More and More House Pieces!

They have really been working hard on the house since my last post. We now have a framed breakfast nook and windows and doors! They also added the stairs to the second floor so we have officially been able to walk around the entire house. It is so very exciting!

Stopped by on Monday to find windows were waiting in the garage.

On Tuesday Matt stopped by and the windows were in place!

Stairs to the basement.

Stairs to the second floor.

Alex's room looking in from the hall.

Our little stairs up to our bedroom.

Looking down the hall to the door of the spare bedroom.

Looking down the other part of the hall and into Reagan's room.

Always on the Run!

So I fell of the blog bandwagon and am finally crawling back on slowly. Life has just been nuts lately and the blog was the first to suffer. Reagan has her last soccer game of the season this Saturday so that should slow things down a little for us on the home front. The Bourbon Chase has been completed so the pressure of that is also gone (more on that in a bit) but work life has gotten maxed out. My big annual conference is less than 2 weeks away and I am so busy at work, I can't really keep my head on straight. I can't really spare the time it is taking to blog but I needed a mental break from work. I was here until 8:30 last night since Matt is out of town and mom offered to keep Alex for me. I am sure I will be back at some point this weekend as well. But once the conference is over, I will be able to take a deep breath and hopefully get things back settled down into a normal routine.

I am sure you are wondering about the house and I will do a separate post on that. Things are just as busy there which is great!

And in case you are wondering about the Bourbon Chase, that was one of my crazy ideas last year that grew legs and happened this past weekend. The Chase is a 200 mile, overnight team relay race. I thought it would be very cool to be a part of it and set out to make it happen on my birthday last year. Over a year later, my team of 12, sponsored by CrossFit Frankfort, hit the road to travel 200 miles from Jim Beam to downtown Lexington by foot. It was physically and mentally exhausting, taking me about 3 full days to recover afterwards. Each team member ran 3 different legs of various distances from 3.6 miles to 8.2. I had the shortest legs at 4, 3.6 and 4.6 for a total of 12.2 miles in less than 24 hours. Was it fun though? Absolutely. I spent about 32 hours in a 15 passenger van with my husband and 4 friends. It smelled, we didn't get much sleep, but it honestly was a blast. Will we do it next year? I am totally on the fence but I would guess we will.

In case you want some insight to the Chase, I did a separate blog for it and opened it up to the team to blog as well: runnersontherocks.wordpress.com. Enjoy!

It Is Really A House Now!

This has been a very exciting week for us with the house. My last post was a week ago and we had gotten the exterior walls of the first floor. Look what this week brought:

Monday:

Reagan and I went over to check things out and found stairs to the basement. Funny story here. We were shocked last Friday when there was an open hole in the floor to the basement. We thought that was pretty dangerous. On Saturday they had put a railing up around it. But on Monday the railing was missing on one end and Reagan leaned in and I thought she had fallen in. Nope, she was just checking out the new stairs.

Wednesday:
Our stop on Wednesday brought the excitement of a second floor and interior walls.

Very hard to explain but the is the back wall of our kitchen, the office/playroom is the room on the left, pantry is the smaller room in the middle. Hall on the right leads to the garage door and the half bath.

Thursday:

You can imagine our surprise after the visit on Wednesday when we saw that the second floor wasn't finished and yet on Thursday morning we got this picture from our realtor:

A roof?? How did they get that far so fast. And before I had even had time to respond, we go this one:

Matt went by after work and low and behold we actually have something that looks a lot like a house now:

Funny thing is that both Matt and I immediately thought, "wow that is big!" And my next thought is always, why in the world did I want something that big to clean?? :) But I have no doubt it is going to be wonderful and totally worth it. Especially when Reagan finds out she gets to start adding vacuuming to her chores list once we move.

I am already looking to going by this afternoon to see what has happened today.

And to figure out why in the world they have avoided doing our eat in kitchen. That is the big hole in the back of the house. It is a half circle and it has my curiosity peaked as to why it isn't framed.

Starting to Look Like a House!

We had another big house day yesterday! We got the floor and exterior walls of the first floor! And according to our neighbor, it was another day where they showed up around 4 and by 6 had done a ridiculous amount of work.

The view coming down our road.

View of the back of the house, first hole is the windows in the playroom/office, big hole is the breakfast nook, last holes are the windows in the family room.

View of the front of the house looking straight through to the back windows since there are no interior walls yet. Far right area is the garage. Hard to see the hole on the far left but it is the front door.

Soon to be the stairs to the basement.

Inside the house looking out at the backyard through what will soon be the breakfast nook. The house back there is our realtor, Ben's house.

Potty Fairy...

Alex has recently decided it might be okay to sit on the potty. When we first tried this a couple of months ago, he would cry and was terrified of the potty. I knew a popular method of potty training was rewarding them when they went so I stocked up on matchbox cars for rewards. But since he wouldn't sit on it, despite the offer of a car, they have been stashed in the closet. 

Last week before bath he decided to give the potty a try again. He has sat on it about every other night since. He hasn't actually done anything, but we consider his willingness to sit on it an accomplishment at this point, so we decided to give him a car. When he sits on the potty, the "potty fairy" will deliver a car in the hallway for him to find. He gets so excited about this that I had to catch it on video:

For reference he says "sticky" not "stinky". The potty seat that we put on the toilet to make it smaller is vinyl and sticks to him when he gets up so he says it is sticky.

More Photos and More Lumber...

The pictures I posted of the basement floor and lumber were ones that Matt took when he stopped by Tuesday. We decided to go by on Wednesday, have a picnic and let Alex and I check it out. Well, when we got there at 5:30 with all our picnic goodies, there were men hard at work. So we decided to leave them alone and go eat at home.

After we finished eating, we went back to see if they had finished for the night. They were packing up when we got there so we were able to check it all out. Our realtor saw us and came over to say hi. He had actually just sent us some pictures of the workers. Apparently they didn't even show up until 4:30 and had already framed the back basement wall. It is amazing how quick they are!

Back wall of the basement.

Alex playing soccer in the basement. I am sure this will be a regular occurrence until it is finished.

Matt and Ben talking about who knows what.

Daddy trying to get a kiss, Alex more worried about "cheesing" for the camera.

First floor walls!

The boys having a blast in the basement:

We Have a Floor! And Some Wood!!

Monday was a fun day at the lot. We got a basement floor and a garage floor. It is funny to think that most people would not think this is exciting at all but for us, this is huge! This means they are considering the basement pretty much finished which means we will start seeing work done to create the rest of the house.

We also got the garage floor on Monday as well.

Even though it looks pretty wet, it had dried enough that we couldn't put our initials in it. Boo. :) Maybe we can add them to the sidewalk or driveway when those get poured.

Yesterday confirmed our suspicions that a finished basement might mean work on the first and second floors when we saw that lumber had been delivered. With all the other homes we have seen being built, when they start on the framing, it gets done quick! On average they can completely frame a house in about 2 days. So I will be anxious to see when that gets started. I am thinking we may have a framed house in about 2 weeks. I just haven't seen the process when the house includes a basement so that will be an added step we haven't seen before.