Week 1....

Here is a sample board of our materials:

We started digging on Monday, and here we are, Saturday morning...week 1.

The hole is looking much more defined, there is some grading, and we have had to change the retaining wall plan a bit, but I think it will look great. Today the guys are out putting in the metal rods to prepare for the foundation --- the circular part of the foundation required significant manual digging in the 100 degree heat. We went to check progress at 7 in the morning, they were there working and then at 7:30 pm we thought we could walk around privately, but they were still there working! I expected them to perhaps take a break on the weekend, but they are there working. At least it is a bit cooler today, but now it looks like rain. There are giant mountains of dirt, but they'll all be used to backfill in the front of the house. The higher the better because we don't want the house to be super high out of the ground.

In other progress, Lloyd got the gas company to come out and they were able to level out the back part of our lot significantly. It looks great and will make that rear portion of the yard much more usable.

The kids are very excited to watch the progress daily. I am glad school is starting soon because otherwise it will seem like an extremely long process to them -- a bit like, "are we there yet" in the car. Already they were asking me if they'd be able to ride their scooters on the concrete in the "basement" next week. Yikes! They've also made friends with the horses at the Equestrian center and want to stop and pet them daily. They've named them, Snowflake, Tommy and Jerry --- with a renaming occurring daily --- Snowflake is now Horace, Jerry is now Dusty.... much more "boyish" names now that they've realized the horses are boys!