Tall tall trees

That's what we are seeing a lot of. Tall tall trees, lots of dirt, big tractors and bulldozers. But lots of change!

A few more weeks slipped by between posts, so here's a quick catch up of our activities and status.

"Tractor" (we call it that for Isaac) got dropped off at our lot. We investigated.

 Huge scoop!

 We met the neighbors across the street (so our lot is the woods in the background). Guy's name is Mark, the lady's name is Diddy. How easy for me to remember since I called myself Ditty until I could say Chrissy. :) The neighbors own a landscaping business and have this great garden at the front of their property. They were very friendly and gave Mara a few heads of lettuce.

 Isaac got some ants on him - we took care of that quickly. I don't think I've stripped a kid so fast before!

 After one day of lot clearing, the guy made it almost completely down the driveway.

 There were a few huge trees that came down.

 Some of our evenings are spent pigging out on chocolate ice cream on the patio. It's very peaceful out back, and the kiddos get pretty messy. 

 A few more days go by and the driveway really starts to feel clear and you get a sense of where the house is going to go. 

 Big tractor is the highlight of Isaac's day.

 Mulcher/chipper?

 The tractor is really huge.

 There are a few piles of these sitting around the lot. The clearing guy takes them.

 And I think the piles of underbrush/branches go into the mulcher/chipper.

 There are several of these piles. Biiiig piles. It smells like sawdust, tree sap and dirt. A great smell!

 Found our first snake - a worm snake. And its name fits perfectly because when I found it, it was wiggling around like a worm does (same size, too) and I thought it was a worm until I saw a snake-like head.

 Lotsa dirt.

 Aside from the house plans and layout on the land, our first big decision was the brick for the foundation. We visited Triangle Brick and selected one called Bessemer Grey. It isn't really grey... but I guess has more grey in it than the red bricks and white bricks. They called this their 'workhorse' that goes with practically any color house. We probably chose it in like 2 minutes. Sweet!

 The sales lady pulled down some shingle colors and pulled house paint chips for us to consider. We don't have to make this decision now, but it gives us some ideas.

 So. Many. Choices.

 We are leaning towards a beige-grey house color, with shakes from the same color family, dark trim and dark shutters. The green might be an option, too. We'll see!

 Mara got invited to her first birthday party from a kid at her new school. It was held at a park in Apex (Kelly Road Park) which was like one of those dream castle parks! I loved it and remember loving kinds like these in Pinehurst at MY grandparents' house. Brought back great memories.

 This is the younger kid side with smaller play sets and baby swings.

 

 Isaac would stay on a swing all day if we let him. Definitely on our list of things to get for the new house (although probably just a regular swing and a tire swing)

 Looking over at the big kid side.

 Mara crossing the bridge.

 Mara still hasn't gotten the hang of pumping yet... but we don't get a lot of practice. Once a month or less... need to work on that! Most of the parks around the apartment don't have swings. Now that I'm typing this... I wonder if we should set one up at the lot sooner than I'm thinking... give the kids something to play around with while we monitor the house build.

 Musical notes/pipes.

 Guess what? Back out at the lot again. Each time we vi sited there was a considerable amount more cleared. We visit every 3-4 days to check on progress. This is pulling in, looking down the driveway... the house will be after you turn right at the end.

 It's hard to show just how massive this clearing is, and how huge the tractor is. 

Pulling down the drive and turning right, here's our view. This is me standing in the backyard, I think.

 This is me standing near the tractor and looking right, back up toward the driveway.

 I stepped back into the woods to try to give a little perspective. The trees are really tall and you feel pretty small you're standing out there. This view from within the woods, I would be looking at the back of the house/screen porch/kitchen.

 Occasionally, we do things other than stalk our builders and our home site. Sometimes we redneck it in friend's trucks. (Elam pointing at me, Mara's eating a banana, and I think that's Lincoln seated).

 I love this weather - perfect temperatures, beautiful skies.

 Isaac and Fiona are 1 day apart- Isaac is older.

 Isaac's 2nd birthday fell during the middle of the week, but we still tried to celebrate with some presents and cupcakes. He opened some motorcycles and a car and car track. (Those legos are from Christmas). He looooves Little Blue Truck so I got him another one of his stories. Do you recognize the motorcycles that I found??? (One is a KTM like Daddy's and one is a Kawasaki like Mommy's). "Motor-ky-cle"

 Pop-pop and Grandmom spoiled Isaac with this "plasmacar" - Isaac was so excited about presents and kept saying more presents! Hahaha. 

