House Watch: Day 3 - The First of Many Lasts

So tonight, we finished the greenplate. Had some help from a good friend from church named Thomas Griffeths and another guy in the group named Blaine Petersen. Blaine's house is the exact same floorplan as ours. What's so exciting about finishing the greenplate on our house is that ours in the last house of 11 houses that we're working on. So finishing the greenplate doesn't just mean that it's done on our house and we'll move to the next thing; it means no one in our group of 11 families will ever have to do greenplate again. That's what it's going to be for everything with our house. The last wall built, the last truss hung, the last window installed. Finishing our house will bring the whole group closer to that ever longed for "move in" day and I plan on celebrating each and every last that occurs.

House Watch: Day 2

It's here! It's here. Our wood package finally arrived. (Thurs. June 26) And so did the day we would begin the real work on our house. We showed up ready to work on Thursday night and were pleasantly surprised to see all this lumber out in front of our house. We were even more surprised and happy to see that we would be able to work on our house. We began by putting on the green plate. Julie started by sweeping our house for the first time. She promises it's not the last time. As for me I started putting the greenplate down, and Julie helped just as soon as she was done sweeping. It was so exciting to actually get out and work on our own house. The way the greenplate works is that you measure the bolts that are sticking out of your foundation and then drill corresponding holes into a specially treated board. Then you tighten nuts down onto the bolts to hold the boards down. This is what your floor will be built on. Pretty cool, eh?

House Watch: Day 1

Today is the day. For the first time I actually went out and worked on my house. In case you didn't know Julie and I are in a program where you and all your neighbors help build each other's houses and that way it's cheaper. Well we've been doing it for four months now and for the first time since we started I actually got to do some work on my own house.

As you can see fron the picture our house isn't much. It's not that brown one in the background it's the concrete slab in the foreground. Yup! That's my house!

So what did I do today? I'm glad you asked. I installed the window wells on the basement windows. See that white metal looking thing in the picture with the ridges? Well that's a window well one of two that we installed. By "we" I mean Julie's cousin Stuart and me. He's the one in the other picture.

So that was Day 1 of the work on our house. It's still a concrete slab. But soon it's going to be a lot more than just a concrete hole in the ground because our foreman told us that we'll probably going to get our wood on Tuesday. If that's true then we might actually be working on our own house on Tuesday. More realistically we'll get the wood sometime this week and then next Saturday we'll get to start working. But who knows. Whatever happens I'll keep you posted right here on House Watch.

Happy Father's Day

Dear Dad,

Did you know that I am who I am becuase of you? I like to go a ride my bike because you're way into bikes. I love the outdoors because as a kid you took my camping and showed my how to appreciate the blessing of nature. I try to help people and serve where ever I can because you made me stick around after everyone else went home and finish cleaning up. I love and respect my mom because you taught me it was important and I love and respect my wife the same. Every once and a while I still contemplate joining the Marines so I can be more like you. I went to college because you wanted better for me than you had. There's a lot of things that I am and do today that you might think you taught me very well but believe it or not your "do as I say, not as I do" attitude taught me what was important, even if you're not the best example. I take my wife to the temple and I go to church because you taught me those things are important. I was married in the temple for time and all eternity because I learned in my home from you and from mom what it means to be an eternal family.

I love you Dad. You're not perfect. I'm not perfect either but I'm a better man than I would be if you hadn't raised me.

Picture Collage

So I found this program on my computer that lets me make picture collages. This is my first attempt. If you can't tell this is a collage of my son. Isn't he cute? My parents and my brothers all got together for Memorial Day so there's a picture of Damon with Grandpa and a picture with Gramie. We all had a great time.