Home Construction (Day 4 - July 20)

They removed the metal containers .

Milestone#1 "Start Construction (Site and Foundation preparation)" COMPLETED

Home Construction (Day 3 - July 17)

The metal containers were placed and concrete were poured into the containers for the walls and pillars.

Home Construction (Day 2 - July 16)

On July 16:


They have placed some metals or building materials in front of the house: (I loved the sky on that day)

The concrete poured into the wood containers


Looks like bones digging to us:

Home Construction (Day 1 - July 15)

On July 10, 7 AM : We met our field manager and he told us about what to anticipate, the schedule and what to expect or what will happen in the couple more days, weeks and months. He also showed us our home's blue print.

On July 15: The ground breaking of our home area.
The wood containers were placed for a foundation.


The pictures were not as nice as we thought since we were using our older camera.

Since all the houses in our cul-de-sac have been finished they decided to place a port-a-John in front of ours (We really don't like this but we have no choice, otherwise they will pee in our backyard)





The digging was invisible from the front of the home



But they really did the digging in the back. This will be the perimeter of our home



From the back yard:



Our backyard view - jungle of sand from the digging:

Our Home Story (Part 3/3)

So we were searching around for other places, after making an unsuccessful offer on our first really nice one. And one of my co-workers told me that she just bought a new-construction home for a really good deal and she found out there construction company was also building a neighborhood near my search area.

So I decided to go to check out this place after work. I went to the model home and was really impressed with the home. The backyard is nice but not too big. It is facing a pond though!
I started asking about the prices for different models and checking out the different areas they have.

After the meeting, I got so excited and decided to take the Russian to check out the place the next day. He liked the place too and we think the place is actually cheaper than the first offered house and newer, of course, since it wasn't even built yet. So we decided to talk and negotiate a deal for discounts and upgrades.

Since the discounts and upgrades were really nice, we decided to make an offer for this place and ditched the first offered home since they were not willing to meet us at our price range. After couple weeks on the market, their agent contacted us and told us that they were willing to go down - but it was too late since we felt in love to the new construction home.

So now the processes of building our home:

1. Before making an offer, we had to decide the upgrades we wanted for the structure of the home such as front home style, number of garages and walkout or lookout basement, etc. etc.

The day we had to make our structural decision and sign the papers was when I was away to visit my friends in a different city. So Russian had to do everything on his own - I felt bad having to leave him, but when I got back in town I had to go and re-sign whatever Russian had already signed a week ago. However, when I signed the paper, I asked if we could make a huge change in the selections...

After a week, we got a call and they allowed us to change -- so we decided to make a completely different home model selection (a totally different floorplan). Instead of a full second floor, we decided to have a 2-levels foyer open area for the piano room and entrance.

2. After the first selections, we would get 2 months to decide on our interior choices such as hardwood, tiles or carpet, oak wood, maple or cherry, granite or laminate etc etc.

This was easier for us since we knew all the selections they had, and were not particularly impressed with them. We decided we could upgrade in the future if we needed to. So we decided to take all the free basic selections (the ones came with the house) except we upgraded the wood type to maple and the trim to white.

Now the process of building our first home just got started. We will post more about our home construction ... but for now we will give you a little bit of sneak preview of our home site.




Check back again next time!

Our Home Story (Part 2/3)

So here's what happened next. After hibernating on this for few months (cold winter), I decided to find another agent. This time I saw her name from a real estate website and contacted her.

The first time we met her, she left a really bad impression since she was late for 30 minutes to meet us. Since this was our trial time with her, we didn't really care. We learned from our friends that we just have to interview our agent and try them before actually making commitment with her.

After working with her, we started to learn that she is always on the phone and we learned not to expect her to be on time for anything! ;)

The time we had with her, we were trying to search for foreclosure homes and fixer-uppers. (Two of my co-workers bought a foreclosure home and fixed up the home and made us wanting to do the same thing.)

After seeing several homes, we decided most of the foreclosure homes need lots of work, and both of us had no experience at all. And most of the older homes were split entrances (the entrance immediately splits into two staircases, so you have to go either up or down) - it was not our favorite thing to do.

So we decided to start looking for a older home with these criteria:

- Mature trees and backyard with privacy
- Waterview would be plus
- We should not be able to see the neighbor's dinner, and vice versa
- At least 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms
- Walk-in closet or her/his closet
- 2 floors with the main floor and garage on the same floor
- We don't have to fix too much to live there and we can do our fixing in the future
- If it has a basement, it has to be a walkout basement
- A lot of natural light into the house

After 2 months of searching, we still could not find any homes matching our criteria until we saw one home not in our search area.

