Happier Thoughts

Fall Road
Originally uploaded by Mahones

Sorry to be so doomie-gloomie yesterday. I have moments, but they're becoming fewer and farther between. I think once we pass this anniversary time of our visit to Viktoria last year, I'll do better and better.

Now, let's talk about the house. That always gets me happier (so far!)

We're moving along, although there is nothing to be seen of it yet. I never knew there was so much behind the scenes stuff that had to happen before the house building could begin!

We learned yesterday what our new address will be! See, we bought three lots, so we weren't exactly sure what it would be. We actually had a choice between 1017 ; or 1019 or 1021. Hubby let me decide because I had talked earlier about how I hoped our address would be 1017.

It seems the number 1017 is an important number in our lives. My Mama's birthday was October 17; my sweet puppy B. Bopp (who died the day before we went to meet Viktoria) was born on October 17; Hubby's anniversary at the church is October 17 (he's celebrating his 13th anniversary tomorrow by the way!); and we left Russia to bring D home on October 17. So now the address of our new home will be 1017 Ouic_ _ _ _ _!!

Another neat thing about the house. When we met with the builder last Friday, he told us to go ahead and be thinking of windows, roof color etc. So we were driving around Saturday evening looking at windows. We happened to see D's Vice Principal outside the house they are building. They're about 2 months ahead of us. Their house is already framed in and they're getting their bricks on this week. Anyhow, she asked us to come take a look at it. We walked in and she started explaining what all the rooms will be (they're still just studs right now) and at about the same time, it clicked with both hubby and me THIS IS OUR HOUSE! They found the same house online as we did! They even made some of the same changes to it that we did. The only difference is that their house is completely reversed from what ours will be. It was so cool to see what our house was going to look like! The outside of theirs will look quite different than ours, they're going more for the rustic look with cedar beams outside and a more earthy colored brick. Ours will be more traditional with a reddish brick.

Now hubby is afraid that it will take some of the thrill out of seeing ours go up since it's the same layout. But I think it will benefit us since we can learn from anything that goes wrong with theirs :O). They're contracting theirs out themselves and we're using an established builder with his own teams in place, so who knows, we may catch up with them as I've heard it's slower going contracting it yourself.

We're waiting to hear from the bank to do our initial "closing". Yesterday, Hubby lined up getting the water and sewer tie-in's done by the city (we pay that out of pocket, about $600). Once we do our initial closing, the builder gets his permit and we're off!

I wonder if anything amazingly wonderful will happen tomorrow? It will be October 17 after all!!

**No, we haven't settled on windows yet. The debate is over how many "lites" (the little squares). In our area, the trend seems to be 9 over 6, but I think it's too busy. I think we're leaning toward 4 over 2, but I wish I could find 6 over 4 - I think that would be just right. The search is still on!**