby from these girls. Then eventually we can have one. :)This is a picture of our house today. You can see the pvc pipes where the water is going to run to our house. They also put down the black tarps and support rods for the foundation. The next step is to actually lay the foundation.
This is a picture of where our front entry way will be and the garage. You can see our neighbor's house from here. Both of our houses are on the same steps. I wonder who will be living there next to us! It's exciting!
We went to the Denton Community Theater today and saw "Joseph and The Amazing Technicolored Dream Coat." I really enjoyed it and thought it was a great show! If you ever get a chance to see it you should!

Last day of Summer Vacation

Well, I woke up with mixed feelings today because I have to go back to work tomorrow. I am really excited to be working at this new school, but it is sad to give up all this time off. At least the kids don't come back until a week from Tuesday, so I'll be able to ease back into it.

I drove up to our house yesterday and not much has happened, so I thought I would give you a picture of the floor plan. Now you can start picturing it in your head too! If you have an decorating ideas, please share! I am being really indecisive about what I want. Well, I would love to paint the whole house PINK, but Matt vetoed that idea. Right now we are planning on more neutral colors. It'll be easier to decide once I can actually see the house!

Foundation Meeting Today

Here is a picture of our kitties... they really missed us this weekend while we were gone. The black one is Cauchy and the fat, grey one is "Baby" Blaisse Pascal. We stayed at a relaxing lake house in Michigan this weekend. We had a good time going out on the lake in the row boat and fishing. We caught more fish than we could count, but the number had to be more than 40. This is one of the biggest ones that Matt caught. It was great getting to see all of our relatives and celebrating birthdays! We didn't get to go through Canada to Niagra Falls because we didn't have our certified birth certificates to get across the border. Instead, we spent a day in downtown Detroit and toured the city from the "People Mover." It was a great trip, but as always its great to be home.
Back to the building of our house... They have cut out part of the curb on our lot. That is where the drive way will go. You can see it in the picture below.
They have also installed all of the underground plumbing. There are lots of deep holes right now. You can see that there is red "danger" tape all around our lot.
This is a closer picture of where the actual foundation will go. They wrote the address of our house on the frame!
We went to a short meeting tonight with the home builder. They had us watch a 20 minute video on the construction of the house and the foundation. They gave us a copy of it on DVD if anyone wants to watch it! At the meeting there were a lot of the people that will be our neighbors soon. Everyone seemed very nice... I'm so excited to move in and meet everyone!

We drove up to our lot again last night after Matt and my mom took me out to dinner from my birthday at Magiano's. The food was great, but you should have seen that dessert... it was amazing! I should have taken a picture! I just love cream puffs with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge on top! It was about 8:30 when we got to the neighborhood so the pictures are sort of dark. This first picture is of the light pole that is one house down in the cal-de-sac.

This is Matt standing in front of the pipes that will be our plumbing. The delivery of these pipes is the only new event since last week when we visited.
While we were out looking at the pipes, we saw a car drive by and it was our friends, well soon to be neighbors, Brad and Jen. Here they are standing in front of their house which is expected to be done and ready to move-in in 6 weeks. They will be living about 10 houses away from us on the cross street. We are going to be having dinner parties with them all the time! I'm so excited, because she is such a good cook!
We are leaving for Michigan tonight! Ya! Tomorrow on my 24th birthday I will be in Canada at Niagra Falls! I just can't wait! It is just so beautiful there! I'll be back next week.

We have broken ground!

We drove up to our house on Saturday and they had put the framing up for the foundation and dug the trenches for the pipes to go in. It's so exciting that they have finally started our house! They are almost done with the houses across the street. They just need to finish the interior on those.

This is a front view of our lot... there are just grass fields behind it, but soon there will be houses!This is a picture from the back yard of our house...
Hehe... here is our kitchen!
This is a picture from the front of our lot... you can see the houses across the street!

The Wear House First Blog Post

Welcome to our house blog! Check back to see updates on the construction of our first home.

Thanks for visiting,
The Wears