The home was really nice, it has a huge backyard and a small creek at the back. However, this home was out of our price range. But we still decided to put a written offer for the house since I really really liked the house.

The next day, our agent called and told us, the offer has been rejected. Actually, lots of other people had also stopped by, interested in making an offer, but so far only we had made a real offer. We decided to wait a couple more weeks since this home just got to the market and it was too fresh to increase our offer.

Meanwhile we still went to search other places until... well, you'll just have to wait to find out!

Our Home Story (Part 1/3)

Since last year we have been planning to buy a house. Everyone around us always tells us now is a good time to buy and we can get a great deal - there is also $8000 tax incentive until December. A few other things which motivated us to get our own place:

- We are really looking forward to having our own washer/dryer, right now we have to share them with every other person in our apartment building and sometimes we have to wait in line.

- People on the first floor smoke like chimneys, and often we cannot open our balcony or windows, in order to spare our lungs from this toxic air.

- We need more space for our stuff (2 people living in a one-bedroom apartment), and I am soooo looking forward to having my own closet

- We can have a dog finally - this apartment only allows cats

- I really want to paint and do some home improvements

But other than that, we will miss this apartment:

- I will miss how cozy this place is, we are always together in the same room because there are only 2 main areas: the living room and bedroom.

- The view in the backyard - ah. the Mississippi river!

- How cheap this place is for us and how much money is saves us each month, compared to a typical 2-bedroom apartment, or (yikes) a mortgage!

- How we don't have to worry about maintenance (kind of... see my post, 2008)

But we have to move on and start searching for an agent to help us with buying our first home. Yes this will be our FIRST HOME (we are both house-hunting novices). So after asking around, we met our first agent: Becca - who is the gf of our hiking leader. She was nice and sent us links every week with all the townhomes based on the criteria we wanted. Then we just had to tell her which ones we wanted and she made appointments for us and visited the places with us.

However after several appointments, we felt she didn't understand about townhomes since she just started being an agent one year ago and she always sold houses. So we ended our agreement with her and think it would be better to go with someone who is more experienced since we are first-time home buyers and we need someone to guide us instead of learning with them.

So -- what happened next? You'll have to wait and see until Part 2... heheeee, see ya!

Apostle Islands

Our first adventure for this month... (July 10 - 11)

We went to the Apostle islands (Bayfield, WI) - I had not heard about these islands before until during the 4th of July fireworks, when a couple of other people told me that it is a beautiful place to visit.

On Friday, we left work early because of the 4-hour drive to Bayfield, WI and the camp site closing at around 10 PM. But as usual we were never on-time on leaving - so we ended up leaving around 5 PM wih 2 cars (4 people/car).

Since Jermaine's trunk is so small, each person only allowed to carry 2 bags

As usual we stopped at the BK in Duluth for our ritual meal, and started driving again from there but this time a bit slower since we had to pass several small towns with 25 miles for their speed limit.

The sky was interesting when we drove there


We got there around 9.45 ... yes 15 minutes before the office closed. We got our camp site map and fire wood. Then we headed to our camp site which is a bit excluded from our camps but it is located in the really privacy area and we got our small lake for our selves.


Couple of us got busy setting up tents and others were busy trying to start a fire - which turned out to be way harder without fuel (we just had cardboard and matches). But finally Russian got the fire to start - we enjoyed watching the stars and moon, saw shooting stars flashing by, and satellites floating across the sky slowly, and we enjoyed how peaceful it was without any traffic noise (until Jermaine's car alarm went off, when he accidentally pressed it).

View of the lake from our camp site


In the morning, the boys got up really early - they were so noisy at night and went to sleep the last and got up the earliest. Then we got ready to check out Bayfield downtown and take a ferry to Madeleine island. We got a little bit disappointed when we found out that we were too late to take the sea cave kayaking trip for the day, and we would not be able to take it until the next day since the lake water would be too high in the afternoon.



So we thought it would be better to take a ferry to Madeline island. We were actually split up between two ferries, since only one of the cars could fit in the first (already-full) ferry boat. Yes we took our cars across to the different islands because we were also planning to find different camp sites. On the Madeleine island, we rented bikes - finally tried a tandem bike for me and Russian (1 bike with 2 drivers, I always wanted to try one). We biked around the town (really small - just like you see in the map), and we got to the beach and spent time almost all day in that beach. Sleeping, chilling and playing frisbee.



