Our new home!

Well friends, it's official! We have started construction on our new home! God has blessed us abdundantly with this land and with a Dad that is a custom home builder! Our attitude about this property is that we are mere stewards of what God has given us, so we fully intend to glorify Him through our home! Our vision to is open our house to others and to use it for fellowship and furtherance of God's kingdom. Since my Dad is a builder, we are able to save a TON of money - so we are getting a much bigger home than what we are actually paying for. Since we a building a good size home, we just want it to be filled with people, all of the time! We are designing it with this in mind too - we'll have a big kitchen for people to congregate in, and a large great room (combining the family and living room) for large groups to socialize and relax in. We can't wait :)

First thing you need to know - who is in charge? One might think it's my Dad, but it's really our family dog, Bailee.

Dad consulting Bailee about the house

The real supervisor!

She learned how to get out of the house without stepping in wet concrete - so smart!

Bailee, taking a break from her hard work

Here's our land, before construction was started. Our land is 4.5 acres. We have neighbors to our left, right, and front, but have woods and a field behind us, for lots of privacy!

Our land, untouched

The beautiful view from the back of our house! I can't wait to enjoy our land!

Me, very weakly breaking ground!

Scott was much better (and stronger) at breaking ground than me

Scott and I have been very blessed to be able to witness a lot of the construction so far. We used Superior Walls for our foundation. They pour the conrete walls in sections and then use a crane to put them in place. It was really fun to watch! Yesterday and today they have been pouring the concrete basement floor. So after today, we will have a complete foundation, so that means next week my Dad can start framing up the walls, and then our house will really start to take shape.

The crane!

Putting the Superior Walls into place

Pouring the concrete

Thanks for sharing in our fun! We are so excited for our house to be built and we are so excited to have YOU come visit us in our new home :)

Proud to be a Pittsburgh Panther

As many of you know, the University of Pittsburgh has experienced a series of bomb threats over the past 2 months. At this point exceeding 80 threats, but still with no explosives discovered. Today broke a record with 13 threats in one day, I believe. The most recent trend has been the attacker targeting dormitories late in the evening or early in the morning, causing students to evacuate their residence halls during times they would normally be sleeping. Needless to say, this is causing tens of thousands of students to become fearful of what could happen and obviously frustrated with the frequent evacuations. I can't imagine how I'd be handling it all if I were living in Pittsburgh right now.

As terrible and terroristic as this situation is, it's been amazing seeing the Pitt community rise up despite the stress and anxiety these threats have caused. Students in the community have created a Google document offering up their homes for those students left on campus who are forced to evacuate their homes. Some of the comments on the document offer to pick up students at all hours of the night, and even promise cookies and home-cooked meals! You typically wouldn't think of college students as generous creatures, but their generosity and hospitality are so inspiring to me! On this day, I'm proud to be a Pittsburgh Panther!