The Short Rebar is Connected to the Tall Rebar...

Here the guys are connecting tall rebar to the short rebar that was part of the foundation and cornerstones. Steel rebar through the cement walls in the basement makes for strong support of the upper level.


The workers are standing on the molds for the bottom half of the basement walls as they continue to connect rebar throughout the walls. Zoey looks on. We have taken her out a couple of times so she will get used to the new area before we actually move. We don't want her to run away to our old house. She seems to love wandering the fields.


These are the metal molds that are going to be used to form the cement walls. The steel rebar runs right through the center.


More of the same.


And again.


Kylee, Kaitlin, and Conner are sliding down one of the hills. I keep waiting for them to keep sliding down and into the hole, but it hasn't happened yet. I will keep my fingers crossed.


The molds are off, and we have walls!


Kylee and Kaitlin have gone down the dirt ramp for a closer inspection. The openings are the windows in the basement. The girls wanted to climb through them but I wouldn't let them as there is still a lot of equipment and tools around and I didn't want them to get hurt.


The long view of the basement, from the opposite side where the Moon's will be living. We have been wondering how the construction will work for the Moon's. All of the trucks just drive all over the place - on our land, the Moon's and the Jacob's. Good thing these are all vacant lots, but come the time the Moon's are building it won't be like that. Not my problem though!


Kylee checking out the walls.


A close-up view of the walls and the molds after they have been removed.

Our Second Groundbreaking

The kids have been bugging me about not posting any pictures of the progress of our house. So this post will be mostly pictures. If I just knew how to do a slide show and had a playlist (don't know how to do that either)...
On our first groundbreaking this is what was used to break ground:


Now our second groundbreaking a little bit bigger tool was used:



I really should call it a "Snort" as Are You My Mother has always been one of our favorite books, and this really was a snort. We all went out to watch the first moment of breaking ground and then went back again later to see the results of the snorts work. Some of the dirt was taken away by an old co-worker of Brad's, back when he worked for Boeing. So that was kind of funny.


This was taken just down the street from our house on Jacobs Lane.



Zach didn't come back with us because we aren't really building a house, just a big hole to eventually fill in and say April Fool's to him. He knows we aren't really doing this. The family is standing in the big hole that will someday be our basement.


This one gives a little bit more detail as to the deepness of the hole compared to where the main level is. Does that make sense?


There was a dirt ramp that we were able to walk down into the hole from the west side of the house - the side where the Moon's house will eventually be. The sprinklers were going on the top of one of the mounds of dirt that hit this dirt ramp so the timing of running up and down into the basement hole had to be just so or get soaked!


King of the Hill - or the dirt mound - or whatever!


In case the construction workers decide to dig or build on the Moon's lot - our builder made sure there was an arrow. Still people have called me and said they can't find our place on the map - doesn't help that there isn't a street sign either.


I found this picture to be hilarious. When my family lived in Greece, we watched an apartment building being built down the street from our house. The Greek construction workers came to pour cement and they used equipment like in the above picture. We thought it was so silly that they had the cement go from the cement truck parked next to this funny truck with the long hoses waaaaaay up to the top of the hose and then down the hose and into the spot the wanted the cement to be. It seemed like such a waste of time and energy to have the cement have to travel so far when it only needed to go a matter of a few feet from the cement truck in the first place. Then when I drove out to our house and saw this truck and found out how it really worked I laughed about what idiots we had been back many years ago. If the trucks get too close to the hole to pour cement, they will cause the hole to cave in. And sometimes pouring cement has to be far away from the cement truck and the hose and arm of the second truck can extend a great distance to reach and pour the cement. The things we learn...


They are loading up the hoses and getting ready to pour the cement.


Here they are pouring the cement into the molds. Then they smooth out the cement, check for air pockets, add metal rebar and then let it set. This is one of the most important parts of building a house. The whole house sits on the foundation and cornerstones. If I could I would play the Primary song The Wise Man and the Foolish Man, but oh well...

First Groundbreaking

Before I blog any farther, let me explain why I am soooo far behind. The past few weeks my kids have hogged the computer - and no it hasn't been games and junk like that. They have had papers and reports, and research like you wouldn't believe. Even though we have two computers I never got a turn and now that school is out, I might still not ever get a turn. I didn't want my kids to hang out on the computer, or playing video games, or watching TV all summer, so they have to buy time to do these things. To buy time they have to play outside, read, do Duty to God, Scouts, Personal Progress, read to Conner, play outside with Conner, do their school assignments, etc. I figured it is only fair if I have to do the same. So.... the first week is free, they can accrue time, but don't have to spend any to use any of the technology we have around the house, but after that...Zach created an excel spread sheet for everyone to keep track as to what they have earned and what they have used. Guess we will see how this works.

