Living on the Edge

Things are really rolling along!

I had 18 conferences today.  It was wonderful to meet with all the parents.  Everyone is doing really well this fall and it's fun to share their work with their parents.  But going over report card after report card is exhausting in one day.  Heck, it was exhausting in the school district I taught in before and they did it over the course of a week!

I had a nice break for an hour and headed over to the new house to see what's been going on...very exciting. And darn it only adds to the anticipation!

 
There's nothing better than not being able to park in my driveway because there are so many workers parked there! 

 
Here's this week's picture from the 'turn-around-tree.'  Look at the siding!  And the rockwork is just about complete.

 
This is the same rock that is around the wood stove inside the house....

 
Look at our pretty floors!  I can't wait till we can put our furniture on them!

  

Dining room.  Love the Humble Gold.  No reference to Humboldt Gold for sure!

Soon to be my kitchen.  Cooking is calling!

  

I just love how this bathroom floor turned out! It's so hard to choose things separately.  You kind of hold your breath and hope that it all works together.  This goes really well with the hickory cabinets.
 

DD picked out the doors for the house.  He finally got some bead board in the house!
 

If you need me the first week we are in the house....I'll be here!  Don't block my view of the moose!
 

Our bonus room has a great shape.  Lots of room for the kids to hang out in...and for guests to stay in as well!

A Work in Progress

It seems like forever!  It's only been 4 months since we moved out of our house.  I can't say it was 4 months since it sold because there were all sorts of hangups with the buyers' lender.  FHA = government and we know how well the wheels of government turns.  We went three weeks past closing of escrow!

 
So the garage in Washington was emptied and we moved on to Idaho...

 
We found our piece of heaven...6 acres worth....

 
So we found the land, got the construction loan...and...well....waited!  Waited for Kootenai County to issue the building permit.  It took four loooooong weeks to get the magic piece of paper so....

 
the boys could bring their big toys out to play!

 
Here's the corner of our future home.

 
Clearing the land for the house and the shop.

 
Our hole is there!

 
First of the cement is poured...Finally something to show off to friends!

 
Lots more cement for our garage and shop floors.  Sorry CC, it's too hard to leave your mark!

 
The floor....got to start somewhere.

 
The walls take shape finally!

 
The girls are hanging out in their new bedrooms!

 
The roof is raised!

 
Trusses going every which way!

 
Now it's starting to look like our home.

 
The house is wrapped...kind of like a present.  Can't wait to unwrap it!

 
Windows are in and the felt is on the roof.

 
Here comes the roof...along with the weather.  See the gray clouds in the sky?  We've had a bit of rain this fall.  Fortunately no snow yet.

 
The trim along the roof is painted..."Vogue Green".  We are so hip!

 
Now comes the inside work...insulation....lots in our bedroom with our day sleeper.

 
Electricity.  I'm such a girl...aren't they pretty colors?

 
plumbing

 
wood for the wood stove that will eventually be in the living room.

 

Showers...I think this picture might be upside down.  It's hard to tell.

 
Our future tub....I can't wait to use this after a long day working in the yard!

  

Sheet rock is up and drying.  Now it really looks like a house.

 

The garage door is up and the rock on the front of the house.  We move all the way from Humboldt County to North Idaho and guess where the rock is from?  Grants Pass, Oregon!

Doors are being painted and installed soon.

 
Texture is applied to the walls.

  

The north wall is an accent color.  It's called...yeah, don't laugh....Humble Gold. 

  

The rest of the house is the same eggshell color.

 

Lighting goes in on Monday.  We have lovely frosted 'boob' lights.  I suppose if they can call the door in the garage a "man" door, then I can call these "boob" lights!

 

Picking out lights is tough.  I think I was handicapped by a terrifying light shopping incident as a child.  My parents wanted one lamp...I think it took a week and we went to every store that carried lamps in the entire Bay Area.  And then the lamp was butt ugly! 

So selecting lights by myself...well, Q was with me, but I was by myself pretty much trying to send pictures to DD on my phone so he could help me choose while he was at work.  Now that was hard too...I had to find just the right place and hold the phone in the air to get it to pick up enough of a signal.  Not an easy thing with the metal roof in Lowe's.

 

Also have the front and back deck now too.

 

Cleaning up the site today.  The girls weren't too into it...until we got the fire going :-)  Such little pyros!  Wonder where they get it from daddy?

This week the siding is supposed to start.  Electrician comes Monday to install lights, cabinets come Tuesday and are installed Wednesday with the wood laminate and vinyl going down Thursday and Friday.  I'm not sure what else will happen...but we are keeping our toes and fingers crossed that we can be in before the end of November!

Time for a House Update

They say for every year a dog lives, it equals 7 people years.  I think it is like that when building a house.  Every day seems like a month, or two, or three...It seems that we have been in this darn apartment for a year already.  I know it hasn't even been three months yet, but boy it sure feels longer. 

We've had lots of little delays in getting things started, but now it seems as though we may actually be having forward motion.  Last week at this time, they poured our foundation for the house and the shop.

