House is coming along quickly!

6/24- Here is a sweep pan for our central vac system that is being installed. You just use a broom and sweep up the room, turn on this do-dad, and it sucks up the stuff you swept. I am very excited about this in my kitchen.
This is the central vac connector to us the power head for carpeting or the wood or tile floor head.
The guy that was installing the central vac system was walking around on these metal legs to make him taller and be able to reach the ceiling. The kids got a kick out of fallowing him around with his tall legs.

Our flooring guy called us yesterday that he had our hardwood flooring samples in for us to see. He set them up on their showroom floor so we could see a huge area of it. We are so excited about these floors and the incredible deal we are getting on them. The little box in the bottom right corner is the sample of our cabinet doors for the kitchen with the flooring.
The hardwood is going to be most of the main floor except the spare bathroom and bedroom. Then it will be in the upper level sitting room and it our hallway that leads to the stairs. This flooring is called Macchiato Pecan.
They also got the sewer line dug from our house to the street. We happened to be out there when the guys were digging and the kids got to watch him work.
Here is Bruce, our carpenter who is doing all the woodwork in our house from trim to cabinets to wall units to book shelves. The guys are in the library trying to figure out how we want to work out all the book shelves. You can see a white cabinet by Bruce. It was a first draft for making the shelving units and now we have changed it all anyway.

The electrician is supposed to be done with all his stuff today. Then we have to have it inspected, which will happen on Tuesday next week. After the inspection is completed, they will go in and spray foam the walls for the insulation. Our contractor says he will be starting to sheet rock the walls the week after the 4th of July. Holy cow things are going fast! In the meantime, they guys will be putting in the rest of our windows to get ready for the foaming.

Redhawks Baseball Game

We had the pleasure of going to a RedHawk's Baseball game in Fargo last Sunday. Declan and 2 of his good friends got free tickets to a game for a reading promotion in 1st grade. I am good friends with the moms of both kids and we decided it would be fun for all of us to go together. Jeff talked to a couple guys at a steel company he buys from alot about using their suite at a game and they gave us tickets for the whole suite. They totally spoiled us with the amount of food they ordered for us, too. There was no such thing as going hungry and we got to bring home the leftovers. Several of the kids said, it was "heaven on earth" being in the suite.
The 3 families had an awesome time at the game. Here is Declan with the mascot, Hawkeye. He came to our suite and we took pictures with the kids.
Here is Jeff holding Isaac and he and Nycole (Declan's friend) wearing their rally hats. It almost worked, too, but the team ended up losing the game by one run.

Me, Isaac, and Declan
Here is most of the kids we brought with us. We also brought 2 extra kids with us because their mom was out of town and could not come to the game. Bottom left corner is Mason in red (Declan's other friend) and Declan is next to him. Then Isaac is on the next row standing up. Here is the younger kids with Hawkeye with Mason's dad watching from the side. We took other shots with the 3 older kids and then the 2 year old.

More House Updates

6/20- A friend gave me the idea to let the kids write their names in the walls while the house was being built. I finally remembered to bring a marker to let them do just that. Isaac did his name in the room he chose and the 5 right next to his big window that he cannot wait to have. He doesn't have any windows in his room in our current house and cannot wait to have windows.
My pictures are slightly out of order, but we will work with it. The footings for our decorative posts were poured last Friday also. We will have 4 posts off our front porch that will be made out of rock and wood.
The concrete sits in this thick cardboard to make the footing. We found that interesting to be made out of cardboard instead of wood.

Here is Jeff's nickname in his wine cellar. Jeff and I also put our names in our bedroom.
This is Isaac's drawing in the hockey room.
Here is Declan's drawing in the hockey room.
This isn't the greatest picture I am just realizing, but here is Declan's name in his bedroom by his big window. The kids have chosen their rooms and it was a mutual agreement. We were so proud of the kids for making this tough decision all by themselves.

House Updates

Things are really moving fast on our house. Everytime we go there, it seems very noisy with many different people working at the same time. It is going very well and we are very pleased.

