Where Does the Time Go???

Well, hello y'all! It has been quite a few months since my last blog post. Yep, we are still alive...we didn't fall of the face of the Earth. So much has been going on that it seems like I have hardly had time to sit down, let alone write a post. I honestly don't know where to begin.

The last time I wrote the house was almost jacked up and ready to roll from the old location to the new one. Since then, it has been relocated and set on the new foundation. The addition has been put on too. Lots of interior things have been going on and with that have brought many headaches along with it. (As with all house building/reno projects I am finding from conversations with people along the way. :) ) While all of this has been going on, we have been trying to do as much as we can by ourselves and that has some monetary benefits but also the downside is it takes more time and slows the process a bit. (Yes, I will have to post pictures of the progress...I promise I will!)

Here is one pic of it at the new location with the addition on the back. Oh, and in the picture with Tank is also something else that has changed...we now have another member of our family, in the puppy form, Jake! I have discovered raising a puppy is a lot like raising a toddler. That is a whole post all by itself.

Crops have been planted and looking really good. Lots of calves on the ground too (and of course, like any calves, they have already found every hole in the pasture fence into the corn fields!). First cutting of hay has been cut and finally baled (after about 8 inches of rain washed it off). We probably need to be getting the 2nd cutting done soon...but can't seem to find the time. There never is really enough time for anything, is there? Oh, the joys of farming.

Hay finally baled. The big white monster is in the background.

Corn up tall and tasseled. 

To add to our already full plate our current/old house in town was struck by a huge hail storm on the 30th of June. The hail was ping pong ball sized and lasted for 20 minutes. Town received 5 inches of rain in that time period and left a huge mess. We now have to replace siding, roof, gutters, windows, and personal property outside and have water damage repairs inside to do as well.. So, looks like the new house progress will be slowed yet again so we can focus on getting those things done to fix her back up. Always something, right?

A/C unit with hail damage

Swingset flipped and grass pulverized by hail storm.

Some of garage siding damage.

Kiddos have been home from school for the summer and I think we have been busier than during school time due to activities, vacations, sports, etc. I am a little anxious for school to resume so we can get back in to a routine but will miss their crazy little tan booties too.

Boys after a haircut. They sure do look alike!

I am pretty sure Little Man is ready for the boys to go back to school, the other day the older 3 were all fighting, rough housing and bickering; he looked at me like HE was exhausted and said, "Mama, when does school start?" Somedays I am sure I think the same thing. One thing I am ready for is grocery shopping without all of them. It is so much easier and quicker shopping with one that can be contained versus having 4 of them. I am sure Wal-mart hates to see me come in with my "herd". One seems to go to fast, one is lagging behind, one is sneaking stuff in the cart and the other is emptying my purse. Ah, memories...seriously tho...it is like herding cats during a rainstorm too.  Ha!

Well, this was just a quick post to see if anyone was still out there "reading" and to test if I could remember how to do it. We are still alive and kicking. Another post yet to come soon... :)

The Ridge...the History and the Dream

Why "Up On the Ridge"?

The "Ridge" is the location we are moving the "big white monster" to (what the kids call the new house). It is where the Hubs' paternal grandparents lived, where his father grew up with his 7 siblings and where his maternal grandparents lived for a few years.

The farm in the 1980's when only the kitchen portion of the original
 farmhouse remained and a mobile home was the residence at that time. 

The piece of the house, mobile home and a few buildings are now gone but there is still the old barn, a corn crib and a smaller shed on the place. It sits on a location where you can see for long distances and has some of the prettiest views at all times of the year.

Spring

Early Summer 

Summer 

Fall 

Winter

We spend a ton of time at the farm with our cattle and other commitments. The children ride their 4-wheelers all over the farm, we had birthday parties and picnics there as well. We even camped this past fall some with our camper. We have joked that we may be living out of the camper this summer there while completing the house...the boys are all OK with that idea. They are usually outside most of the time anyway so if it is for the short term we could probably do it.

