273/365

Today we have had a much better day!  This weekend is homecoming here and tonight they had a Dinner at the Den where you can come up and meet all of the athletes and get their autographs.  The kids thought it was so cool!

This morning the developer FINALLY signed the closing papers on the lot so we officially own it as of this morning.  What a relief!  Our builder wasted no time getting busy out at the lot.

The kids were so excited to go out and see what all had been done.

This is the first time that the kids and I have really been able to get out on the lot and walk it because the brush and cactus have just been so thick.

It was nice to get out there and imagine how it would look.

Cactus carnage...

The view of the lot looking west.  Jackson's room will be about where the bobcat is located at the back of the house.

Looking from the garage area East towards the house.  That big pile of brush happened today!  They cleared the entire area where the house will be in one afternoon.

Looking south from the garage area at our driveway.  The entrance will be where the tractor is located.

The builder did take out a few of the larger trees that we had hoped to keep, but I'm sure there was a reason for it.  He knew that we wanted to keep all of the trees that we could.  I told him to get rid of all the cactus and leave the trees.  I am beyond thrilled with the progress so far.  They have the bobcat for the week and have told us we can use it, so in the evenings Jacob will be out there trying to clear out the back part of the lot.  We wanted to do a lot of the work to save money and so that we would have a say as to what was done with the trees in back.  This may be boring to some of you but this house is also my baby so I will be documenting the daily progress as we go along.

272/365

I am simply too wiped out today to even write a blog post tonight.  Today was a drama filled day (the stupid lot and developer AGAIN!) and I am just too worn out to go into it all.

We pretty much spent all day in the car trying to take care of things and running in circles getting nothing accomplished.

It has been tough.

Our lot did go from looking like this...

To this....

The tractor is where our driveway will be.

The bad news is we found out today that the lot technically isn't ours.  It's a big mess.

But hey...progress was made.

I'm off to bed...I need to sleep this horrible day away!

271/365

My boys love their backyard football and baseball.

(Actually...my girl does too!)

Jackson is really into football right now.  He loves playing it at school and can't wait to go to football games.

If you look closely at his mouth you will see why it is that he bit his tongue in half a few years ago.  (He still has a hole by the way!)  Apparently when you concentrate you must stick out your tongue.  I took several pictures of him kicking the ball and his tongue was out in every one of them.  LOL!

Tyler is enjoying playing in their tree house/fort.  He can't wait to get out there every day to work on it.=

They are really going to love our new house and all of the areas for them to play out there.

Jaci just goes along and does her own thing and jumps in with the boys whenever she feels like it.  She is her OWN person and she lets everyone know that.

We also went out to get the house marked off today and ran into a few issues that HOPEFULLY I can take care of tomorrow.  Unfortunately it has me dealing with the man who sold us our lot and that is never easy.  Our builder will be clearing a lot of the cactus off tomorrow and doing some prep work but until we get the developer to sign off on our house placement we can't clear off the trees.  (Sigh!)

  I am still thrilled with how fast our builder is moving on this now that he is back.  That makes me feel good and I can deal with little things here and there.  Just pray for my patience tomorrow.  I have never dealt with the developer face to face and I am a little worried I might not be able to hold my tongue if he gives us a hard time and delays us more.

And now I have officially used the word tongue WAY too much for one post!

I'm off to bed!

270/365

This is pretty much what our day was like today.

It was just so pretty here today.  Almost a bit cold this morning but perfect for opening up the house and letting the wonderful Fall air in.  We were in and out of the house all day long.

I just love this time of year!

(Have I mentioned that yet???)

I am not loving the mosquitos though.  They are about to eat us alive!  Bug spray doesn't phase them at all...they just attack!

Tomorrow we are meeting with our builder to mark off where the house will go.  I am SO EXCITED to get started!  He is hoping to have the basement dug this week, but I am not getting my hopes up.  If we get the house area cleared and staked off I will be happy.  The basement getting dug will just be an awesome bonus if it happens!  Funny thing happened tonight while watching the news.  The weather man was talking about how great the weather will be this coming week and mentioned if you have any construction plans that this week will be perfect.  I just looked at Jacob and laughed.  I have never heard a weatherman mention construction in the forecast but I take it as a good sign that things are finally working out in our favor!  Yay!