6-18- Our garage floor is now concrete. They got that done and will be scoring it today.
Here are the kids watching the guys get the concrete smooth and finished. They enjoyed watching that yesterday while we answered many electrical questions.

Here is a picture of plumbing, heating or a/c vents, and recessed light can. It seems like the plumbing guys are done with their part for now because their big truck is gone. The heating guy got our furnace in the upper level and is doing all the duct work stuff. He still has to do the brick furnace in the basement and stuff down there. The electricians are cruising with all their stuff and they just started on the 18th.
We got some windows put in yesterday. Bruce, our cabinetry guy who is also brothers with our contractor, had to get the inside of the windows stained and coated before the windows could go in. I guess they will be doing about 10 more today, too.
The main level of the turret has all its windows. They look really cool and we are very excited!

T-Ball

Isaac had his 1st T-ball game last Friday. He is so excited he is finally old enough to play the game he has been watching his brother play for 2 years. He was so cute out there and really seemed to know what he was doing. He was extremely nervous the night before and would not go to bed until after 10pm for a 9am game, but I think he is over that now. He loved it and cannot wait to play this Friday.

Here he is batting.
Isaac also played catcher. He would pick up the bat after someone hit and carry it around with him so he could give it to the next batter. When he had to get the ball to put it on the "T", he would put the bat under his arm to grab the ball. We called out to put the bat down so he could get the ball and he told us he cannot because he has to give the bat to the batter. We just laughed!

Declan is also playing T-ball this summer. You cannot start toss ball in this town until you are 8 years old. It is lame, I know, but what do you do. Many of us parents think it is ridiculous and it holds kids back, but the park department won't change it. Here is Declan crossing home plate after running the bases. He is enjoying T-ball and has a couple of good friends on his team this year. He hasn't had that any other year with friends so he is super excited!
Declan fielded the ball and is throwing it to 1st. He has been getting a couple outs a game and hitting really far.
We are so proud of our boys!

Summerfest Fun

This is a water-balloon fight thing that the kids have been looking forward to since last year's summerfest. The first time it was Jeff and Declan....................

.............against Grandpa Dick and Isaac. They had a great time trying to get each other with water balloons. I think each team got the other team at least a couple times in the many dollars that was spent playing this game. I think Jeff counted they played the game 6 different times, but not with Jeff and Grandpa everytime.
Here both boys were against a girl on the other team. It is hard for them to pull down the shooter by themselves, but the guy who owns the game showed Declan how to use the back of the stand to hook his foot on to get better leverage. Then they started getting her back pretty well.

This was our second time at the parade last weekend. Our first time on Saturday evening was cut short about 10 minutes before the parade was supposed to start becasue severe storms were fast approaching. They even sounded the sirens in town to get everyone out of downtown and we heard there were funnel clouds sighted around the outskirts of town. Nothing serious happened except for trees and a few summerfest tents downtown. The parade was postponed to Sunday afternoon. The kids got way too much candy and had a great time!
Here we were with Greta and kids at the parade on Saturday. They had to go home on Sunday and couldn't see the parade. BUMMER! Greta you didn't miss too much, there was only 1 band in the parade, a couple floats and lots of advertisements.

helicopter pictures

Here are a couple pictures from our helicopter ride from Summerfest. Our house is the green one in the middle of this picture. I liked the view of the lakes around us in this picture. To the top of the picture is actually 2 lakes seperated by a road and some houses, I think. The first lake is Lisle Lake and the other one is Swan Lake. We don't know if there is an official name to the lake straight down from our house, but our abstract calls is Lake Louise. Who knows.
This is as we were getting closer to the house. The mowed area to the lower left of the housewith the straight lines is the tee box for the golf course. We are about one lot away from the tee box to hole #13.

Spongebob

For summerfest Park Region Telephone usually has a kids character at their place the kids can meet and have their pictures taken with. This year the boys got to meet Spongebob. They have been watching this cartoon for a long time and have always loved Spongebob. It was a very excited day to meet their favorite cartoon character. Notice they both had to wear a Spongebob shirt, too.

