On another note..

Pun intended.

I duno if any of you have ever heard of Relevant Magazine, but they are a great Christian magazine for those interested Emergent style of worship and forward thinking. They also have a relatively new section called Relevant TV where they focus on all kinds of Christian and Secular up-and-coming music. Through this and other sources I have been able to keep up with some of the new great Christian artists... everything from country to hard rock.
One such artist is Anberlin. I had not heard of them before, but they have a new album out that Rocks...literally. So check them out if you like good Christian Rock.
Other good artists to check out are: Falling Up, By the Tree, Tree63, Casting Crowns, Skillet, Kutless, ReliantK, Lifehouse, Sanctus Real, Switchfoot, David Crowder Band, Delirious, FlyLeaf, MercyMe, Jars of Clay, Newsboys, Pillar, SONICFlood, Thousand Foot Krutch.

Also of note...Petra is no more. They have retired. Its a sad day, they will be missed.

Meeting with the builder...

We had a pre-construction meeting with our builder on Wednesday. It went very well. We walked the lot and talked about what trees will go, what will stay and he got input from us about the slope of the driveway as well and how high we wanted the house... The lot is on a slop, so he could cut down and put the house lower or build up the dirt around and place the house higher...we opted for the latter because it will give us a better view. One of the really cool things is that we will have input along the way for things like grading and rockeries (on the back side for retaining wall...all depending on how the lot gets finally graded). We have a protected growth area in front of the house, which means we get to (have to) keep a few trees in the front of the lot, which is fine by us.
Also, one of the options we had, that we gladly chose, was to have an open wood beam on the main level (9ft ceiling) that allows the kitchen/dining/living area to be fully open. This beam will be natural wood and we will have timber (real trees) as the two posts in the kitchen for support. The original plan was to have a Glulamb Beam. While we were at the lot on Wednesday, we saw a few large, straight trees that had been felled on the lot next to ours that the builder is working on as well. So I asked...

So about the open beam...would it be possible to take one of those (*pointing to the logs lying by us*), and mill it to be our open beam?

His response was this...

You know, I was just starting to think about that too, so I'll talk to my mill guy and let you know.

SWEET
:) Our builder is awesome.

New schedule (rough dates):
June 12th - clearing/grading starts
July 1st - Framing starts
December 1st - Completion

It will probably slide some, but I just hope we can get in by Christmas...

More to come as it unfolds.

Progress!

Yea, so during the final junk/odds-n-ends moving process on Saturday, we got a call from our cool realtor Andy with word that he has been in contact with our builder. Finally, permits are completed and everything is good to go. The site is scheduled to be cleared late this week or early next week and we have a pre-construction meeting planned for Wednesday afternoon. The meeting is to walk the lot to see what trees can be saved and to get an idea of what the final grade will be like, as well as to confirm all the requests/changes/additions/selections we have made over the past few months.

It is perfect timing, because now we can focus solely on the house and we are only 10 minutes away from it! :) God is good. We had an opportunity to move a while back and didn't end up proceeding down that path because it just didn't feel right. Everything about this move has been awesome and has fallen together easily and efficiently. That is one of the many reasons we know we are making the right decision.

All out

The sale of our house has closed, money deposited (YEHA!), and we are out...never again to be in our old house.

The apartment is packed...there are boxes everywhere. It is a nice area tho and the dogs seem to like it and are getting used to the noises. The only thing that sucks? No Air Conditioning...I really like my A/C. :)

Our place backs up to a rock wall and has grass off of the patio. Thus I have on order (delayed...suck) two sets of metal pet pens that I am going to link together and put up around the grass and patio so that we can let the dogs out without putting them on leashes every time. So that will be nice. We still have to clean out the garage so that we can fit the Z4 in it. Lots to do, but we are tired so it may take a bit to get organized. I have one thing to admit... as much as I hate moving and the fatigue that goes with it, I have been feeling more alert because of all the activity and exercise (moving boxes and such)... so I just need to keep that up.