Now to catch up on what has been going on with our house. On Monday, May 19, we met with the Moon's and the Jacobs to have a BBQ and groundbreaking at the land. Here is a photo of our family compliments of Terri Moon.



The rest of the photo's I took. There are pictures of the Moon family as they are breaking ground on their plot and the Jacobs family on their plot of land. Sister Moon bought cute little shovels and painted them gold for our ceremony. Seemed like we should have something important to say, but we just dug a bit of a hole and took a few pictures. We ate hotdogs roasted on sticks over a fire pit that is actually on our land, chips, salad, and then of course, we had s'mores. Well, I have been trying to figure out how to put labels with my pictures but I am a real dunce with the computer right now and am about out of patience. Besides I think my turn on the computer is over as I have had three kids come in to see if I am done yet so...

Picture of our Tree

Remember the little tree I talked about earlier that Kaitlin brought home from an MCP field trip? We still don't know what it is, but it started out as a stick and now it has little baby branches and leaves. I imagine we are going to have to take it out of the ice cream bucket soon, but for now, here it is. At enrichment this Tuesday we are talking about gardening in a pot so I guess I will take this with me and see if anyone can clue me in as to what we have and how big it is going to get and how long before I have to transplant it.

Catch Up On My Family

Just a brief update on what we are up to. (Not much!)

Michael is still at BYU. He will be graduating in December of this year with a business degree. He was originally in the Computer Science field, but has come up with a business he wants to some day open in the Tri-Cities when he has saved enough money. He isn't sure what exactly he will be doing after graduation, so if you have any suggestions... He is really good with computers and works at the church's help desk in Provo. He keeps waiting for the Prophet to call and tell him his computer is down but that is yet to happen. He has talked to Bishop Banks while still at the Pasco seminary, his mission home in the Philippines, and many others as he helps them with the church computer problems.

Courtney is married to Will Keeler who is from Rhode Island. She graduated from BYU in 2007 and Will graduated just this past April. They are both working in Provo right now, but will be moving up to Cheney (near Spokane) where Will has been accepted into the Social Work graduate program at Eastern Washington University. We are really excited to have them living so close. We have promised them that we won't be annoying.

Erin just finished her first year at BYU and has decided to major in Communication Disorders and is still doing a lot of American Sign Language. She is home for the summer and is working at the new Sonic on Road 68 in Pasco. She is pretty excited about it as she LOVES to roller skate.

Zach is 16 now! Hard to believe and working hard towards: good grades in school, black belt in Taekwon Do, Eagle scout, Duty to God, drivers license. Kylee is in her first year in public school at MAC and has decided that homework stinks. Being homeschooled was much easier as once you finished your school work for the day you were done - no homework. Kaitlin still attends MCP, which is a homeschool group which has classes once a week. She is looking forward to turning 12 this year and finally going to Mutual with Kylee and Zach. Conner is 5 and thrilled to begin reading. He likes to sound out words and is especially good at math.

Well - that about raps it up.

Oven!

I went to do some visiting and my friend told me about this oven that she plans to put in her house when she builds in a couple of years. It sounds like something I would love to have, so I need to look more into it. I have always wanted a double oven as whenever we are making Thanksgiving dinner or have lots of company over and I want to be able to bake the meat and the rolls at the same time, etc., it is pretty much impossible. It just seems a waste of space to have two ovens when for the majority of the year I would only be using one. Plus two wall ovens are very expensive. This seems like the perfect solution - surprised I haven't seen more of these before!

We Have an Address!

Been playing run-around-games with the City of Pasco the past few days. We had to sign an annexation agreement in order to be hooked up to the water and to get our building permit but the city was having a hard time locating us. They could find us on the map and use the parcel number, but they couldn't take my money to pay for future water usage upfront (their requirement) until I had an address. They assured me it would only take 15 minutes, but quite a few HOURS later - we have an address. It will be 7712 Jacobs Lane. My kids think it has a nice ring to it, very friendly. We will sign some more papers with the bank tomorrow and then...