My mother-in-law was telling me when the Hubs' grandfather came back from the war he wanted to purchase a farm. He was a prisoner of war and said he wanted a place he would feel free. He picked this location because of the space and how far you could see. It is like you are sitting on top of the world when you are there. It is so peaceful and calming to sit on one of the hay bales in the summer time and feel the wind blow...and boy does it blow up on the ridge. Maybe we should name it Breezy Ridge! ;)

We purchased some of the acres on this farm and have planned for years to build a home there to raise our family. Heck, we even had a floor plan for the home picked out and stuck to the front of our refrigerator for years. We had mulled over and scoped out the location of where the house would go on the property and which direction it would look out. This dream of ours was many years in the making and it seemed just that...a dream.

Then in early Spring of 2013 a friend mentioned there was an old farmhouse in the area that was going to be bull dozed down if it didn't go elsewhere.

Farmhouse..."the big monster"

We contacted the owner, toured it and started the work of researching the costs with carpentry contractors, electricians, HVAC contractors, a concrete company, house movers, plumbers, etc. Then we visited with our financial institution and the next thing we knew our gears shifted from building a house on the ridge to moving one there.

Due to the location of the house and the location of a large creek near it we will have to move the house across approximately 1 mile of farm fields to get it to a road to move it. There were crops in the field by this time and we had to wait until they were harvested in the fall before proceeding with the moving. So we waited.

Meanwhile, all buildings and trees were removed from around the house and she stood all alone awaiting her new home.

While brainstorming ideas of names for my blog I asked the Hubs for his input. I told him loosely what I wanted to write about now with the house move and in the future and he suggested "Up On the Ridge". We continued to brainstorm but I kept coming back to it, so it stuck and here we are.

While waiting for the house movers to come in the fall, we had abstracts updated, surveys completed, estimates compiled, we did dozing work and site prep.

Driveway before dozing 

Driveway after dozing

House site. Little Man looking at the dozer starting up

Excavator working on removing trees

The site is starting to open up.

All that remains is the tree between the apple trees.

Cleaning up the debris after leveling and tree removal.

Site is ready!

We had the basement dug and poured the basement walls in December 2013.

12/16/2013 Breaking ground on the basement

Breaking through the frost. 

The hole is dug. 

The boys were more interested in the new dirt pile!

Little Man checking out the "walk out" portion of the basement.

12/17/2013 Setting up the forms for footings.

Footings poured and forms ready to set up for wall pour.

12/18/2013 Setting up forms for walls.

Pouring walls. 12/18/2013

Pumper truck putting last of concrete in walls.

Walls are poured.

Water repellent applied.

Drainage in and sills on for house to set on. 

We covered the area with hay bales in hopes of insulating the footings some from the cold.

Large bales over the walkout area.

Small bales for some insulation.

More small bales.

We also completed what demolition needed done on the house before moving it including removal of the back addition on the house as well as removing the double brick chimney that went from the roof to the basement floor.

Back of house with addition on it.  

The addition was removed due to goofy floor plan and part was concrete floor.
We will add an addition at the new location.  

Due to holes in the house after removal of the addition we had to cover it with plastic. Poor old gal. A lot of demo but she will be great when we get done with her. :)

The attic where the chimney was. The Hubs
had to remove it with a sledge hammer.
The bricks were dropped from the top down the inside
of the chimney to the basement. 

Second floor chimney removal. 

First floor chimney removal. It was a long tiring process, but he got the job done! Now there is a whole clear through the house. The boys think we need to install a fireman's pole in the space. Hmmm...I'm thinking no on that one. :)

The movers showed up in February 2014 to start jacking up the house for transport.

The lonely house with the movers trailer of beams and equipment.

As of today, the house has been jacked up approximately 12-18 inches and as long as there are no hiccups I am optimistic it will be rolling by the end of the week. Time will tell tho.

Slowly, but surely, our dream is beginning to become a reality! (insert a little squeal of delight here from me.) :)

So, I guess these are the tales of our life "Up On the Ridge". (and how we got there) ;)

Catching Up

It's been 10 days since I have written a post...it has been a crazy 10 too.

In a nutshell it consisted of Valentine's Day, 2 school snow-days, the house movers showed up...well, for a little bit anyway and we lost another calf.

