Walls are up

Over the past two weeks a lot has changed. It's amazing and exciting to see how quickly things are progressing. The debate remains whether or not the house will be finished by Christmas.  Just yesterday, they poured our basement walls and today they took the forms down.  They also started to run water lines to the house today. 

This is the retaining wall that will run along the back of the house

 This is the front of the house.  The doorway is to our "safe room" should we ever need it.  I will definitely feel safe in that fortress.

The west side of the house.  The level above where I'm standing will be our glorious walk in pantry (Oh happy day!!) You can also get an idea of how tall the walls actually are.  

The East side and part of the back of the house will be daylight (hence the retaining wall), so no poured walls there.  We have decided on a brick color - Henry Brick Ole Cahaba.  We were able to drive around a few weeks ago and see the color in person, which helps a ton compared to just trying to pick one online.  One decision down, about a million to go. 

This past weekend we were in Mobile visiting family that we haven't seen in a long time.  We had a great time.  My favorite part of the past few weeks has been Nicholas' improvement in potty training.  He has had very few accidents at all, so we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.   

Footings - AKA a maze for Nicholas

The footings were dug on Monday and finished up today, so of course we had to check this out.  Nicholas loved running around in that area as he thought it was a maze made just for him.  Several trees that needed to come down were knocked down and we are moving right along.  As I'm writing this post, concrete is being poured into the footings, so Nicholas will have to find something else to play with.

Tractor #2 for Nicholas to be in awe of

Which way will he go next?

Daddy standing on top of the huge dirt mound

I was so excited to see the quick progress that I wanted to do dirt angels in our good for building chert rock.  It's a good thing the property is right down the road as I have a feeling we will be back and forth much more than normal.