We have walls!

This week was a flurry of housebuilding activity. It began with the exterior walls being framed-up by Keith and my dad. My father-in-law and one of his friends helped with the walls too, as well as doing a fantastic job building the basement stairs. By Saturday, they finished framing the exterior walls and started on the sheathing. They finished sheathing the house today and started on framing the porch for the floor deck. In all, it was a very good and productive week with fantastic fall weather. A special thanks to my father-in-law, Kevin, my dad, Ronnie, and Craig who helped Keith tremendously this past week.

We had one disappointment this week when we found out that the roof trusses we were having delivered last Friday would not be ready. Long story short, they did not have a record of our order because the individual working on it was fired from the company. By midweek they got our trusses ordered and they will be delivered on Wednesday. There are a lot of trusses that need to go up, but with a little help from our friends and family I feel confident that we will have some great pictures to post about the roof next week.

My mom and I have been doing quite a few outings with the kids while the men are working on the house. This weekend we went to pick out and tag our Christmas tree . For the last 4 years I have been taking the kids to a place called Quailfield Farms in Charlotte Hall, MD. The tree farm is pretty small, but the family that owns it is great. In addition to the trees they have on the farm, during the holiday season they make weekly trips to WV and Pennsylvania to get additional trees. The kids love running around the trees deciding which one would be the perfect one for our family. We will go back a couple weeks before Christmas to cut it down and put it up for the holiday season. For the past two years we have picked out a white pine tree. I was never a big white pine fan growing up, but now I have a different appreciation for the tree. It's branches are tough enough to hold up some of my heaviest ornaments, but the needles are soft enough for the kids to touch if they are helping decorate. Even though it was 65 degrees this weekend, we were still able to pick out our perfect tree and think about how exciting it is that Christmas is right around the corner.