Thanksgiving 2008

Another great Thanksgiving has come and gone and we are all a couple pounds heavier to prove it. On Thursday we spent the day at the Bradford's and of course mom made my favorite meal ever!!!! We all hung out and were lazy all day.

Then on Friday is Roger's side of the family. Everyone came over to see the house that afternoon. Jay, Sharron, Rebecca, Nate, Kotcha, Joyce, Grandpa & Grandmother all stopped by to see the progress! Then on to Grandmothers house for her wonderful meal -- lots of family and good food.

Great walls of split faced block

It is finally time to put up the block walls! Again we thought this would go off without a hitch, but we were wrong. At first the walls were going up great. The crew we hired were doing a great job building our walls. They got a lot done each day; but then we came to a huge snag. We had an engineer out to talk about the roof and he said there is no way the block on top of the windows would ever hold -- the windows would just collapse once the roof was up. We couldn't believe it -- what are we to do now???? So we called our engineer that drew the plans and he said of course it would not hold up the block. To that Roger asked why in the world did you draw it then, he replied ..... "you wanted it that way". They he said .... "I am out of it now and I will not sign off on the stability of the roof". Well you can imagine the fury we experienced at that moment. Why did he not tell us from the beginning this wouldn't work???? We had to push forward though. So we found an experienced engineer and he said we would need steel beams to go over all the windows in order to hold up the roof. So we had to wait a week for the beams to be delivered :(. Once the beams were delivered it was Thanksgiving time and we couldn't get anyone out to work. Then after Thanksgiving it rained for a few days. So a few weeks later, we finally got everyone on track and we were up and going again. At this point 12/8/08 we are almost done with the walls and it can't come too soon. We have one more run in with the kitchen window -- hopefully this can be resolved and then they can finish the walls.

On a great note, we love the split-faced block walls and columns!! It is really cool and very different from any house we have seen.

Time to SWIM!!

The concrete slab had to set for a couple of days and then finally the long awaited pool arrived. A crane service came with Tom's Pools to put the pool in the hole. When the crane arrived the guy said "This is the biggest hot tub we have ever delivered for Tom's Pools -- what exactly are you doing with this thing?" Roger quickly replied ha ha this is not a hot tub it is a pool. They gave him a hard time saying "we were wondering what kind of playboy mansion this would be with a hot tub this large". Needless to say this is the first time Tom's Pools had ever sold a pool like this so the crane service had no idea it was a pool. Now that the pool is in place I really want to fill it up and start swimming, but Roger said we have to wait :(. I know it is best to wait till the house is finished, but I really want to swim!!!!