Helicopter Ride

This weekend in Fergus Falls is Summerfest. There are craft tents downtown and activities for kids. There is also a parade tonight. For the past few years, there has been a company in town during Summerfest that gives Helicopter rides to people. It isn't the cheapest thing in the world, but how do you NOT do it. The 4 of us went on a ride today and asked the pilot to take us to our new house and we took a video of it. He was so nice and hung around the house and let us get pictures and a video all around the house. What a great pilot! We could not resist getting as much out of a cool experience as we could. Now, you can have the full view from the sky!

When I say, "I don't think so" in the video, Isaac asked me if there was anyone working at the house today. Yes, there is a truck there, but it has been there all week. That is the plumbing truck. You can see we have a little tiny lake right down from our lot and then bigger lakes the other direction that we can see from our house. It is an amazing view from the upper level. When it is ever sunny outside for a day, I will get some view pictures to put on here.

Shingles are done!

June 12- The guys got the shingles done on the house. Jeff wanted his turret to stand out a bit more than the rest of the house, so we did the shingles on the turret totally black.
This is the view I have been doing from the hole #11. We did walk through stuff with the plumbers, heating a/c guy, and then electrician this week. The plumbers have been busy at work for a few days and I think the heating stuff will start today or Monday. Then the electricity stuff will be Tuesday next week. They also got the garage floor ready yesterday so they can pour the concrete on that Monday. The lot needed to dry out a bit before they can bring in the big concrete truck. Things are moving right along!

Storm

We had a nice little storm blow through here on Wednesday morning. We all of a sudden had some really big winds that I heard were around 70 miles an hour with a bunch of rain. The kids watched this Ash tree fall into another tree in our yard.
We aren't quite sure why it uprooted and how we are so lucky it fell that direction, but we are happy there was no damage from it. Our fence and house were saved by the big Elm tree. We called the tree service guy right away and he checked out the tree for us. He said this one looks safe and isn't going anywhere he will be back later. I am sure he some pretty more important trees to take care of from the storm. We also heard about 2 semis getting blown over by the wind during the storm on the interstate. CRAZY! We are thankful nothing serious happened to the house we will be selling soon or putting up for sale soon.

June 9th

It is hard to tell in this photo, but Isaac is wearing rain boots. He has ruined 2 pairs of shoes with the intense mud on our lot from all the rain. We had mud ones and good ones, but he decided the good ones needed to be muddy too. I disagree big-time, but it was too late to stop him when his brother was pouring water out of his good shoes that were stuck in the mud. So, we went yesterday afternoon and bought rain boots for the kids to be worn at the lot at all times. Will this solve the issue, don't count on it.
Declan in his rain boots.

This is the ceiling of the turret. We had envisioned the ceiling going all the way to the peak of the turret and doing the cedar wood up there, but you cannot do that with trusses for the roof. So, we are having a flat ceiling, but these beams will be below the flat part and with cedar around them. It will still look cool, but we just didn't realize it couldn't be peaked. Upper and main level of the turret without the support boards everywhere.
The guys started shingling today. I am glad there are people who are not afraid of heights who can do this because I could not do it.
Shingles on the front side done and they started the other side on Tuesday. I will get pictures in soon. Have to take them first. I forgot the camera this afternoon.

HEELYs

Declan has been begging for Heelys for a year and a half. We finally, actually I finally decided, he was ready for them on his birthday this year. I have been fighting it because I have heard so many horror stories about broken arms and stuff with heelys. He was so excited and has been wearing them everywhere. He had a hard time figuring out how to actually use the wheels, so he called his friend, Mason, who has had them for about a year to show him the trick. Mason gave him a couple tips and that was all it took for Declan. We have had to establish ground rules in restaurants and stores, but he does a great job with them.
He loves practicing with his Heelys.

When I was taking pictures of the Heelys, Isaac was showing me his tricks on his scooter he got for Christmas. It took him a while to get the balance on it, but now he rides it all the time.