We Have Lumber and Steel!!!

Last night we went to check out our house and how it is coming along. Here are the pictures.

I am loving living out in the country. I wake up to the sounds of many birds chirping and I go to bed to the sounds of frogs and crickets making their song. It is pretty cool. We can especially hear it since our walls are not so thick.

I'll try and post more pictures at the end of next week.

Construction

Here are some pictures of what the house looks like so far.

Front of the house.

One side

the other side
You can check out video of it on dropshots.

The rock that I saw yesterday was for the road. James' cousin Chuck was putting down rock on the road, yeah!! We've been waiting for that. They wanted to get rock from the riverbottom because it is free, but the river has been too high for quite a while now. No work was done on our house yesterday, probably because of the rain on Wednesday night. The big trucks can't go on the road if it is wet. Having rock on the road will help speed up the building of our house. The road is only half covered with rock so far, so hopefully it will get finished soon. If the basement isn't pourred today, it should be done by the end of next week.

Ultrasound Results

Well, once again God is blessing us with another BOY!!! I wasn't a bit surprised. I was expecting that news. Everything looked good. The measurements put me at 21 weeks and 3 days, right about what I was expecting. So, praise God for good news!

I plan to take pictures of our house building progress. We've been out there every night this week so far to see what they did for the day. Today there were hauling many dump truck loads of rock back there. I'm not sure what they are doing with it. They already had put lots of it inside the foundation last week. Maybe this is for outside. The walls weren't all pourred as of last night. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.

We're Home...

We made it home about 1:30 this afternoon. It was a tiring drive home, but no naps today and lots of work (laundry, unpacking, etc...). I'm actually feeling pretty good, but if I don't get to bed soon, I may be falling asleep in church tomorrow. We were very thankful to make it home without any van breakdown. Soon after we left yesterday morning, we were driving along a scenic route back to the highway when all the gauges on the van malfunctioned. I had to drive a ways without a speedometer (kind of weird). At first we thought it had to do with the battery. I started thinking about getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, (and it was a warm day) with six kids. We started to pray and the gauges eventually returned and everything went back to normal with the exception of the radio and clock. We figured out that something shorted in the cd player when James went to put in the cd. We can thank Jesse for that. Earlier in the week he decided the cd player was a piggy bank. I got most of the coins out, but I know there is at least one quarter still stuck in it. So what could have been a major deal, turned into no big deal. We used our laptop to listen to podcasts to keep us awake through the night.

First stop on the way home was our property to see if any ground breaking occurred while we were gone. The basement is dug and rock is pourred. Very exciting!! I'll try to post more pictures of the first part of our trip later in the week, after the sand settles (we've got lots of red sand in clothes and other things).

Vacation Part 2

Day 5 (cont.) – After returning from Moab, we did the Park Avenue hike, which was one mile long. It was a cool hike with lots of rock to walk on. James and the older three boys hiked back to the van at 4 M.P.H. in the hot sun. The rest of us waited for them to pick us up. After that, we drove 8 miles on this very bumpy, gravel road. We did another hike that was somewhat strenuous at times. There was no one else there (its not very popular, probably because of the drive). The first part of the hike was pretty steep climbing up rocks and later we had to climb lots of hills in the sand. Walking in sand sure can give you a workout. The arch we saw was worth the journey to get there. There was also lots of spectacular scenery all along the way. We made it back to the van before dark, but it was dark by the time we got back to camp.

Day 6 (yesterday) – Yesterday we did our biggest hike as a family (8 miles). We started right from the campground. It was the best hike, although it was hard at times and hot. It took us over 8 hours. We saw several arches and did lots of rock climbing (some of which was part of the trail). Rachel traveled on James back more than previous hikes because of it being hot, long, and difficult. But even with that, she did hike a lot and did some difficult stuff. I was pretty sore by the time we finished. I was ready to sit and relax, which I never ended doing. I was getting warmer clothes on for the little ones and me, and the kids were climbing behind the campsite on the rocks. The next thing I knew, Rachel was crying and James had her in the tent with a towel on her head. She had fallen and James had to switch into doctor mode and stitch her up (3 stitches). Fortunately, he had all he needed in his survival kit. What a blessing to have a prepared doctor as a husband and dad! Rachel did extremely well through it all. She never even cried or flinched, even through the shots of anesthesia. We finished off the night with a final campfire. The weather has been so nice while we’ve been here. Every night the skies have been clear and the moon shining bright. What a beautiful setting we were in!

Day 7 – We packed up camp this morning and started to head home. First stop, Sand Dune Arch. Jesse even got to walk to this one. The kids had a blast, playing in the sand and climbing on the rocks. Jay said it was his favorite place. Next we stopped and hiked the short trail to Double Arch. We missed some great pictures here! Oh well, I’ll probably never forget to make sure I have proper camera equipment for a vacation again.

Right now we are at the visitor’s center and James took the boys in to get their junior ranger badges. They worked on some activities in a book and attended a ranger program to earn this. They were pretty excited about it.

