Still in his hands

In so many ways we're living as though the addition is complete...but it's not. ;) It's very much livable, but there's still no door on Matt's office, or plexiglass window to keep matchbox cars, balls, and small children from falling from the living room onto his desk (a large couch is sufficient for the moment, but not a long term solution.) The stairs from the main level down to Matt's office, and then to the playroom are still rough framing lumber, and outside we still need to build the walk outside the door (right now we just have a very tall step down to the dirt), and the limestone retaining walls around the lower level window well so we can finish backfilling against the rigid insulation. And then there's the rain-screen boards on Matt's office, and the whole thing needs a final coat of paint. (So does the main house, by the way, from when we installed that siding, um, seven years ago!)

We've been ramping up with some preliminary work with the unseasonably nice weather. A few weeks ago we had to move one of the large piles of rock that we'd been stockpiling on the property line between our house and the one next door because the new owner of that property didn't want it encroaching at all on his side of the line. This was a great opportunity to spread the pile out a bit into a more accessible layout, making it easier to find the right one when the time comes to build the real thing.

We were so grateful to our two-doors-down neighbor who came over to help us move the rock. There was a lot of rock in that pile!

I'm on the landing roof - looks like some ancient graveyard or something.

"Look, Mom, it's a stone Nerf gun!"

Earlier this week we started building a small retaining wall with the limestone back by our vegetable garden just to get a feel for how laying a dry-stack wall with natural limestone would work. However, not wanting to run out of stone before we have the real walls done, we decided that today we would go for it!

All staked and level and ready...

...so here we go!

This is where we stopped for lunch. Upon going inside after our first morning of being back to work on the addition, what did we find in the mail but a check for $50 from someone who has once before given us a gift at just the right time. (Scroll down to the sixth picture in this post.)

So, who's with me in thinking that we're still not alone in this adventure of life? It's good to be reminded of that. God made sure we had what we need to get this far, and we're going to continue relying on him to bring it to completion. (I'm writing that thinking not only of house projects, but also of parenting "projects" as we've had a bit of a week with a few of the little ones around here!)