Bachen it . . .

Last weekend was great and relaxing.  Cassie's Mom was headed to Houston for a week of Bridge playing and we were looking forward to it.  She made it in around dinner time and we headed over to the Grand Luxe, it's one of Candy's favorites and we usually eat there at least once while they are in town.  We had a great dinner and had the chance to meet one of Candy's bridge friends who came to be her partner for the week.  

Not much was planned for the week, Cassie was planning on leaving on Wednesday for a wedding in San Angelo, but we were still working with Highland to make sure we were not slowing down the progress on the house.  When we signed all the paperwork last weekend, Mike encouraged us to get in to the design center and make all of our selections ASAP so we would not be holding up the paperwork they needed to release our house.  I talked with Mike and since the designer was out Monday and Tuesday and we didn't know if she would have any openings later in the week, Cassie decided to leave.  She had set up an appointment with the music coordinator who is gathering the different musicians for the wedding and they needed to make some final decisions.  

Thursday I went and picked up Candy at the hotel and took her to get her car.  We left it at the apartment for the week so she wouldn't have to worry about parking it downtown.  After she left I had a easy going relaxed evening.

Work has been going pretty well.  Thursday we had our monthly PM/Superintendent meeting and it was shorter than last week.  Harvey is taking a very strong stance on safety this year, some of it is because we have had a few bad years safety wise and we are trying to turn that around.  The other reason is because in our line of work safety is so crucial to our clients and it needs to be our focus as well if we want to continue working with those clients. The meeting went well and I didn't have to write a check back to the company for any safety violations so all in all it was a good meeting.  

Friday I had a meeting at the 99k House.  Harvey has taken on a challenging project, building a residential home for less that 99 thousand bucks.  The main challenge is that were not residential builders.  We have been relying on our relationships with commercial sub-contractors to build this hose, these are businesses that are used to having 2 million plus contracts, not 2 thousand dollar contracts.  I volunteered at the beginning of the project, thinking with my residential experience I might be some help and it's been interesting.  We met for about three hours to discuss where we are on the project and where we need to be in the next four weeks.  

This weekend I have been chilling.  This morning I got up and went for donuts, come home took a nap, ate lunch, and I'm still sitting on the couch.  It's been a great relaxing day!  Cassie is out at the wedding and I don't think she's having too much fun without me, but it's great to be doing nothing for a change.  

Tomorrow Cassie is coming in to town and we are going to head down to Texas City for dinner with Mom, Kimberly and Jeremy.  Cassie is going to spend the week with Mom going to school and observing for the week, something she needs to do for a class.  We are meeting with the designer one night this week to make the selections so it should be another fun filled week.

Nappy Poo

Nap Time

Cassie didn't get much sleep last night so she's snuggled up on the couch. I just figured out how to send posts from my Blackberry, so I might get better about updating you guys from now on. We will see how this process works.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Pic's

I know i'm going to get ton's of crap (Dustin) for this, but I know a lot of you want to see the pic's. Cassie and I spent a few hours (more like the whole day) taking pictures last Saturday and they are posted on our Photographer's web-site.  Lacy is a long-time friend of the family and she does amazing work.  She really deserves some credit for putting up with Cassie and I for the day in order to get some pretty cool pictures we will hang on our walls till we die . . . I mean these things are going to be around for a while, let's make em good right.

www.morethananimage.com is where you can find the pic's.  Once you get there, click the picture on the far left and that will take you in to her photography site.  At the top click "View your Event" and the code is 14001 to see our pictures.  Let me know if you have problems getting them.

That's all for now.

It's Final

Over the past few months Cassie and I have been working through the process of buying a house.  We have been working out the financing, getting a realtor and looking at homes.  Over the past few weeks we have looked at several homes, we found some we really liked, one in particular, and some not so much.  We narrowed down the area to Fall Creek, it's a cool master planned community across the way from where I did my internship with Perry Homes.  It is home to the Shell Houston Open, a nice gold course, but I couldn't afford it, even if I did play golf.  In our search we found one section in particular that we especially liked.  The homes had a more rustic look to them, with the stone and brick combination.  Every time we drive through the neighborhood there are people out working in the yard or talking to neighbors and you just get a good feeling there.  We found a house in this section about a week ago, and by the time we got our offer in the homeowners had already accepted an offer on a different home.  Cassie and I were pretty bummed for a few days, but we started the search again.  Cassie has been looking during the day with the realtor and when they found something they thought I might like we would go check it out after I got off work.  This past week we found one that was a good second choice, it was a Perry so I knew it was built well, and it had a few upgrades, but it still didn't have the stone that I liked, and it was not in a section that we were crazy about.  After looking at that home we discussed possibly going back to the section that we found the other home is and talk to the builder who still had some lots available.  We had already visited the builders model and even though they were offering 15,000 dollar incentives, we still would not get as much for the money if we were able to find a good deal.  We decided to set our price and give the builder  challenge.  We knew we would not be able to get the upstairs seeing how is was a 27,000 dollar upgrade, but we pretty much wanted everything else for the same price we would be willing to pay for the other home we found and liked that was a Perry.  We met with the Sales Rep, Mike, last night along with our realtor and started talking about the options.  About two hours later, he had us sold.  The list was long, but not impossible . . . We got the bay window, stone elevation, study option, and brick on the fireplace.  Cassie and I are on cloud nine, we didn't think he would be able to make it all happen, but he did, and he even threw in another 3,000 for good measure.  The lot we picked out is on the corner so it is about 15 feet wider, and while it's not much deeper, it is still deeper than the other option and will give us about a 30 ft deep back yard.  The corner lot will be really nice the house will not feel so closed in with the 5 ft lot lines that you would typically have.  We were able to give the other side yard about 8 ft and the left will be plenty big because we have the sidewalk all around.  Go check out the pictures we took of the lot here, we also took tons of pictures of the surrounding homes by the same builder so we can narrow down our brick and stone combination.  That's all for now, we are really excited to be buying a home, and being able to build is really awesome.  With my experience I really feel bad for the superintendent building the home, because I will be all over this thing, but I guarantee it will be the best house on the block by the time I get done with it.  I will try to keep the blog up to date with the progress of the house construction, pictures etc.  I never thought in a million years I would be at this point in my life so soon out of college, but Cassie and I are very fortunate!