Breaking ground

Here's our lot ... won't be wooded for much longer

The lot from behind. This will be our back yard.


The back of the lot. Matt is standing next to the fence that divides our neighborhood and another one.


The power pole path along the fence. I plan to run here often.


This afternoon we walked our lot again. We met with the appearance committee last week so now we're just waiting on the building permit to break ground. We are so excited! I think our house is perfect for us at this point and through the next five to seven years. It's a modified version of a house we've built once before. We tweaked a couple of things, specifically, added a sitting room/nursery off of the master bedroom and created an awesome screened porch/deck area to take advantage of our wonderful back yard.

We hope to have all of our children in this house and would love to be able to build our "permanent" home on some acreage once we outgrow this one. Right now it's crazy to think we could need more space than this -- which isn't even that much -- but throw in a few kids and a home office and a treadmill room and I bet it happens fast.

We will be the fifth house on the cul-de-sac and today we met our next-door-neighbors. They were friendly and laidback, which is hit-or-miss in our town. They have two teenagers and they said the people on the other side of them are a little younger and have two little girls. I can't wait to meet them. The people across the street are retirees.

We were so lucky to stumble across this lot. It used to belong to our high school friend Shelby's parents-in-law, and when they decided to put it on the market last year Shelby mentioned it to us. We loved it immediately and bought it ourselves instead of listing it. Not only is it a flat, wooded half-acre (practically unheard of here) but it backs up to thick woods for lots of privacy. The lot to our left is vacant and probably unbuildable because of its shape.

I can't wait to follow the power pole path that runs along the neighborhood fence -- I think it probably hits the greenway system somewhere. I would love to have a running trail at my back door!