April 17, 2007

We moved back into the tepee as of Sunday. I hate moving! Even though we only had a fraction of our stuff unpacked that we used at our temporary winter housing it still seemed like a lot. I can’t wait to move into a house that is ours and actually stay for awhile. We are both missing some of the creature comforts of living in a house, but it feels good to be back in the tepee on our land. It’s just the next phase of our life that we need to get started on. No better time than the present! We have a lot to do on our property to get ready for building. We ordered a propane refrigerator that we’ll pick up on Monday in Denver which we’ll put in our shed for now. It will be so great to be able to have a place to store perishable food instead of using a cooler and having to fill it with ice like we did all last summer. Although right now we probably wouldn’t need a cooler. We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland of snow! That’s the first time we’ve slept in the tepee during a snowfall. It left about 4” on the ground and it was a still and beautiful morning. Kirk didn’t sleep so well our first night at the tepee since he was a little worried about the bear. I however, slept like a baby. I couldn’t believe it. Last night we were both so tired that we slept hard and sound. I woke up at one point in the night because I was hot and I thought I heard an animal outside the tepee. Thankfully I was wrong and soon went right back to sleep. So far so good!

The house plans are coming along nicely. We are giving ourselves plenty of options. We have a developer friend who is going to bid a pre-fab version of our house design which would be a quick solution for us. That means we could have our house delivered in June! We also have been talking with a contractor that we’ve done a few small projects with who also has an office in the same building as us. They have offered to excavate our foundation and help us pour it for a trade in engineering services. You gotta love small towns for things like that! We are also having them price building the walls out of ICF (insulated concrete forms). Then we are still looking at the possibility of building it ourselves using the stacked concrete block. A lot of it depends on pricing and time constraints. Regardless we are still hoping to break ground in May.