Baby pictures!

Here's a picture of our latest project. It's from an ultrasound we had done at 12 weeks as part of a screening for Down Syndrome. The screening results came back last week and our OB tells us that we have nothing to worry about, baby looks great...Max and I congratulated each other on our old, yet well preserved, DNA.

Click here for a short video from the ultrasound session (open the highlighted file: baby_k.mpg, it may take a minute or two to download). This little bean doesn't seem to sit still...sounds like someone else I live with.

We'll have one more ultrasound at 20 weeks to check that all fingers and toes are present and accounted for and maybe even find out whether we're having a little Mr. or Miss. This is week 14, first week of the second trimester.

House plans

Here's a look at what we're planning to build. However, we're not planning to paint it ten shades of beige. That's just the default color :-)

Big thanks to Adam and Danica for sharing their house plans...they were a huge help as we came up with our layout (and I'm sure A&D can see much of their first house in this one).

Clicking on the pictures will open a large enough image to read the text notes.

Note the guest room...can't wait to get some visitors!!

Putting in the driveway

Ah! What happened to our beautiful forest trail!?! This was a bit of a shock to see, and I felt terribly guilty about the neighbors' feelings for weeks. As it turns out, the neighborhood men are all thoroughly impressed with the driveway, practically patting Max on the back as if congratulating him on the birth of a new baby! I think many of them were making bets that we wouldn't be able to access the lot, given the grade. Happily, our "dirt guy" knew what he was doing.

Starting to look more like a driveway.

Here is the former steep slope at the top of the lot. Now we have a nice flat pullout to look both ways for nonexistent traffic before pulling out onto the road.

And here's the other end, looking over the house site.

We had the foundation hole excavated at the same time the driveway was put in.

Max checking out the local soil stratification. We were lucky, finding only a few feet of the problematic silt that can make building tricky. The main/front door of the house will be up one floor and directly behind Max.

Our land last September

This was the slope we had to work with off the road. Where the car is parked is now the top of our new driveway. This was a well used and much loved neighborhood trail cutting across the top of our lot. In the pictures above you can see what we did to it in the process of putting in the driveway. I think we've been forgiven though, as many of our future neighbors have stopped to chat with us about our building plans and to welcome us "kids" to the neighborhood.
To the left is the partially cleared house site, and the still untouched trail is on the right, looking back up toward Pika Road.
The house site. Max spent plenty of weekends and evenings cutting and burning, burning and cutting...this is looking north (and down hill) toward the Goldstream Valley. You can see the sun-lit ridge on the other side of the valley through the tops of the birch trees.