Week 4

The forms have been put in and the foundation will be poured this week. I'm excited because after seeing the forms in place, I can finally wrap my mind around the exact size of this thing, and it looks pretty spacious to me. Here are a few pictures. We'll be leaving on vacation this week, so I'm sure we'll be really surprised with the progress when we get back.

We have to make our choice on the front door before we go. The first of many tricky decisions!

A bomb or a tornado???

Well, it's neither. It does look kind of like an ad for an insurance company that will help you "pick up the pieces" after a natural disaster! This is actually the torn up concrete area of the garage that wasn't supposed to be torn out. We are expanding the area of the garage but to save money, decided to just add the additional concrete and save the current slab, so there would be some big seams. Well, when the contractor was on vacation last week, the workers made a mistake in how they cut around the existing concrete and a few of the corners got torn up. So.....they had to tear out the whole thing and now we are getting a whole new slab poured, compliments of the contractor. Oops!

The kids are standing here where the new part of the house is going to be. They excavated it yesterday and found that the ground was extremely soft because of water or sandy soil or something! So...... they have to dig it all deeper (translation: $$$$$) to pour the foundation. Oh, and Sunday evening at 8:30 we got a phone call from a friend/neighbor who had just walked past the house and found that the lock on the gate had been cut. Ruel went over there and found out that the foreman's huge toolbox had been stolen. It must have happened sometime Saturday night. The police came yesterday and took a report and also took the lock to fingerprint it. The foreman said he has had the copper pipes cut and stolen from 6 jobs in the last 2 months (apparently it's valuable and punks take it and sell it). Nice.

As a side note, Andrew still keeps telling me that our house and our garage are "broken"! I promised him they would fix it. Luckily he doesn't seem too upset about it!

The Wizard of Oz

Hannah's 1st grade class performed the play "The Wizard of Oz" at the beginning of June. They practiced for months and months. Hannah and one of her best friends both got to be Dorothy. Hannah was "Dorothy 2", which meant she acted in the last half of the play. She was thrilled about that because she got to "melt the witch"! Here are some fun pictures from the play.

Melting the Witch

Singing "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead"

The Dorothys and the Witch

Hannah and her teacher, Miss Watanabe

Demolition

So this is our new attempt at a blog. The motivation this time? No, not the children........... the house! We just moved out of our house a week ago so we could start a big remodel and addition to our house. It is supposed to be done around the first week of December (stay tuned for updates on that!). Anyway, it has been fun to see the progress already. Of course the demolition always goes faster than the rest!

Day 1:

(June 30th)

Day 3:

(July 2)

Day 4:

(July 3)

One week down, 20+ more to go - and loving a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 kids!