House Update!

Since we got back into town today, Landon and I stopped by the new house to see how everything is going.  It was like a completely different house! It is 100% dry walled on the inside and all the siding was up! We are just waiting for stone on the outside. 

So be prepared to be bombarded with house pictures!

Front of house with siding and shudders!

We noticed a few weeks ago a very sizable puddle outside our front door and were very concerned for our foundation.  Last week they seemed to have put this contraption in-I am guessing it is some sort of drainage system? I asked in my weekly email to Hayden tonight on what exactly this is and what it will do.

Inside the garage!

Landon just going right on in.

Living room looking towards the office!

Landon running towards the mud room and front door. You can see a storage closet under the stairs on the left and part of the pantry on the right.

Kitchen with a doorway into the dining room

Looking out into the morning room from the kitchen

Standing in the kitchen looking into the living room with the fireplace

Kitchen lighting and kitchen outlets! Can't wait for cabinest to go in!

This is the guest room windows!

Looking from the top of the stairs into the bonus room doors on the right and master bedroom straight ahead.

Giant shower in master bathroom!!

Looking down the stairs to the front door.

Looking at the plug in in the bonus room for the projector

Looking at the wall for the screen in the bonus room. The three holes on the top are speaker wiring.

More bonus room

Bonus room nook and mess!

Landon loves running around this yard-we need a fence lol!

Cheese =)

Until next week =)

80 Weeks!

We have had a good week.  The weather has been amazing for playing outside, despite it being somewhat rainy. It has been cooler and less humid the last week...well up until yesterday.  We have been busy doing walks, playing at the park, and beginning the early phases of packing and cleaning the house. 

Landon has become such a little man in the last few months that he seems like a completely different baby than just at the beginning of the summer.  He has so many words, knows his likes and dislikes, can recognize and name family members in his photo album book, etc. He is still VERY obsessed with Elmo and lately his Daddy.  He is going to be one sad boy when Logan leaves again soon. 

Some big developments for the fall, we have decided to put Landon into the Mothers Day Out Program at the United Methodist Church where he also does music one day per week.  We think it will be really great for him and it will give me a 3 hour break one day a week to get stuff done around the house,  pack, go to house meetings, etc.  It is very affordable; I will have to volunteer about once every 9 weeks in addition to the teacher in the classroom.  I am excited since it is set up a like a preschool setting which we hope to eventually put him in when I head back to work.  I am excited, but nervous.  I am waiting to hear back from the director to see if there are still spots open in the 12-23 month class. 

Here are the pictures and even a video from the last week!

Exploring his new backyard

Someone thought he was sleeping in our room...I don't think so buddy.

Cleaned out the car yesterday and found this grossness under Landon's seat. This is all sand/dirt!!

Loving his Elmo pjs and looking at his Daddy!

Climbing outside....he is a monkey.

Reading with Daddy before bed

Enjoying some swing time

Ruling the park this day....

 Here is a video of him and Logan playing:

Until next week =)

New House: The trades and furniture shopping!

The house is coming right along!

We went up to visit on Sunday and were pleasantly surprised to see the trades have been in doing work.  This includes the duct work, plumbing, and cabling.  I am sure I am forgetting something, but I don't know much about this stage of building the house ha! It was fun to go in and see everything really cleaned up on the floors, etc.  At some point this week we think we will have our pre drywall meeting with the project manager.  That meeting we will spend time going over the framing and looking at all the different things in the wall.   Also this week we expect the siding to start going up on the outside of the house, which I am SUPER excited about.

Here are the pictures from the last visit at the house:

Outside with the roof and windows!

Back door!

Blurry L running through the kitchen and great room

Landon's first climb up the steps

Landon's bathtub!

After the visit to the house in the morning we spent the afternoon furniture shopping down in Newport News.  We went to two furniture stores, Haverty's and Haynes.  They were both pretty nice and have labor day sales going on.  If we buy something now we will just put it on lay away for delivery in November. We want to make sure we catch the sales for these type of things so we decided to start looking sooner rather than later.

Here are the pieces we picked out yesterday.  We are still trying to decide between the two bedroom sets, so opinions are appreciated!

The downstairs sectional!

Dresser, first bedroom set

Smaller dresser-first bedroom set

Whole bedroom set-first set

Dresser-second set

Whole second bedroom set

Nightstand second set

  Until next week =)

79 Weeks!

Today marks 79 weeks for Landon-or 18 months! We have been pretty busy this week.  Logan was off Monday so we spent the day with him.  We had Landon's 18 month appointment today at the Drs. where he also got 3 shots.  He is all up to date on his vaccines now until age 4, except for the flu vaccine! It is nice not to have to subject him to getting stabbed every 3 months!

He was a handful at his appointment.  He didn't want anyone to touch him and screamed and fought while the Dr. tried to examine him. So that was hard, but overall he is healthy and advanced in most places developmentally.  He is still a big dude...he is in the 75th percentile for weight and height and in the 50th for head.  He is still on the same growth curve since birth, so that is great. I still don't have any idea why he is so big for as tiny and short as Logan and I are.  I am just glad all that is done until he turns 2 in February.

Other than that we have just been up to our usual things.  We visited York River State Park in Williamsburg.  It is on the York River and has alot of hiking trails and nice playground for Landon.  Rusty went swimming in the river, but the problem is the jellyfish.  Thankfully, Rusty didn't get stung but we didn't even want Landon near the water. 

Here are some pictures from the week:

L loves this army bear....

Pushed this box over to the door to try to escape and unlock the door...

Jelly fish in the dirty river!

Playing at the park!

Naming people in the book.

I am in love with his hair-I love its color and that it is finally growing.

Wearing Daddy's shoes

Waiting for shots...poor guy.

Until next week =).

New House: Second level!

In the last week the house has been framed completely! It is amazing that they can put it up so quickly. From last Tuesday to today they have been busy little works bees.  They work 6 days a week and try to get as much in as possible without having issues with the rain.  Here is the houses progression over the last week!

Last week-Tuesday I think?

Saturday, 8/10/2013

Monday, 8/12/2013

Monday, 8/12/2013

Back view-8/12/2013

 As you can see, they put it up fairly quickly.  The stairs are set to go in today and then throughout this week and next the trades people will be out to put in plumbing, electrical, wiring for the bonus room, and start insulating.  In about a week and a half we will have our pre-dry wall meeting and learn a little bit about what is behind the walls of the house in terms of energy star things, pipes, etc. So that will be interesting to hear about that.  We are hoping that Logan will still be around for that. 

We went to a meet and greet for the neighborhood for an hour or so on Saturday and found out some interesting things.  We had been having trouble getting a hold of one of the project managers and turns out he was either fired (we heard this through the grape vine) or left the company.  So we ended up meeting with the new project manager today, Hayden.  He was really nice and told us he would work with us the best as possible on any questions or issues we have with the house building process.  He helped work on a friends house in a different neighborhood a few years ago and she had only great things to say about him so that is encouraging.  We got a few words of advice from the neighbors about watching the subcontractors closely since they like to cut corners.  We are also happy we decided against a basement because it seems everyone is having moisture issues with them as well.  Thankfully, we dodged that bullet!

We also found out they are going to sod our entire backyard which is awesome.  We noticed our neighbors only had the back partially sodded so we were a bit concerned.  Overall, great news for us!

Until next week =).