 Chocolate ice cream isn't an every-day occurrence... somehow we started out on a Tuesday/Saturday pattern and we've gotten Mara to recognize we only have it on those days.

 The apartment is really too small for a riding toy... but Isaac makes it work and does circles around the kitchen. He can sort of wiggle the steering wheel, which is what is supposed to make it go... but the fake wood floor (linoleum) is too slick to work, and the carpet is too thick. So he just scoots with his feet. He loves his car, calls it "ma car, ma car" and the first night he had it, he stopped mid-dinner to leave the table and relocate the car so he could see it. Thanks Grandmom and Pop-pop! 

 The pile of trees and stuff just keeps growing! And we knew they are already trucking loads off. What a big job. This is again, pulling down the driveway and looking at where the front of the house will be.

 Here's one of the tree piles. I keep the kids away from this for snake reasons and my fear that they will fall and roll the kids over.

 

 Ah, took me a minute to figure out where I took this picture. But the blue chipper is parked at the driveway, so I'm standing at the far end of our clearing where the side of the house will be (front house will look to the chipper, back will be by the tractor). This side of the house will have the Master bed/Master Bath/Master Closet (and the unfinished room above).

 Here is pulling out of the driveway and looking down towards the road.

 Leaving from the front of the house. The pile of trees is about where the garage will be.

 I wanted to show how wide of a clearing they made in relation to the car. The builders told us Duke Energy came out and needed a wider clearing up front in order to run lines across the road and bury them (room for their equipment) and somewhere there will be a new transformer.

 Partial deer scull that must have been unearthed during this process.

 Check out this awesome tractor shirt Isaac got for his birthday from grandparents! This is him after he got blood drawn from a finger prick to check his CBC. All was good (he was previously borderline anemic). He's now in the 40 something % for height, 4% for weight I think, and like 30% for head size. 

 He was also sent some firetruck stickers. They lasted like 1 minute... and here's where they ended up.

 Another weekend, another park. (Can you tell we are trying to get out of the confines of the apartment?)  This one was back by the house we sold, and it has a huge dragon sculpture.

 And several play sets (see Isaac?)

 

 Mara's balance has been really great, and her strength, too. She happily climbs things.

 She's also faster than you'd think. We played freeze tag last night at the apartment playground and she was able to avoid being tagged by a 6 or 7 year old boy (same boy from the pool picture, I think), for awhile! She darts!

 Isaac loves the sand and trucks and slides and swings. I think the only thing he DOESN'T like is the pool. "No pool, no pool!" Mara is like a fish with floaties. She loves it, but can't swim. At least she's very confident in the water. We have lots of time to practice swimming, although only one parent can seem to take her since Isaac screams NO POOL NO NO the whole time. 

 Biiiiig dragon. I asked Mara what it ate and she said dogs.

 Well that's a relief.

 Oooo, something slightly different this day! A big blue truck! (Yay for Isaac's little blue truck). This is us pulling in and staring down the driveway.

 And a mini dozer. Starting to look a little clearer, right? House will be where the pile is.

 Look at Isaac waving at the "tractor"

 You're at the lot for 2 seconds and you have a tick... so sometimes we don't put the kids down right away.

 It'd be really awesome to see the clearing guys in action. But we're at work and I think we'd just be in the way if we showed up.

 Big dozer is still here. I think it's the workhorse.

 Standing at the back of the clearing, looking pretty much straight at the back of the house. Driveway is to the left of the mini dozer.

 Leaving the driveway.

 Leaving and looking back at the house (where the pile is)

 Leaving the house and looking out to the road.

 Ah yes, in the day that we did EVERYTHING HUMANLY IMAGINABLE (long park play, lot visit, running up and down the hill at the apartment)... we also did this:

 It's been on Mara's to-do list for several weeks so we finally went.

 The berries were sooooo good. Isaac was pretty tired (all our weekend activities throw off his naps a little) so he gave Daddy some exercise in sprinting down the line to the bee boxes at the other end. hehehe...

