Mini update on the house

Last Saturday brought news - the contractor that we've been talking with since last fall about working with Matt on the bulk of the framing of the addition finally got back to us, and part of the reason it took him a while to do that was because he and his wife were working through some options before them, and made the decision (and Matt and I are in full agreement with him on his reasons for the decision he made) to NOT take our project, but instead take a few that he's been asked to do that are closer to home (Which is 3+ hours from where we are.)

He also said that he's excited about *why* we're doing what we're doing, and is hoping to be able to make the trip down for a long weekend or two to volunteer his time on the project. So, although we lost the experienced guide we were hoping to have (Matt and I have both framed up small residential scale buildings before, but simpler than ours, and not nearly as many times as someone who does this for a living has, and we were hoping to be grunt work and let someone else be the brains of "what order do we do this" and "when do which materials need to be on the site" kind of stuff), we have gained some well-qualified man-hours of labor at no charge! So in an odd way, this disappointment has turned into one more way that God is providing what we need to get this done.

Matt also asked him to shoot a rough number at the project for cost, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that his gut reaction is the same range that ours is. Nice to know we're not WAY underestimating the cost.

So, this past week has been filled with talking with another framer that we know who may be interested in working with Matt to get things framed up and windows in, and a lot of looking into getting all the permits we need to begin work. We're both feeling both like we're further behind on some of these things than we should be, while also realizing that we haven't been sitting here twiddling our thumbs in past weeks, either. ;) And that God can orchestrate the timing of things just the way he wants them to be.

Side note: when we got our travel dates for our visit to K, Matt was hesitant for a moment for three reasons 1) we'd be gone for Leah's birthday and birthday party 2) we'd be gone for the Good Friday service at church which Matt was supposed to play his cello for and 3) it was supposed to be a great week for maple sap flow, and was the week Matt was eyeing up for his first boiling off day (we've put in about 25 taps in our yard and our neighbors' yards over the last 3 or 4 years, and it's something of which we all enjoy both the process and the results!) He decided none of those was worth pushing off the time when K could come home, so we went. Turns out it was NOT a good week for sap flow, and it wasn't until we returned that it really started to take off this year. Matt has just now come in from what will be his fourth and last day of boiling off for this year.

earlier today...

the 55 gallon drum we use to hold the sap until it's a good day to boil it off (for those of you who are unfamiliar with the process, if you have 40 gallons of sap, you need to boil off 39 gallons of water to end up with 1 gallon of syrup. This is why this is an outdoor job. We don't need that many gallons of water vapor in our house!

Reuben and Leah in the hole in the snow that was left after Daddy lifted out the barrel to dump the last drops into the boiling pan.

Which means that the next nice days we have will be days for starting to work on taking down the four trees (one dying, two not-really-where-we'd-want-them, and one beautiful-huge-we're-going-to-miss-but-its-in-the-middle-of-the-new-living-room)! And once things thaw out a little more, I've got the big job of digging up all the perennials that are in the path of where big trucks will be coming through and moving them to a temporary location in the vegetable garden.

Owen and Leah's academic 2nd grade and kindergarten school year is going to end a month earlier than usual this year. Come May 1st we're all going to be outside working!! And I know many of you reading this are people who are already making plans to join us for a few hours, a few days, and we've heard there are some people from my parents' church in WI that are planning on spending up to a week up here helping with the work! Starting next month, I'm going to have lots of photos to put up here.