Next we head to Moab, where we’ll gas up and I’ll post this to my blog. We plan to go to the Colorado National Monument sometime late this afternoon. James thought it looked like a really cool place to check out. Then well stop in Colorado for dinner at Cracker Barrel (a family vacation tradition we do on the way home). After that we’ll be driving straight through the night until we get to Troy. We decided it would be more bearable this way than to take two long days of driving.

First thing on the agenda when we get home is to unpack and hit the bathtub. We’ve all gotten pretty dirty this week, with no showers. James’ parents have a pretty big bathtub and I’m looking forward to taking a long bath. All in all, a great vacation and a fun time together as a family. God really blessed us this week!

Pictures from Canyonlands

Hello from Moab, Utah

Day 1 – We got up at 2:00 a.m. and were on the road by 2:30. We had an uneventful drive to Colorado where we stayed last night. We so enjoyed the drive through the Rockies. It was an unexpected treat. We even got a little snow along the way and saw plenty of snow on the ground. It was a cold night in the tent, but the heater helped keep up from freezing.

Day 2 – We got up and left Colorado around 8:30 a.m., after stopping at Walmart to get some sneakers for Josh and bowls (items that were left at home). We drove for about 3 hours to the parks in Utah. We stopped at Arches, but didn’t stay as the campsites were already all taken. (It wasn’t even 11:00 in the morning.) We then went to Canyonlands and found a site. There were only 12 sites in the whole campground, so we were praying there would be one available. There was and more than one. (They were filled while we were setting up). Later we realized they weren’t as booked because they don’t have water. We are driving back from Moab right now with 15 gallons of water in the back of the van. We plan to see a few sights tonight and then have dinner and a campfire. We plan to do a long hike tomorrow and see some of the sights closer up.

Day 3 – We got back to our campsite and we had missed a rainstorm that came through. Unfortunately we still hadn’t learned our lesson from the Smokies and we left all the windows open in our tent. Things got wet, and it was a cold night. It was rainy and windy too. James had to get out of the tent early in the morning, while it was still dark to “baton down the hatches”. The tent was getting blown in and he had to stake in guy lines.

We went on a 5.8 mile hike into a canyon that wasn’t very deep. It was just a perfect day for hiking; no rain and comfortable temperatures. Rachel hiked most of it herself, which was her longest hike to date. We even had to do some rock climbing, which was tricky with Jesse on Joshua’s back and Rachel on Mommy’s. Once we got to the top, we got to walk around the rim the whole way back. It was much easier than the first part of the hike. I’m writing more details than usual because at the beginning of the day I realized I had left our camera battery charger at home. Whoops! So, no pictures for the rest of the trip. We took quite a few at Canyonlands, but we bought a book to help up remember all the cool sights here at Arches.

Day 4 – That was yesterday. James woke at 5:30 and took Jonathan and Joshua to get a campsite at Arches National Park. The campground fills up at 7:30 every morning, when it opens. James got in line at 6:30 and he was third in line. It was a 40 minute drive just to get there, then another half hour drive to the campsite to pick it up. He got back to us around 9:40 and we had the camp all packed up and ready to load in the van. Then we drove back to Arches and set up camp here. It is the coolest campground I think we’ve ever stayed at. Our site is great and there are lots of rocks behind us to keep the kids occupied. They are loving the rock climbing and sliding down sand dunes. We went on a hike in the afternoon before dinner. We just started out from our site and went exploring. We weren’t on a specific trail, but there were lots of “trials” between the vegetation. We got up close with a big arch and later went through “Broken Arch”. The hike ended up being longer than we had intended, so we had a later dinner. By the time we had a campfire, everyone was exhausted and the kids voluntarily headed to bed (except Jonathan, who made it longer than Mommy).

Day 5 - It was starting out pretty warm. It is supposed to be in the low 80’s today. We are planning on doing smaller hikes and seeing different arches. We also have to make a trip to Moab for some ice (our first time needing it). My legs are pretty sore from all this hiking, but it is pretty fun!

We just finished our picnic lunch (pizza on the campstove – a hit!). Before lunch we went on what was supposed to be a half-mile hike to see an arch. We ended up climbing up higher and Rachel, Josiah and I decided not to keep going all the way to the top, like the rest. It was hiking on steeper rock and it was pretty tiring in the hot, desert sun. It feels like summer in Missouri today. I’m glad we’re here in the Spring and not the summer.

We are on our way to Moab now and I hope to get this posted. If I do get it posted, it will be the only time I get to. I’ll post the rest of our journey when we arrive home. For those who don’t know, we did close on our house last Thursday and we closed on our construction loan on Friday. Building is set to start this week, but it depends on how wet the road is, since it doesn’t have gravel on it and the concrete truck can’t drive on a muddy road. We’ll be interested to see what progress was done while we are away.
Sorry for any typos, I can’t see my computer screen real well in this sun in the van.