 Me and my love bug. In her new dress/shirt that she was so excited to get among  Isaac's birthday presents.

 Guess what? More tractors. And Mo wanted to sit on it. 

 Alrighty, looking a little clearer pulling down the driveway. Do you see what we saw???

Only about a 5-6 foot long black snake.

Woo hoo! Space for a house!

 Except this won't fit in the fireplace. Hmm. See how huge these piles are compared to Zack?

 And how ginormous this is compared to our car??

 Walking along the back treeline/future back yard.

 Car is in the 'driveway', and I'm standing at the back corner of the clearing.

 Kids love the dirt. Even when we go to the park or the playground... Mara's favorite part of the day is going to our lot, she says. And we usually only stay for 10 minutes or so.

 

 Me and my crazy comedian.

 Still at the back of the clearing.

 Looking out towards the road.

 We noticed they brought the pipes to install the culvert! (The current one is plastic)

Okay guys, that's 99 pictures that took forever to load. I have newer pictures of our most recent visit to the lot, which has all the logs/piles gone and little white flags out there for the footings which should be poured on Tuesday! They installed the culvert and put down a bit of gravel on top of it when you first pull in. Once the footings are poured (there's 20 something of them.........) then they will start on the foundation! Builder said the building permit is approved and the permit box and their building sign will go out this week, with a partial gravel drive being placed Monday. Things should really start picking up.

I'll try to post again soon, with pictures from today's trip to the NC Zoo with friends and family. We had an amazing time, it was perfect weather and so relaxing, even though we were there from 9-4:30. Whew, long day. And the FIRST animal Isaac saw was an ostrich (in the same pen with the giraffes and zebras), but when the ostrich relieved himself (#1 like a fire hydrant and #2 like a cow), Isaac talked about it THE REST OF THE DAY. "Ostrich! Poopy!". And for those keeping count, we also witnessed the otter poop (he did a funny tail wiggle dance to get it out) aaaand the polar bear poop (to which Isaac said "ewwww"). Poop was the best part of Isaac's day. "Ostrich. Poopy." was on repeat. Every few minutes, like a broken record. For 7 hours.

But for those wanting an update of the KIDS... Mara is growing so tall and doesn't seem like a 4 year old since she makes such mature conversation and just seems like another adult. She loves chocolate ice cream (obviously) and thinks of her brother often. If she gets something, she asks for one for Isaac. She and her brother use their pleases and thank yous and your welcomes with each other. She loves watching movies and gets excited when Netflix arrives or if we check a movie out from the apartment office. She dressed herself this morning (shirt, undies, shorts, socks) in preparation for the zoo and has been in an extremely chipper/happy/bouncy mood like every day, all the time. Although Pooh Bear is still her one and only lovey, we found a similar lovey (it's a green giraffe in the same shape/style as pooh) the other day at Target, and she insisted we get him in case we lose Pooh. And she calls it "Girly girl." Try keeping a straight face when you ask her questions or pick her up from school and say "do you have girly girl?" Super. 

Isaac's words are coming together and he sometimes surprises me by what he says. I mean, he'll communicate in a few words, but then I'll be folding laundry and he comments as I fold Zack's shirt, "That'sa big shirt." Hahaha. Or "That'sa big truck" (or tractor, or whatever he's pointing out). Right now, I think every corner of him has a scab - each knee and he got his elbow today falling at the zoo. He loves bubbles and sweets. And he is doing great sleeping in the bottom part of the trundle. He loves his 'rag' (the diaper rags that became his lovies) and he's off the binky except for night time. You can ask him how old he is and he'll say two! (and hold up one finger). He tries to count (and can get to three), and he likes to sprawl on the floor and color, kicking his feet up and around behind him. Still a lefty (draws and throws left), so I try to be conscious of that as I put things into his hand or set his drink on the table. He picks up a stool and carries it to wherever he needs to reach ("ma stoo"). He locked himself in our room the other night (the turn lock) and Zack had to unscrew the door handle to get him out. He isn't very interested in TV but will sit for awhile watching motox with Zack on the computer (or tractor youtube videos. Yes... we have one bookmarked with rap-type music that Isaac bounces to as the tractors flash by).

Anyway, time for me to go bed! Love ya!

It's Beginning!

