The Hole

We received a call on Wednesday this week that we are on the excavator's list to dig our hole next week. We will head out next weekend for photos!

New Home

Things appear to be well under way for our new home. Our builder submitted for permits on Sept 22nd. It takes about 4 weeks to get them and then they can start digging. Once the foundation and footing is done, it is almost exactly 120 days until the home is done. The expected date right now is mid-April. We will be meeting with our general contractor once they have permits and we should have an even better idea of the date.

I thought some of you might like to see what we are building.

Our home will look like the above photo except our pillars on the porch will be wood, not stucco. The main stucco of our house will be the light stucco around the windows in this photo. Our front door and the vent will be "Evening Blue". It isn't navy but it isn't royal. I will see if I can get a sample.
The stucco around the windows and other accent points will be forest green just like the garage door in the above photo. Our garage door will be the same as in the first photo...I think..we picked "almond".

This is the basic floor plan. We made a few tweaks here and there but not too many.

On the main floor, we will be adding a picture wall between the "dining room" and the living room. Not where they show the sample wall but more towards the front of the house. This is to break up the football field feeling but still keep it open. Above is a sample of the picture wall from a different floor plan. We are also adding a Powder Room aka Toilet and Sink on the main floor where the "storage" closet would normally be. We also added the peninsula in the kitchen. We thought about an island but it just didn't work so this gives us the same amount of extra space.
We chose light oak for our cabinets, white for our appliances and a light color for the counters. We like it bright! This way I can paint the walls any colors I want too. We will have the same cabinets, counters, carpet and vinyl throughout the entire house. Below is a sample of the counter top.
Then we have upstairs~
Check out my master closet!! The master bedroom is HUGE too. I seriously don't have enough furniture for this house.

We made several changes in the Master Bathroom. These include...

A Garden Tub

A separate showerA Second Vanity
A window between the vanities
and believe it or not, vinyl is not standard in the master bath, only by the commode SO we upgraded to that as well. Carpet in the bathroom...GROSS!
We also decided to move the laundry room upstairs! We figure that other than kitchen towels everything is upstairs that we wash so why not have it all up there all the time. This replaces the storage upstairs. Because of this though we will have a big mud room between the garage and kitchen. I am SO excited for this. This is one feature I have always wanted to have in a home.

I know we have replaced a lot of our storage with other things but we will have a huge crawl space below the house. The next door neighbor says that his is 8.5 feet.
We are on lot 178 with the church behind us. We met our neighbors to the east lot 179 on Saturday and they seem really nice. They have at least 2 little girls, one who is 5 and one who turned 3 this weekend. I am sure we will meet our other neighbors as we venture out to watch our house be built!

Life

I haven't had the time to blog as I would like these past 2 weeks. Even now I don't think this will cover everything I want to say but hopefully during the next few days, I will be able to catch up.

August 30th - We decided to stay home from church. It was the last day in our old ward. Our stake added a new ward and realigned the boundaries making it so we were part of the new ward. This has been very exciting for us as we would now have ward members actually living next to us rather than a mile away. I know that outside of Utah it could be like that BUT we live in Draper, Utah not somewhere else. We didn't want to go and have people gushing all over us for leaving, cause we really aren't leaving. Well it is a good thing we decided to stay home. While we would normally have been at church, Rick received a very important phone call. After a bunch of telephone tag, Rick was speaking to his son Jeff. I have never met Jeff and Rick hadn't spoken with him in about 6 years. Jeff called to let us know that his mom, Jana, had died. Not only that, her boys were the ones to find her.
Jeff turned 23 on Sept 1st and his brother, Stephen turned 21 back in May. Suddenly our lives were all turned upside down.
We spent Sunday afternoon with them at the home of their grandparents. Rick has since talked with both boys every single day and they have together and separately spent time with us at home.
We had their mom's funeral on Sept 5th. It was a lovely day. There was a viewing and a memorial service here in Salt Lake and she was buried in Trenton, Cache County. It was a perfect day for everything. The talks during the funeral, some were good, some so not. I could go on and on about the one that wasn't. Let's just say, I almost got up and walked out and Rick did later on during the same guy's talk. Yes, it was that bad!
Now let me tell you a few details - I have this morbid curiosity about dead bodies. I didn't used to have it. I avoided funerals and all that a funeral service entails until a few years ago when my grandparents died. Rick didn't want to have anything to do with the dead body but I sure did. I wanted to make sure she was really dead! So I crept into the viewing room and checked her out. She looked gray! Seriously, I haven't seen many dead bodies in my time but never have they looked so horrible. Not only that she looked SOOOO old. The only thing missing was that she didn't have the gray hair. She had wrinkles that were horrendous. Ok I should say the body looked like that because I do not believe that the body is the same person as when they were alive. It is a vessel for the Spirit.
Anyway, back to the point - not sure what it really is.

On Friday the 5th we received another phone call - this time it was from Rick's sister telling us that our niece, Michelle, had committed suicide. She would be 40 next month. She left behind a husband, 4 children and a step son. I had only met Michelle once about 3 years ago, but I know her dad fairly well.
Michelle had been having a very difficult time with life and had tried earlier this year to end her life. We know that she is now at peace but unfortunately her children have to learn to grow without their mommy there for them.
Michelle's funeral was held on Friday the 11th. It was good to meet some nephews and their wives who I had never met before but it was obviously a very sad occasion. Michelle's cousin, Amy, passed away 5 years ago. They were only a year apart and we know Amy was there to welcome her with open arms and the love she felt she didn't have in this life. I am sure Amy was there to take her cousin to Heavenly Father and Jesus where she would also have their love. (Along with all our other family members.) - Photos - Rick and his dad. Sharron, Rick's sister, Amy's mom, holding her Great Nephew Ryker who Rick blessed back in February.

On Monday the 7th, as we were walking out the door Rick got a call from Steve telling him that Steve wants to live with us. WHOA! I really didn't see that one coming. I figured he would want to live at his aunt's. We live in a 2 bedroom apartment. Not a house. Heck I don't even want to live with us in such a small place some days. So for the last week we have been trying to figure out what to do with him and Jeff because Jeff has just as much right to live with us, as long as either abides by our rules.
Yesterday Jeff and Steve had a family meeting with their mom's family trying to figure out what they are going to do. We haven't heard the results of that meeting yet. And yes, it bothers me that they think they can get together and decide the fate of these boys without their dad being there but let's not get into that.
We should know in the next day or two who will be living with us, if either choose to do so. I told Rick that it can only be one cause if both move in, I am moving out!

My genealogy stuff has been really good lately. I am finally on the New FamilySearch website which has made it possible for me to generate many cards with names of family members whose Temple Work needs to be done. I have learned that I can make it to the Draper Temple and back, along with a session of initiatories in 1 hour. I have been trying to do this every week lately and it makes such a difference in my outlook of life.

In the mean time, we decided to try and move forward with building. That's right, we are building a home! We signed our reservation agreement on Saturday to build a home in Stansbury Park. I will write a separate blog about that entire circus the ensued. In the end though, we are VERY excited.

We have a lot of changes going on in our life right now and are very excited about them. Some more than others obviously.