Forward motion

For starters, we have  yet to hear anything about a court date for K. This is what we expected, since the time going through the MOJ is expected to take about a month, thus explaining my silence about how stuff with K is progressing. We're just waiting. And still crossing off our days counting down to when we expect to have him home, or at least have a date for bringing him home.

And on the house, things have been happening despite my lack of time to post. (It's rather amazing how hard it can be to sit down and post a few photos!)

Let's see. I last posted early evening on Friday. That night as we were falling asleep, Matt commented to me that that was one of those days when all he wanted to do was push all the dirt back into the hole, plant a new tree, and forget about the whole thing. We didn't sleep much that night with all the storms going through and children who were awake because of the storms. We lost two decent size tree limbs in the early evening storm, and were fully expecting more before the night was through.

Saturday was better. First, Matt shared this with me that he had read early that morning:

Cast your bread upon the waters,
    for you will find it after many days. 

Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
    for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. 

If the clouds are full of rain,
    they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the north,
    in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. 

He who observes the wind will not sow,
    and he who regards the clouds will not reap. 

As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.

Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 

Ecclesiastes is an unusual book that I find to be better read all at once than little bits here and there because the "punch line" doesn't come until one little sentence in the last chapter, but that said, there was so much in here that touched where we were. The weather has been a big challenge for the construction. We expected to be significantly further along by now than we are. And yet we were reminded here that we do not know what God is doing, or how he is doing it, and that therefore, if he has told us to work, we work. 

So we didn't fill in the hole. ;)

 Our framer didn't make it here at 8am like he was planning, but DID get over here a little before noon, and did enough work to get us to this point:

notice the little 8-year-old with a good view!

What a difference having walls makes! Not all of the walls, and not sheathed walls, but there were some walls down in that hole!

Monday they were here working for a few good hours, and then were here for part of the morning today putting sheathing on and framing up more of the walls. This photo is fun (for me, at least!) because it starts to show some of the definition of the levels. The lower part of the wall is where the joists for the half level landing will bear, while the taller walls are where the main floor joists will bear. (For those of you who care about the details, the tall wall at the far left of the photo is in the entry and Matt's office at roughly hip height. A normal thickness wall will sit on top of that, but having the foundation come up high there will let us keep the level of the dirt high around the office, thus sinking it into the ground. The ground, by the way, doesn't show in the snip of the model I added.)

Matt also said that tonight it felt really good to get out there and get some "real" work done instead of just shoveling landslidden muck back out of the hole or vacuuming water out of the space next to the footings. Here he is putting a strip of vapor barrier onto the top of the wall and wrapping down the interior face. This will then be taped to the vapor barrier that's put into the inner face of the wall, and foamed to the rigid insulation inserted into the spaces between the joists.

We're hoping that by the end of this week we'll be ready to put waterproofing on the exterior walls. This would be a big step forward. We'll see what comes. ;) We sure do not know the work of God who makes everything!