And so, we signed away our savings yesterday. But why bother saving if you don't intend to use it for your future?

Here is our future:

That dead tree is across where the house will go. Everything was so green and lush when we went out there yesterday that it was hard for me to figure out what pictures were what! I think I'm standing at the edge of the future house where the master bath will be and looking north.

This picture above is looking out to the road where we parked... but not from the house location. You can't see the car/road from where the house will be (300 some odd feet off the road). We met with Andrew (the tree clearing guy who is dropping a bulldozer there tomorrow), and our builders, to walk through the lot and talk about what gets cleared. We're trying to clear minimally... just the driveway and right around the house (30 feet off the sides and 60 feet off the front/back) so we'll still be nestled in a nice pocket of trees once we're done. We can always remove more later if we need to... it's a tad more difficult to put them back.

I "snuck" a picture of our builders standing at the house site. I am standing in the same spot as the first picture, just I turned right and that stake is the back right corner of our house, and looking out into the backyard. There are a few big trees out there that will have to be removed, but I think the clearing guy was happy there aren't other home sites to avoid with his dozer. We'll likely leave 10-30 feet between our property line and driveway, I think. The guy on the left is Ralph, and the guy on the right is Carl - we mostly deal with Carl since we're on his "half" of their area, but Ralph seems to tag along to most things, too. They have been really nice guys to work with so far, both have older kids (high school/college) and seem to have great family values and a plethora of funny stories.

So, since we closed on the construction to perm loan yesterday, some lot clearing equipment gets dropped off tomorrow and clearing guy (I think he has an assistant, so maybe it's a 2 man business) should start working on it Monday. The builders expect it to take 2-3 weeks to clear what we need. We have our engineered house plans and we'll see what we need to do next.

Apartment life - the pool opened up. Freaking freezing cold. We dipped our toes in one day, came back on another to "swim" and Mommy and Daddy refused to go past their knees. Mara and Isaac both accidentally stepped off the steps into "deep" (3 foot) water and Mommy had to rescue them. So both got soaked, and we made them go home after Mara was visibly shivering. They are excited about going back this weekend, and hopefully the water will be warmer. We dug up the floaties that Cherry brought and I hope Mara learns to swim this summer. She is very willing and excited!

Mara is a friend-magnet. Within a few minutes she had two different little boys sitting next to her. Haha. And her new teachers keep praising how mature and sweet and thoughful she is and how she reminds everyone to be safe (I think she gets that from me...).

Isaac prefers to spend time with this new awesome contraption:

 We were getting too lightheaded blowing so many bubbles in the evenings while prepping dinner that I splurged on this $10 bubble blower from Walmart. So far, so good.

 Bubble dance party!

 I flipped my phone camera around so Isaac could see us taking these pictures and he thought it was awesome. He yelled ISAAC MOMMY CHEESE!

His words and sentences are coming along! I think he can say maybe 4 discernible words in a string, but I usually know what he's talking/asking about. I LOVE this talking stage!

We also entertain ourselves with our indoor motorcycle racetrack/mini-truck arena. Isaac makes VROOM VROOM noises and rides this (or his toy motorcycle) around. Mara is eating salad from the colander in the background...

 While Zack was riding his motorcycle this past weekend, we tried out a local park. Mara thought these looked like giant glasses and posed herself for this pic.

 Where's Waldo? Amara?

 We made cupcakes for our new daycare that day, too. Isaac was such a helper, distributing the liners. Then, I turned my back and he switched tasks...

 He grabbed the bag of homemade cinnamon pretzel bites (see them beside the microwave in the pic above?) and decided those went in the cupcake tins better. Oh boy.

 We kept busy with art and movies and talking. It's been nice to have time to do this kind of stuff on the weekend. So different from the last MANY months of house prep/clean/sell/pack/move/etc. I alllllmost feel guilty for not working on a project like we had been... but this is so much more fun and I had been looking forward to spending more quality time with the kiddos once we had some breathing room.

 Hope you all had a great week. I have pink eye again and Zack used lots of my drops this past week when HE got it... ugh. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my doctor will let me refill my prescription.

Happy FRIDAY!

Life Changes Update Part 984732766

Hi, everyone! Here's another quick update/summary of our recent weeks. I think most of the whirlwind has died down, and we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

We met with the bank on April 1st to start the construction to perm loan process.

