fewer piles + more house + pictures by husband = happy wife

Erik is a wonderful husband and ran over to take pictures of the house during half time of the Oregon game. Thanks Erik! 

We now have a floor to our second story/roof to our first story :)

There are several other pictures that show how much work they did inside, putting up all sorts of new walls and using up all of that wood sitting in our driveway, but Blogger doesn't seem to want me to upload the pics, so I'll try again tomorrow.

We have walls!!

My great friend Jeannie stopped by today just to hang out (she's wonderful and even brought Starbucks-thanks J :). We decided to head down and check out if the rumor was true that they were working on our house. 

Good news, here's what we drove up to! Such a difference from the previous post. 

Here's the view from the back corner. If you look closely you 

can see them actually putting up an interior 

wall while I took the picture! Go guys go!!

Welcome to our home! Don't forget to take off your shoes :)

How exciting! Jeannie, thanks again for going to check it out with me!!

p.s. I think the guys working thought I was crazy :) Well, get used to it guys!

The latest...

We stopped by the house on the way home from John Day and here is what we found. Wood, lots and lots of big piles of wood. No, the wood was not in the shape of a house, it was more in the shape of several piles. Exciting, huh? I guess Arctic Blast 2008 took it's toll on our house too.

Upon further inspection we found this. Good news, we have (or will have) heat! 

The best news came the next morning when Erik's friend called to let us know that they were working on our house!

Christmas and Birthday celebrations!

Merry Christmas to all (just a couple of days late)! We spent this past week in John Day celebrating and relaxing. We had a great time hanging out with family and friends. Here are a few pictures from our week.

We played cards, lots and lots of cards...

We went sledding. We really like sledding! There was tons and tons of snow, 

which made it even more fun. Here I am with our niece, 

Sydney, waiting for Erik to hike back to the top.

We made (and ate) cookies. Well, when I say "we" I mean 

Sydney and Sophie made cookies. Sophie told her mom that she and 

Sydney made the cookies and Erin helped just a little :) 

We celebrated Erik's birthday! Happy Birthday Babe!

We also celebrated Christmas, but no great pictures, just great quality family 

time celebrating the birth of our Lord! We are so very blessed.

I couldn't resist posting this fun icicle picture.

It was great to see you all! Thanks for having fun with us!

School?...That's weird.

All signs point to me having to work tomorrow. Strange. I haven't worked all week due to "Arctic Blast 2008," but it looks like school is back in session tomorrow. There's always time for cancellations in the morning! I guess one day on-two weeks off isn't too bad of a schedule.

Us Elfed

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

So, for those of you who don't live in or around Portland, we get kinda crazy about snow here. Any mention of it and people hunker down, collect massive amounts of food from the store, and prepare to be snowed in for weeks on end (despite the fact we've never been snowed in more than a day or maybe two during my lifetime :). My favorite is the news stations and what clever title they have created for the latest weather adventure. This weekends was entitled "Arctic Blast 2008." Really, that sounds like we're at the North Pole or something! 

Anyway, we did end up getting a couple of inches (definitely a blast :) so of course Erik and I had to go enjoy it! Makes for such a fun morning!

Junie B wondering what the white stuff falling from the sky is. 

It was so fun waking up to snow!

Meet snow Erik and Erin!

Aren't we cute friends?!

And now, time for some hot chocolate!

For the record

We saw the house again today! It was fun to get some pictures when it wasn't pitch black out, but those pictures aren't in this post, they are in the post below. The one Erik so kindly contributed. Please pay no attention to the words on the previous post, the pictures speak for themselves :)

It was raining pretty hard, so we didn't stay long, but it was still fun to see! We'll keep you posted!

Player Please

Dear readers, to whom it may concern, et al.

    Seasons greetings to all my vader haters out there.  This is my first post to the blogified interwebs.  I hope that my wife has been doing a good job of keeping y'all updated about the building of our new house.  She probably hasn't been giving you the whole story.  Here is "the rest of the story".  We are building a house.  We occasionally post pictures.  We stumbled upon this location in oregon while we were on vacation from Mexico.  I was totally thinking to my self, "we should think about buying a house here", erin was thinking, "I need to get some hair spray, let's stop by target".  Next thing you know we were buying a house, and it is totally awesome.  We are actually have a contest, it is self titled "most excited about  the house contest."  All you have to do is post a comment to this blog with your favorite slogan and what your favorite TV show is.  The winner will receive our undying affection for the rest of the house buying process.  Good luck and may the best poster win.  Below are pictures of our foundation and the plumbing that will remove our waste water.   See for additional comments. 

It was raining, I got my boots muddy.

Erin tried to walk on the beams, but she doesn't have the best balance.

This last picture is of our soon to be driveway leading to our garage, but where else would it be leading to?  About this time we were both getting pretty hungry, so we decided to consult our recent addition to the family, our Entertainment book (thanks uncle ken).  (that's my first blog shout out).  Next we went to an undisclosed location for lunch.   My wife just about  pulled the laptop out of my hands (that she gave to me in the first place, btw).  

