The House - Wrap-Up

One last post on the house, then I can move on from documenting the whole homebuilding process and move onto only blogging about our trips...

I mentioned in my last post that we sold our house.  We had to be out of there on June 24th, 7 years and 364 days after we purchased the house.

Our new house was pretty much ready, but we couldn't pass a final inspection because our permanent electrical meter wasn't installed.

Rocky Mountain Power dragged their feet for a couple of weeks, so in the meantime we were jumping from one hotel to another.  We stayed at the Best Western here in North Salt Lake, the Residence Inn out by the airport and the Downtown Marriott while we waited for permanent power.

We were finally able to get RMP to set the meter and base, which allowed us to move in.

Later in July they started to come and install our splash pad.  First step was digging a big hole for the water tank and pipes.

Laying out the splash pad.

Pouring the concrete.

Sealing the concrete.

Once the splash pad was in we were able to have our landscapers start.  They installed the sprinklers, leveled everything out, brought in top soil,...

Added lawn curbing,...

Planted shrubs,...

and finally sod.

I'll be honest. It was awesome to not have to worry about putting in a yard myself.  I work too much to get too many big projects done on the house.

And thus concludes our 36 part series on the building of the Squire Residence.  Stop by for a visit sometime!

Houston in the Fall

Now onto the next trip (and the good news is that for the moment I'm less than a year behind)!

Our next trip was to Houston to visit Angie (Alison's sister) and Hyrum.

We found a great deal on Frontier, which is not my favorite airline, but the price was right.

Unfortunately we had an overnight layover in Denver.  I grabbed a room near the hotel and we crashed for a few short hours.  The girls were all snuggly sharing their bed.

When I went to wake them up at 5AM I loved the position that they were in.

We went to my very favorite Tex-Mex restaurant El Tiempo Cantina. Ada got $1 for eating a jalapeno.

We took a day trip to Brazos Bend State Park. We were hoping to see lots of alligators but after taking a few walks around the ponds and lakes we were skunked.

We finally saw a couple from afar. So we left not totally skunked.

There's probably a gator out there somewhere.

After Brazos Bend we made our way to Galveston.  Our first stop was the beach. The sand wasn't great, and the water had a ton of seaweed, but the Gulf is an excellent place to swim.

Ada and Kate.

Posing.

Lyla and I built a mud drop sand castle.

Families that build sand castles together stay together.

The tide was coming in.

Sunset.

The crabs started to come out.

We gathered as much seaweed as we could. If you would twist them and wring them they would pop and water would come out.

Sea monster.

I can't remember where Alison got this chocolate of the Manneken Pis. Hyrum probably brought it home from Europe for her. A bit random.

Lyla and Kate shared a bed.  I love finding kids in strange sleeping positions.

The next day we visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Dinosaur shadows.

We grabbed tacos for lunch. This place was excellent.

Next stop was the Children's Museum of Houston. Here we're ready for the science lab.

Ada with her dry ice soap ball.

Kate.

Lyla.

One more with Kate and her beautiful smile.

That night we visited the bridge at Waugh Dr. to watch the 250,000 bats leave their resting place from under the bridge.

On Sunday we packed a picnic lunch and played frisbee and soccer in the park. It was lovely.

Giving Angie good night hugs.

I'm always game to try new donut places.  These are from Hugs and Donuts. They were decent.

The next day we went to a movie (I don't remember which one) and took a picture at the I love Houston sign on our way back.

We were sad to leave Ang and Hyrum.  Luckily we only had a layover in Denver on the way home (and not an overnight stay).  Houston in the fall is lovely!

The House - Week 35

Week 35 - June 22, 2015

Alrighty, we are so dang close to moving in.

I was so happy to see that the contractor was able to get the fridge put in.  It was so heavy. Note to self: next time don't buy the floor models so that we can get free install...

The railing on the deck was installed.

This here will be the bane of our next two weeks.  The whole house is ready and cleaned, but we don't have a permanent power meter so we only have one 20 amp circuit running the whole house.

So many good sunsets up here. Also we had a railing installed along our 11' wall.  And surprisingly 15 months later we haven't backed into it.

One last view.

This week we also said goodbye to our lovely house on York Dr.

The plan was to move everything out of our current house and into the garage of our new house.  I drove up the hill with the moving truck following me and when I got there the garage floor was being epoxied. Shoot. With some quick thinking and a couple of phone calls we were able to find a storage unit nearby that we loaded up with all of our belongings. While we were disappointed that we would have to move everything twice, we were hoping that it would be a short stay for our belongings in the storage unit.

Saying goodbye.