Bathroom Installation!

There has been a lot of progress on the house since we have last updated the blog. We finally got our Porto Potty installed! Luckily they placed in right in the middle of the front lawn so it will be convenient for our neighbors to use also. We aren't completely happy with the orange color, but that is always something we can change later.

Our roof is finally completely shingled. We had 10-15 of our shingle bundles stolen so they had to reorder some additional shingles.

7-28-11

Our brick got delivered about a week early. We were hoping this wouldn't get taken as well.

7-28-11

After about a week of inspections for the plumbing and electrical, the insulation started. It would take them about 3 days to do all of the insulation and get that inspected as well.

7-29-11

The stone is delivered!! Notice how the Porta Potty is already providing a nice shade for the front yard...

The following pictures are from 8-6-11. The sheet rock is completely done now, we are just waiting for the inspection, then they can tape and mud. I am a little concerned about the ghost in the second picture down. Hopefully it will move out by the time we move in...

Bentley

A Party, A Goodbye, A Rangers Game and House Updates

This past weekend was pretty busy so instead of doing several posts I am just giving the highlights in one.

Our sweet niece, Kaelyn, turned 2 on July 6th and her birthday party was at Pump It Up. Kaelyn and all the other guests had a great time.

The birthday girl. She has a small bit of cake in the corner of her mouth I think...

Kaelyn enjoying the big slide

It looks like the adults had just as much fun as the kids!

Bentley and Robbie racing. Even after instant reply, we aren't sure who won!

They had to do a round 2 to settle the score. Bentley's last ditch effort to pull Robbie down from his ankle was unsuccessful.

Our sweet nephew, Rylan, also enjoyed the party! Bentley got to hold him briefly after prying him from Memaw's arms!

Brittany and Kylin moved to College Station on Sunday so we wanted to spend their last night in Dallas with them. Kylin had lots of surprises that day including going to the Dallas Aquarium, GattiTown and snow cones from the snow cone lady. We were at Kaelyn's party so we did not go to the aquarium but we did go to Mr. Gatti's and had a great time.

Kylin loved playing games!

Such intensity

We are going to miss this silly boy!

On Sunday we went to the Rangers game and got to sit on the first row. Bentley was given free tickets so we were happy to go. Kristen and Robbie were able to go with us because Wayne and Betty watched the kids for them. It was very HOT but we had a lot of fun.

View from our seats

Josh Hamilton

Of course we have been driving by our new house several times a week and things are moving along quickly. We can't believe the change since just a few days ago.

July 8th - still framing but getting close to being finished

July 9th - roof almost framed

July 11th - most of the roof is framed

July 13th - framing is done and the shingles are going on

The house is progressing a bit faster than we originally thought thanks to no rain. We are currently in the middle of stage 3 of 10 stages. The only remaining steps for stage 3 is to finish the roof (currently abour half done), and get all of the inspections for the HVAC, electrical, and plumbing. All of this will probably take just under 2 weeks.

July 4th Weekend and House Progress

We had a wonderful 4th of July weekend and enjoyed an extra day off work (although it went by too quickly). We started off the weekend by driving by our lot just to check on the progress. We weren't expecting to see any change from the last time we were there but to our surprise, we had a foundation.

07/01/2011

We talked about putting our hand prints on the back porch if the concrete was still wet enough but the only part that was not dry when we arrived was the driveway. The driveway was already fairly dry so instead of hand prints, we did an imprint of our A&M rings and drew the letter "H" into the concrete. It looks much better than this picture now that the concrete is dry.

07/01/11 - Our attempt at "personalizing the house" (for some reason when I upload the picture it turns it but you get the idea)

After stopping by our house on Friday evening, we met some friends from church for dinner at Babe's. We had a great dinner with Adam, Cortney and Keegan. After dinner Cortney had a great idea for us all to get snow cones from The Snow Cone Lady. The snow cones were really good and we had so much fun sitting outside and talking for a while. Keegan was hilarious and really had fun playing with Bentley.

The rest of our weekend was fairly relaxing and included lots of pool time, family time and eating good food.

We drove by our house again on Sunday evening and they had started to frame the first floor. This was fairly shocking to us as we didn't expect much work to occur over the holiday weekend. It is really fun to see the house begin to take shape.

07/03/2011 - First floor framing

We drove by again on Monday, July 4th and they had started to frame the second floor and the stairs were up too.

07/04/2011 - Second floor framing and stairs

07/04/2011 - Second floor framing and stairs

Thank goodness we live close to where our house is because we like to drive by as often as we can. This evening ,we stopped by and we can now begin to see the roof line.

07/05/2011 - Continued framing and roof

House Update and Meeting Neighbors

This weekend our soon-to-be neighborhood held a pool party for current residents and those, like us, who are in construction. We got to meet 3 other families who are building on our street and they all seemed really great. All 4 of our homes should be finished towards the end of the year so it will be nice to have met a few people before move in.

Here is a picture of what our house looked like on Saturday, June 25, 2011. Our builder told us that we should expect to have the slab poured by this weekend if the weather cooperates. If he means cooperate by being 100 degrees then I think we have it covered!

And So It Begins!

We have been patiently waiting for the time when we would see some building progress on our new house. That time has finally arrived! We drove by our lot on Sunday evening (6/12) and to our surprise there were several workers and the forms were being put in place. Then we drove by again on Wednesday night (6/15) and so much had changed.

Sunday, June 12, 2011 -



The next two pictures were from Wednesday, June 15, 2011

My goal is to use our blog to document the progress of our house being built. We'll see how well I do!

2011 Race for the Cure - Team Save Second Base

On Saturday, June 11th, Susan G. Komen held their annual Race for the Cure in Plano. This year I decided to form a team in honor of my dear friend, Angela, who is battling breast cancer. We had about 30 friends and family sign up to be on our team, Save Second Base, and we raised just over $1,800! Thanks to everyone for joining us and working hard to raise money!

We had several members of our team who ran the 5k while some of us walked the mile so most of the runners missed the picture.

We're Moving!

In the Fall of 2010 Bentley and I really started talking about building a house and had been driving around looking at neighborhoods for months. In January we really got serious about finding a neighborhood and builder. We found the perfect neighborhood for us, fell in love with a floorplan and lot and decided to put our house on the market. We listed our house on March 3rd and had an offer on April 24th. All-in-all it was a relatively painless process although at the time it seemed like it would never end.

Last weekend we moved out of our house and into an apartment. It was sad to say goodbye to our Riley house but looking forward to the future is very exciting.

Just in case our house did not sell, we signed a contingency with our builder. Luckily that was not an issue and we lifted the contingency at the beginning of May and work has already started. The lot was recently cleared and we will go to the design center next week to begin the process of designing our house! We are super excited and can't wait to get started.

Our lot!