This is the shop foundation.  It's a bit higher to level it out equal with the house elevation.  It doesn't look quite so high now as you'll see.  Virgil and Rex, the backhoe boys filled in with that big pile of dirt that you can see behind the shop.

Here is the house.  No basement...yeah!  One of the things that you will learn, if you build a house...during some stages of building, the house looks smaller than you think it's going to big. While during other stages it looks bigger.  Right now is the smaller part.

Today DD and the girls went by the property.  The cement was poured for the garage and the shop floors. 

 

Here's the new garage floor. See, it's at the small looking stage again.  But it's at least at the closer to finished looking stage :-)  CC is checking to see if she can write some graffiti...darn too late...it's hard!

Shop floor.  Now this actually looks bigger now that the cement is poured!  Look how the huge walls of the foundation seem to have disappeared.  Good job Virgil and Rex!

Well, tomorrow comes the next stage...FRAMING!  Now we should see something exciting!

Counting Up Now!

I am counting down the days till our house is done.  It's going to be a bit of a count, I admit.  They just poured the foundation today after all.  But we've already been counting down or rather counting up to this point!

Why were we counting up?  Our house sold in Washington. Escrow was slated to close on June 30th.  Everyone signed off on it, we had a buyer, they were eager to move in, we were eager to move out and pass the house along to another family. Things went smoothly as long as you don't count in realtors and FHA lenders.

So, we had a contract for close of escrow on June 30th, but apparently with the current state of the economy, government lenders only take this date as a mere suggestion!  They dragged their heals, sent it to underwriters, they required a second appraisal, then on to Quality Control, then back to underwriters and then on to cutting that check for us.  All in all it was 22 days past our closing date.

We are happy that our prayers were finally answered and the right family came along (our realtor told us that it would take the "right" person to buy our house--not sure if that was a comment on our house or on his skill as a realtor...LOL!)  So, now we were three weeks past where we had wanted to be....submitting our building permit.

So here comes the next speed bump...Kootenai County.  It took them 4 weeks to approve our building permit.  No, we aren't building the Taj Mahal...just a modest sized home with TWO bathrooms.  I emphasize this because the 1,000 square foot apartment we've called home all summer has only ONE bathroom and coming from a house with three...well, I need not explain the problems involved with that.

Apparently Kootenai has only two people who do the permits and one goes on vacation during the summer...go figure!  So 4 weeks later we have our permit. YEAH!  The day we received our permit is the day we were counting up to...now that it's here and the foundation is being poured, we are starting our countdown. 

In a way, it's probably still a count up...but that seems endless.  I like the idea and the sound of counting down to something. 

Now we just need to keep our fingers crossed that our completion date is before we have to be out of our 6 month lease at our apartment!

Here's the sunset last night from our future home:

 

What do you think...should this be our postcard for our change of address?

Saturday was a busy day

By the time we finally got home Saturday evening, I was wiped out!  I think I'm ready to start going to bed early and get ready for the school routine starting tonight!! 

Every morning starts with the dog walk:

 

This is the sad look Buddy gives me until I say "walk?"

Next CC and I headed out to the farmer's market.  We didn't get there as early as I had hoped and we missed the chocolate croissants at the bakery booth.  :-(  Such a bummer!  So instead, CC found a treasure:

 

And I took pictures of the colorful veggies and flowers....

 

 

Then we came home, picked up DD and headed to the land to see the trench.  See yesterday's post.

Then we headed to the storage unit to find a suitcase, my canning pot (couldn't find it), and our couch.  The other day when I was there I discovered that some new neighbors were visiting our storage unit....by way of little poops on my expensive couch!!  MICE!!  ick!  I hate mice...that's a long story from when I worked and lived in a cabin on Donner Summit. 

So we bought a little special treat for them....

Peanut butter!  By way of a special little mouse plate! :-)

 

Mouse Traps!

 

 

Yum Yum...some nice tasty peanut butter!  We stuck with the snap traps because the poison kills the animals that eat the mice.

So after setting up the little mouse diner...we headed back home and then got ready for church followed by our first dinner out in over a month!  Yeah, no dishes.  So instead of cleaning a kitchen, I got to come home and play with my pictures on my laptop snuggled up in my jammies. 

I Met a Couple Men About a Hole

Builder Bob called yesterday to let us know that he was going to have the trenches dug for our water and electric lines.  I was trying to not jump up and down as I was talking to him on the phone.  Yeah! Something was going to happen on our land.  So this morning I drove out to our future home and checked it out.

 

Good sign! Trucks and trailers parked across the road!

DD won't miss the driveway anymore! We have our first house number. Actually this is the second and they say it might not be the last.  Not sure why "they" get to change their mind multiple times.  And who is "they" anyway?  At least we know it will be an even number...I like even numbers.

There's the machine...and look a pile of dirt!

My Heroes!! Virgil and Rex!  Nicest couple guys that can't wait to do more digging.  If you ask me, I think that Virgil must be the older brother...he gets to drive the big toy!  Poor Rex is stuck in the hole.

