Still Waiting...

 We're still waiting for our new home to be framed. We know this is going to be a looong drawn out process so we celebrate each and every little sign of progress. 

The latest signs of progress are that the ends of the post tension rods were trimmed on the foundation. After that the name of each room was written on the slab. Yay! Of course I took pictures. Haha.

We had a phone meeting with the hardscape landscape designer. He told us our house is scheduled for frame inspection on 12/29. I actually laughed. Then he said "of course, that could change". I didn't have the heart to say what I was thinking "yep, it could be moved back further".

We did talk to our sales associate a week ago and he said it's possible (fingers crossed) that our lumber could be dropped in the next week or two. We'll see.

In the meantime, Dan's received two appraisal orders for our community. It's exciting to see the progress on some of the other houses.

I keep busy decluttering our stuff. Packing what's not essential for life in this house. And dreaming about what our house may look like... Someday.

Never Forget

 

Ahh, September!

 

We Have a Foundation!

 Four months, three days after signing a contract to build a new home, we finally have a foundation! There is no point in getting in a rush over the house building process these days. The builder literally will not, and can not give us a timeline for our house.

In late March when we signed we were given a range of 8-10 months. Two weeks later it was revised to 12-14+ months. We were given the option of backing out at that point, but chose to hang in there. We're not in a hurry. 

The hold-ups in the construction industry are many, and they change week to week. Right now the major delays are in HVAC, windows, cabinets. And of course, workers. In Arizona the federal unemployment benefit expired in early July. The hope was that workers would start returning by 7/10. I don't know if they have or not, but I hope so. Of course, the shortages today are different from the shortages last March. Then they were having trouble getting paint, medicine cabinets, and insulation.

The up-side to the length of the building process is that each day that goes by our current home rises in value. So does our new home. See, there really is a bright side to everything!

I read a devotional a few weeks ago that encouraged praying for what we desire. Even though God already knows our heart's desires (as well as our needs, our hurts, our joys, everything about us), the devotional said we should share them with Him in prayer. This is not something I'm in the habit of doing. I'm good at praying for others, but rarely pray for myself. So, I decided to take that to heart and start praying specifically about the house. 

The best, best case scenario would be to move in November/December. My hope is to move in by the end of January. The reality is it will probably be in April/May. I'm preparing myself for June. 

But for today, I'm so excited to have a foundation.

August!

 

Yes, it's August, but in my mind it might as well be September or October. All of my grandkids return to school this week. Two of them start back tomorrow, the other three on Wednesday. Once kids go to school my thoughts turn to Fall! I have Fall Fever so bad and it's not helped by the fact that home decor stores, grocery stores and Sam's Club/Costco have Fall merchandise on the floor. 

To be fair, August is a month that we kind of want to rush through in Arizona. It's usually HOT and humid. At least humid to us. This year though, it's warm (under 110 degrees) and humid. Very humid. We've actually been getting some rain this year which is awesome! 

I've been anticipating August and am so glad it's here! Starting Wednesday, I will not have any children doing school at my house for the first time since 3/13/20. I told Dan the first two weeks I plan to watch all of the Hallmark Christmas movies I taped last Christmas and cross stitch. I will do a little housework, but it will definitely be limited. 

So officially it's the last month of Summer, enjoy!

I Miss You... Hope All is Well

 Do you ever sit down to blog and realize "I haven't read a post by ... in a while"? I did that today. Three of my favorite bloggers came to mind and I looked at my blog roll to see when they last posted. One was in December 2020 and the other two last posted nine monts ago! 

So first off, shame on me for not noticing sooner. And second, none of them have attached email addresses so I can check on them. I hope they're ok.

Bloggers drop off on a regular basis. I have to admit there are less than 10 bloggers between my two blogs that I actually contact outside of Blogger. And that's generally only to exchange Christmas cards.

Blogging relationships are so special. They can feel so deep when you connect with someone in your same stage of life, or someone who enjoys the same hobby (cross-stitch) or someone with the same obsession (ALL THINGS CHRISTMAS!!!) or especially someone who shares your faith journey.

These relationships enrich my life. But... they're online. That means they can drop from my life in an instant. Real life relationships fade, but that's just it. They fade. They don't generally end in the blink of an eye, or in my examples, in the blink of several months.

So to the bloggers I'm missing I want to say, I enjoyed reading your posts. I enjoyed getting to know you in even a small way. I miss you.

And to those of you still posting, I love reading your posts. I look forward each (well, it used to be each, now it's a couple times a week) morning to see what you've been doing, to be inspired by you, to feel the warmth of our blog relationship. I love getting to know you. I hope we stay connected.

A Little Progress...

 

A little bit of progress on our new house - the plumbing is in! We're hoping the slab will be poured by the end of this week (fingers crossed).

You may notice the cloudy sky in this photo. We've had a real Monsoon this year. Cloudy for parts of every day and a bit of rain here and there. Also our normal high this time of year is 107 degrees and we've been below that for several days and the 10-day forecast actually has some 90s in it!

In the meantime I'm continuing to declutter. This weekend we made trips to the dump, Goodwill, and storage. I just have a feeling that I'm still keeping too much stuff for our much smaller house...