This will be the best post ever in blogville, 

Erik

SO IT BEGINS

It wasn't a lie, they really did break ground! We were so excited we decided to drive down last night to check it out, here's what we found. Despite the fact that you can hardly see what is in the pictures these are some of my newest favorite pictures. It really feels like a beginning to a new and exciting part of our life. We are so blessed!

The view from the street. Straight ahead is the driveway,
to the right is the porch and dining room, doesn't it look great?!

This is the view from the front right hand corner of the house, so what
you see is the dining room, behind that is the kitchen,
and in the far left corner is the family room/den!

I'm sure you can tell, but this is obviously us hanging out in the backyard!

I only put this in because it's kind of creepy. The creepiest part is that
we couldn't see the fog, it just showed up in the picture!!

They broke ground...

Or so I've been told. 

Today-a big hole...tomorrow-foundation. 

It could all be a dream, but then again, it could finally have happened. Of course it happens the one week we won't be in the area to take pics, but I'll get one as soon as possible. 

If anyone drives by our lot will you let me know if the hole is real?! Thanks.

Ugly Christmas Sweaters and Making Spirits Bright

Well, yet again, no house update...but on a good note, I've had some fun friend time in the last couple of days! On Friday some friends and I got together in our best ugly sweaters! We had a great time, played some serious poker, had some good wine, and laughed a TON! Girls, thanks for a great evening-it was just what I needed!

Tonight I met up with Jeannie and Tracy to help Make Spirits Bright for Children's Cancer Association. See here for more info! It was fun to see you friends! I had a blast!

The non-update

Yep, you read right. This is a non-update. That's because there is nothing house-related to update you on. Sad, right? Apparently there is a new permit guy working for the city of Keizer who is taking a little longer than usual. Hey permit guy...just in case you are reading this I have at least 2 dedicated readers who want updates (and maybe one is my husband, if I remind him)...help us out here. No permit = no update. That's not a happy equation. 

None of the realtors seem to be concerned, so I guess that is a good sign. The last realtor I talked to said they are building houses in about 85 days right now, which still puts us moving in at the end of February. The fact they can build a house in 85 days is a whole other blog. So there you go, no update. Maybe tomorrow...

Decisions, decisions

We were able to see some of our countertop and flooring options this week. It was so exciting to see what could be the makings of our house! I can't even believe I'm going to post these pictures, the quality is terrible. Really, really terrible. My camera battery was fading fast so I had to do quick picture taking. Anyway, all excuses aside, here are our options (sans upgrade options!):

Just one of the 74ish linoleum options for bathroom floors

I know, it's so blurry you can hardly tell what it looks like,

but these are our tile options for both bathroom and kitchen

 counters. It's hard to tell, but between the next two

pictures there are four options. Which do you like best? 

We like the bottom picture, right hand tile option.

Seriously, I'm supposed to pick a carpet color from

a one inch square?

We were really excited about these floor options 

Any opinions or tips on flooring would be great. Are you a dark carpet or light carpet person...and why? Which wood color do you like best? Still no word on the permits, which means they haven't broke ground yet, but we are hoping that will all happen next week.

Wet Ducks

Neither Erik or I went to UofO, but we got tickets to the game this weekend, and we got to sit next to Melissa and Geoff too! I'm pretty sure Erik planned the weather so I will quit asking to go to games with him. I've never been so wet in my life...honestly. Good thing they won, made it worth it! We had a blast. These pictures were actually taken at the very beginning of the game. We should have taken "after" pictures, huh Lis?!

Notice who doesn't have ponchos! Hmmm...

Melissa was quite bundled up!

Some of my new favs!

So, I realize for most of you our wedding is old news, but I finally downloaded our wedding pictures. We loved our wedding big time, so it's been so fun looking through and remembering. We are really excited about our wedding pics, and here are just a few. Can you forgive me for posting a non house related post :)

The ceremony...

I love this picture, two of my favorite men on earth looking so focused!

Oh the Hemry kids...will we ever grow up?! I sure hope not!

There's not much to say about this one, Erik has great friends!

No News is Good News...We Hope!

Well, there hasn't been much new news regarding our house. We did get a gigantic packet of Title paperwork, which was thrilling to read! It has been fun to start thinking about room colors, furniture, and decorations. Since we don't have any new news, I thought I'd show you all the floor plans of our house, and Erik was nice enough to scan them in for me!

We are super excited about the plans. Our house will actually be flipped the opposite way the picture shows. Some of my favorites inlude the biggest under stair closet ever. It not only goes the length of the stairs, but wraps around in an L shape as well! Another fave is the double doors into our room! What do you like best??

Our New Blog

Hello all. We are almost 4 months into this wonderful marriage of ours, and we are so blessed in so many ways. One of the new ways is being able to buy a new home. We (okay, Erin) thought it would be fun to document the process for all to see! The goal is to be in our new home by the end of February. Maybe we should take bets on if that will actually happen! We hope you enjoy this journey with us.

It's Official!

View of the front of our new house. Well technically, it's a neighbor's new house, but it's the same floor plan, so we can all pretend for now..right? Ours will likely be a similar color, but with a dark charcoal trim and a fun rusty red/orange door! Let's see if it actually works out that way.

The window you can see downstairs is the dining room. The small upstairs window is the laundry room and the big upstairs window is one of the bedrooms. So...what do you think??