We moved into the apartment April 4-April 13, although started sleeping/commuting from the apartment on April 5th. It's a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, basement level unit that overlooks woods and a walking trail. I'll have to take a picture of the patio view... but here's an idea of the main living area. In the second picture, I'm standing in the kitchen. I'll post more pictures as we unpack and clean.

Kids started their new daycare April 14th. The daycare has web-monitoring so I can log into a secure website online and see what the kiddos are up to! Mara has mentioned missing her friends Anissa, Bristol and Sophia, but I remind her that she's made some new friends and she agrees. This daycare is on a more convenient route from the apartment and from the future home, it was a little less expensive than our last one, and the facilities/teachers seemed great.

We closed on Kingston Ridge house on April 16th, got our payment same day. (Bye bye to the first home my kids knew!) For sale by owner process complete! And mega-easy for the huge savings. I've helped at least 2 other people do the same thing, and no regrets1

After closing on the house, we spent Easter at the beach with Cherry and Grahampa. Isaac has a major sweet tooth (evidence below - chocolate bunny not even being unwrapped)

  

  

You can see our princess and the pea above, as well as the loot from the Easter Bunny (who happened to hide all the eggs INSIDE the house this year. It was so rainy and windy outside, the bunny was afraid things would blow away and that his/her bunny fur would get wet).

Isaac is craaaaaaaaaaaazy about bubbles. That's ALL he wants to talk about or do. But I love him.

Isaac's talking is coming along quickly and we're so proud of him when he strings words together. We deal with nightly tantrums over him not eating his dinner b/c he wants to blow bubbles, or him not getting what he wants. But we hope this phase will end soon. His favorite things to talk about are trucks, bubbles, motorcycles, airplanes (which we get to experience a LOT of in Morrisville), and going to the playground.

We argued with the bank for awhile over various stupid things that shouldn't have had to happen with their job experience. Whatever. Received loan approval and are set to close on the loan May 8th.

Our butterfly hatched that we received during the church service for Hayden Butler's baptism. We released him/her on a warm sunny day.

I think we finally finished updating addresses on our bills, mail, subscriptions, drivers license, concealed carry permit (had to go downtown for that one). Our evenings are currently spent on the patio blowing bubbles, watching movies borrowed from the apartment office, taking the dogs out on leashes for their business (oh what a pain), speculating what the "stompers" and their dog are actually doing above us, and making frequent trips to the apartment playground and mailboxes.

  I got a horrible case of conjunctivitis. It was this bad for about a week, and I had to turn off my office lights and dim my monitors to be able to function. Now I'm on some different eye drops and the whites of my eyes are white again; I can see!

   Even in the apartment complex, we discover little treasures here and there!

 

 Whether it's a turtle, or a boulder!

 Isaac is loving having the dogs inside with us now (as they had been in the Kingston Ridge garage for like 6 months while we prepped to sell.). Isaac follows the dogs making kissing noises, perches his rag on their backs and giggles when it falls, and he snuggles.

 Good boy, Arson.

 And believe it or not, I've seen at least 2 dogs who are bigger than ours living in the complexes - a huge Akita with a BIG bark, and a Great Dane who looked like a person staring down at us from his 2nd floor balcony (standing on his hind legs).

I've squished a few bugs, and expect many more since we're on the basement level. I've become an expert at packing the puzzle of the teeeeny freezer. We have to run the miniature dishwasher daily. We got a new washer and dryer (since the buyers wanted our old ones) and I'm so grateful for them! The first week we moved into the apartment, the dog got sick, and Isaac got sick... and we really needed those cleaning machines!

Mara has gotten SO SLOW at eating recently - I think she's chewing her food, and chewing over her thoughts. She asked me during breakfast this morning if I knew Grahampa before he was so wrinkly. (sorry Graham). She's got a great imagination and we role played at the park yesterday - first she was Mario and I was Luigi (because you're bigger, Mommy), and then she was Elsa and I was Ana (from Frozen) and I chased her all over the playground, begging for her to come back and unfreeze the world. She is so fun!

Anyway, it's Friday and we have a clear weekend ahead of us. Hope yours is wonderful! Maybe next post, I'll have pictures of our lot being cleared!