Around 8 PM, before we had to ferry back to Bayfield, the boys decided that they wanted to go back home to Minneapolis and cut the trip short, since they thought they had seen enough of the Apostle islands, and their iPhones were telling them that tomorrow's weather would be rain. So we decided to go back with them since Russian started having a fever (he was not feeling well ever since we went to the island .... can't blame him since I was sick earlier that week and he must have caught it from me).


Good thing we left early since his fever got really really bad the next day - he basically spent all day lying down, unable to move, and sweating it out - but the girls and Jermaine had their fun staying in the island because they got to do the sea cave kayaking .... We were all a bit jealous but we will definitely visit the island next time to catch up! : )

4th of July

Nothing too special about this year fourth of July

Russian was in Atlanta visiting his family and I stayed home, hanged out with the girls and watched fireworks.

During the fireworks, we were able to plan activities for this month ...

You will see soon our adventures ;)

Russian's new geek game

The Russian has been drooling over a board game store for a couple of years now -- every time we go to our nearest mall it's right there, staring him in the face. Actually, it's right next to the food court, so we're always walking by, and it's like a magnet, tempting him, beckoning him, so he goes in there and stares at things he's not going to buy anyway. Boys...

Well this all came to a boiling point a few days ago, when he broke down and *begged* me to let him get us a board game. Here are the ridiculous reasons he came up with to try to negotiate my agreement:

0. "It's gonna be awesome. Best game you'll ever play. Way better than Monopoly."
1. "It's an investment! It'll last forever"
2. "Think of our kids -- our kids will play this with us! Good family moment!"
3. "This game is a classic, it's so highly rated online!"
4. "You love that Harvest Moon game, this one is just like it!"
5. "Come on, I never get to buy myself games, just once!"
6. "I promise, it'll be under $25, seriously!!!"

etc. etc. etc., this went on for 30 minutes at least. (I gave up pretty quick, actually, now that I think about it.)

So I waved him off -- fine fine, Russian, just go, buy the stupid game already, just stop bothering me, I'm trying to watch "CSI: Murderous Psychos: Chattanooga" or whatever.

Before I even finished my sentence, he was gone. All I heard was the tires peeling away on the street, as he raced to the mall. He was back in mere moments -- it's not even humanly possible to get to the mall, buy something, and return that fast using a conventional automobile. I think he ran, on foot, powered by his adrenaline and excitement, faster than any car could travel.

As soon as he stepped back in the door, he gives me this line:

"Wow, hon. I can't believe you gave in so quickly. I'm not sure you're gonna be ready to be a mom if you just let your kids beg you for anything they want, and just give in like that!"

I could have slapped him right there. (He was giving me the guilty smile.) It's that same scene from Friends when Phoebe challenges Ross on his views about evolution. She goes "you scientists thought the earth was flat -- then you found out it was round. And you guys thought the atom was the smallest thing, until that was split open! And now you're telling me there's not even a hint of a possibility that you might be wrong about this?" and then Ross admits there might be a small possibility and then Phoebe totally flips around and goes: "WOW, I can't believe you just gave up like that. Before I respected you, even though I disagreed with you, but now..." and she shakes her head in disappointment. Then Ross leaves in shock. Then Phoebe laughs "that was fun."

So he tried to pull that on me. Hah. Didn't work.

But I have to admit, the game is cute and fun, even though he has to force me to play it. I've won all three times so far that we've played -- the Russian is trying, but he's just not good enough. I have the natural talent. Here are some photos:

Dentist

Check out all these postcards from our dentist:


We get one every 6 months for our cleaning appointment


Since there are 2 of us, I requested to get one for each of us - so we get 2 cards every 6 months


These all I got since we started visiting our dentist, Dr. L.


Most of them are baby blues (Lani was the one who introduced me to read Baby Blues)


Aren't they funny ; )



They always put a smile on me



We post them on our refrigerator - now we noticed we need more magnets



But the *funniest* card which is the one that is posted on his office window -- I will take the picture on my next visit.


Ok ok, I admit, I didn't get all of them from my appointment - sometimes when the nurse asked me to fill our our 6-month appointment card, I also checked out their cards and I could not decide only on one - so I asked if I can have more ; )