269/365

Today was beautiful!

It was cool.  It was breezy.

It was FALL!

I love Fall.  I love getting out in this beautiful weather.  I feel like I have so much energy this time of year.

It is truly my favorite time of year!

The kids loved it as well!

They got outside and built a fort today in the back yard.

(And by fort I mean they piled up a bunch of limbs under a tree and pulled a wagon over there)

They had a great day climbing trees and being creative.

Lounging around.

And playing football.

It was a beautiful day and I loved every minute of it!

268/365

I am still not in much of a picture taking mood.

There are just too many other things on my mind other than being creative.

Sorry for the lack of creativity lately.  With the beautiful weather that we have coming up this next week I am hoping that I will get inspired.

267/365

Today we have enjoyed a cooler rainy day.  It is just the type of Fall day that I love!

After supper we went outside to play a little football.  All of the kids absolutely love it!

It eventually started raining too hard to stay outside so we came in and watched a movie.

This was exactly the type of day and evening that I love!

I think tomorrow is supposed to be similar!  Yay!

266/365

This afternoon and evening I spent about 5 hours cleaning out the kids closets. 

(Well...technically we are all in the same closet.)

It took FOREVER to sort through all of the clothes and set aside the ones that they have outgrown.

Forcing them to try on clothes to see if they still fit is not fun at all.  Poor Jaci pretty much needs everything new which makes me sad because she has a TON of cute Gymboree clothes that I loved that no longer fit her.  I am going to have to get busy listing things on eBay and buying her some new stuff.  They boys have some stuff that will still fit.  Tyler was a 4-5 last year and this year needs a 5-6.  Jackson's hand me downs are all size 5 or 7 so that won't work well.  I sure do miss living right next to the outlet malls.  I could always go over there ever week or 2 and pick up an outfit and have a fully stocked closet for each kid and I didn't have to do it all at once.  This year I don't have that and I hate it.  Buying for all 3 at the same time is going to hurt!

I didn't even think about pictures until they were out of the bath and banging on boxes with chop sticks.  Sorry for the lack of decent pictures.  I just wasn't in the mood to be creative when I had been sitting in the closet for hours.

265/365

We break them in early around here!

Thankfully he loves to help cook and begs us to help out!  He is going to make a good husband one day.  :)

Jaci and Tyler are both throwing up.  Tyler started in on Sunday night.  We thought it was because of his cough.  Monday night when he threw up he was coughing as well, so again we figured it was the cough.  Last night Jaci threw up and wasn't coughing.  She threw up several times through the night.

Today I took Tyler to school, (kept Jaci home with me) thinking that he was OK.

He was not.  Clearly they have a virus because it continued on this afternoon even when they weren't coughing.

This is no fun!

I am praying for a vomit free night tonight, but all kids (including Jackson) are sleeping with a bucket just in case.  All of our extra sheets are in storage so our sleeping arrangements have been less than desirable once someone throws up in the bed.  I am so tired of stripping beds and washing sheets!

They have been super cuddly and sweet though and I have LOVED that!

Side note...Can you believe I only have 100 days of this Project 365 left?

264/365

Tonight's theme is puzzles!

Tyler's teacher called me today saying that she had made Tyler cry today because she made him participate in puzzle time.  Apparently he has not participated in puzzle time at all since school started and today she told him that he had to.  He then began crying.  When she called she wanted to know if the kids work puzzles.  I told her that Jaci and Jackson enjoy them but Tyler never has wanted to work them and we just haven't forced it.  She stressed how important puzzles are and said he needs to work them so after Jacob got home I loaded him up and took him to get a few new puzzles.  I figured if he was picking them out and they were new he would get hopefully get excited about them.  It worked!

We bought 4 new puzzles and then drug out several more that we already own.

We spent 2 hours working puzzles over and over again.

And praising them for doing such a great job.

In fact we worked every puzzle that we own tonight.

I am pretty sure Tyler won't have a problem participating in puzzle time from now on.

Here they are with just a few of the puzzles they worked tonight.  Jackson wanted to line them up and show them off.