So much has happened since my last post. Nick and I have been married for almost 3 years. We moved back to Sunfield and I am now working at Auto-Owners home office in Lansing. I am part of our ClaimCenter team where we are working on new systems for our claims department. I love my job and the people I work with. I feel pretty lucky to be 25 and to be able to say I love my job. Nick finished his first year of teaching at Hastings SouthEastern elementary school this June. He team taught 5th grade and was in charge of Math and Science. We also have our baby pup Luna. We love her so much and I think we wouldn't know what to do if she wasn't around.
Kellie and Gary (Nick's mom and stepdad) bought some land for Gary to farm with a house on it. It's a beautiful 50 acres with access to a small, very small, private lake, some woods and of course the field. We renovated the old farm house on the land in January of 2014.
At this point in our life Nick had not yet gotten a job, so we were unsure when we would be able to build a new house, but new that we wanted to at some point. We were extremely excited when Nick got a job last August and started talking about if we could build a house sooner than expected. It seemed like we were still dreaming and we had a while until our dream would actually start happening. The more we started talking about it, it began to seem more possible. With a gracious gift from Nick's mom and stepdad (and father Dave), we started to become more serious about building and started applying for construction loans. Kellie and Gary gave us a little over an acre of the land for us to build on, our construction loan was in progress and we started to sit down with our contractor, Ken Stoepker, to start drawing our plans. Because Nick and I had talked so long about building, we were pretty much on the same page about what we wanted, so the house plans were easy for us.
Through all of the drama of getting the loan ready and us and the bank on the same page, we were able to close on the loan last Monday, June 29.
That meant Tuesday, June 30, was the start of digging. We had Jackson Dirt Works come out and our basement was dug by 4 pm.
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| Nick hanging out in the "basement" |
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| Tuesday Morning when I left for work |
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| Tuesday night |
Wednesday, July 1, was the footing inspection and the footings being poured.
Thursday, July 2, the forms for the walls were put up and the walls were poured.
Today, July 3, the forms are coming down and the tar is going up. My mom and dad, and Nick's sister Jessica are coming over to help clean up the outside of the walls and we are going to put in the tile and peastone around the outside. I'll post more photos later, but right now I want to get outside and watch them take down the forms and we can see our basement wall for the first time!
Excited isn't a good enough word to describe what we are feeling about finally being able to build our house. We are doing most of the work ourselves so this wouldn't be possible without our friends and family - specifically naming a few: Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Buck, Tim and Fern (my mom and dad), Rachel and Phil and Ryann and Ben (my sisters and brother-in-laws), Kellie and Gary, Jessica, Kristin and Lauren (Nick's sisters and stepsister) and our wonderful friends Adam and Courtney, Mike and Zach. Thanks for sharing our excitement with us and all of your encouraging words and help. We love you all!
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