Hopefully next week we get issued the official building permit so the actual foundation can be started. It's been two weeks and one day since Builder Bob applied for it....not that I'm counting! :-)

Home Sweet Home...just a few walls away!

The house has begun!  Here is the Southwest corner of the house.  Isn't it pretty?!

 

The road leading to our land.

 

Here is our home on a day in August.  See the big mound of dirt in the middle of the picture?  That would be our bedroom.

 

This would be my dear husband doing his walk about around his new place.  He is kind of like the dogs in that way....

Today's pictures from our land

It's Wordless Wednesday...so here are some pictures I took at our land this morning.

 

Rathdrum Parade 2009 Part 2

Here is the second part of the pictures from the parade yesterday.  If I caught any of your loved ones in my pictures for the day, let me know and I'll be happy to email you the picture!

 

What real teachers do in the summer?  Hang out with more kids of course!  This is one of my fellow teachers from our 1st grade teaching team.

 

Even the trains wanted to get into the parade!

 

Is this the short bus? We apparently have very small children in town. just kidding!

 

Oh here is the real bus...CC is looking on...she doesn't have to ride one because her mama drives her to school now every day :-)

 

And in a small town...they still throw candy to the kids...or on a hot day, frozen otter pops hit the spot!

 

Q really liked this car...it's yellow!

 

The Octo-mom will need this bike for her kids in a few years!

 

Some more pretty horses...and riders!  But more horses means....

 

Horse poop to clean up!  These horses apparently ate plenty this morning!

 

The Lakeland Soccer Club must have just seen the movie, UP!  Fortunately, enough of the girls were sucking the helium that they didn't float away!

 

So many opportunities for the kids to be in the parade...soccer club....

 

Dance and cheerleading teams...

 

And in the Inland Northwest there are lots of church groups.  This one is from Sheperd of the Hills Lutheran right here in Rathdrum.

 

Animals are also a big part of any parade.  Who can't resist a cute miniature horse?  The girls are already planning which animals they want to do for 4-H! 

 

If they had their way, our 6 acres would resemble the Ark!

 

Hey DD...look at the toys the Kootenai County Sheriffs Department gets to play with!

 

Watching this pony walk...it looked like it was part moose!  It had the longest legs that had the same awkward looking gait as a moose.  It was really weird.

 

This little guy was sooo adorable!  Athol has a great bagpipe and drum group.  They were a delight to listen to....and there was a woman playing the bagpipes too!

 

You'll notice they were wearing sunglasses....

 

not sure if these were prescription or not!

 

Another dance/cheer group.  This made my mommy hackles rise cuz I hate when they do lifts over pavement.  One fall to the asphalt and a young life could be dramatically altered forever!  But they were good.

 

Very North Idaho...there are Democrats in Rathdrum.  I actually know some of them, but they weren't represented in this parade.

 

This was a cool entry...looked like it drove right out of the show M*A*S*H*.

 

The people standing next to me said that the gentleman in the uniform was really a retired 3 star general!  He had quite a presence that's for sure.

 

My favorite...it's a garden shop!  Only thing better would have been if they had passed those plants out!

 

Cool old car...and great advertisement.  The Old Rathdrum Jail is open for tours.  We toured it after the parade.  Fun history....I can't wait to share that in future posts.  I hear Rathdrum has some claims to fame.

 

And this parade ended with all the fire engines in town :-)  I'm sorry if you missed the fun this year.

Next July, come on out and enjoy the fun in North Idaho for Rathdrum Days 2010.

Rathdrum Parade 2009 Part 1

Life in a small town can be a lot of fun.  Things don't have to be expensive and complicated to make memories.  I love a small town because you can have a sense of being connected to a community.  You can go to the grocery store or the gas station and run into someone you know. 

Today the girls and I spent the day in Rathdrum, the town we are building our (hopefully) last home. Or may be we should say...to hopefully build our home...but that is a story for another post.

Our day started with the 5K run/walk.  It was a nice morning for it.  Not too hot and definitely not cold.   We did the walk....my feet and my knee don't do running to well these days.  But it was hot enough to walk!

After we did the run at the crack of dawn (8:00 a.m.--the girls consider this early during summer!) we got a bite to eat and a cold drink then headed over to Main Street to watch the parade.  I wasn't expecting it to take too long...but it had quite a few entries.  Here is a recap of many of the entries for those who would like a taste of Small Town America!

 

Unlike the last parade I went to in Spokane, this one started with a color guard!!  And everyone stood and honored it too!

 

This town definitely honors those who have served past and present.

 

and future!

 

 

We have naval interests in North Idaho because of Farruget.

 

Rathdrum's Mayor, Vic

 

Idaho doesn't just grow potatoes!

 

And lots of horses too!

 

The girls loved these little cars.  They sounded just like the go-carts at Triple Play.

 

Everyone needs a fairy godmother to grant your wishes!  Rathdrum apparently has their own.  Wonder if she knows the tooth fairy?

 

and don't forget the high school cheerleaders.  And who follows cheerleaders?

 

Well high school football players of course!

Well...time for bed.  Part 2 will be tomorrow :-)