The boys wanted minion Valentines this year so we came up with these.

Even though they were a little tedious to make (75 total of them) the boys loved them and I think they were a hit at school too. Don't know how we are going to top that next year. (Thank goodness for Pinterest! That was where this idea came from too.) I think I have pinned a gazillion pins...of course I've only actually ever used about 10. One of these days though I will make that cool garden fountain out of a tractor tire. Hubs will LOVE to mow around that in the yard. ;)

Friday evening we were heading into the school for a family function and we drove up to plug in the tractor so it would be easier to start when Hubs had to put out hay bales later that night. As we are driving out we see one of our cows was having her calf and it was not alive. This is our 3rd calf loss already this year...not a good way to start out the calving season, or a family night out. Lots of questions from little boys and it put Hubs in a depressing mood. Just another risk of the farming gamble, but one you never get used to. Not sure if the extremely cold winter has anything to do with the losses or if the cows slipped and got hurt. Could be a number of things. We are just hopeful this is the end of the losses.

These shown are our first two live calves of the season...they are just too stinkin cute! Only about 40 more or so calves to go....oh my.

The owner of the business that is moving our house contacted us to let us know he'd be there this week to start putting the beams in place to start the moving process. Well, needless to say Mother Nature had other ideas...snow was in the forecast.

 Snow days are always exciting for the boys...a little nerve wracking for me but then we get into a groove and it's all good. We had the first snow day of the week on Monday due to a brief snowstorm we had in the morning then by 11 am it was 40 something degrees and it was all melting. We went outside and played for almost 2 hours. Built snowmen, scooped sidewalks and driveways, had a snowball fight and of course had to eat a little snow...who doesn't?

Artie, Tank and Little Man with another "baby" snowman.
Stretch in the background is attempting to avoid pictures.

As you can tell, some of my boys are not as happy as others to have their pictures taken! ;)

Tank and Little Man working on building a baby snowman...and eating snow. 

 Our oldest who is 10, "Stretch" and our second son who is 8, "Artist aka Artie" both were good help scooping snow. They were worn out after all the work so I had to finish but I appreciated their help. After nap time, Little Man and Tank woke up and were very displeased to see their baby snowman was melted. (I can't say I shared in that disappointment...the snow was fun but I was pleased to see it gone.) Because of the snow the house movers didn't show up on Monday and said they would on Tuesday instead. :-(

Icicles on the barn. 

Well, Tuesday came and the house movers finally showed up...........at 10. They worked some and were gone by 2:30. (That is a full day of work? Wow. Things have changed since I was in the workplace.) When we originally talked to them we were to move the house after harvest so we could move it a mile across the fields to the highway. We couldn't move it until the crops were out. Then it got delayed until "maybe December" we were told. Then it was "a couple of weeks". We poured the basement because we were told it would be the beginning of January before they could get to it. Then we were told it might be the end of January. Finally, on the 18th of February they show up, are only there for a short time. We were disappointed to say the least. They said it was too muddy and would be back early on Wednesday morning to work while the ground was still frozen. So, I went out at 7:30 that morning. No one was there. Finally at 9 they showed up to work. They were gone by 11 for lunch then back at noon. By 3pm they were gone and had only 2 of the main beams in place.

First main beam getting hoisted into position.

Second main beam getting positioned. 

"Cribbing" that is placed under the main beams in the basement.
The jacks will go on here to help hoist up all the beams when jacking up the house.
Then it will be slid over onto "dollies" aka the wheels in order for house to move.

They had planned on having all of the main beams and 5 smaller side beams in place by the end of the day that day. Disappointment doesn't even come close to describing how we felt that day. So frustrating because we know there is not much we can do. Just praying for patience to get through this part of the process and we can move on to the next step.

Thursday brought another snow day for the boys. The movers also got another day off. Ugh.
For a little break in the chaos of 4 boys cooped up in the house we had a Nerf gun fight. There was screaming, jumping, moans of fake deaths, and LOTS of Nerf bullets all over the house.

Don't mind the bugs in the light cover...(I just haven't gotten to cleaning that yet either!)
but check out all the nerf darts stuck on it...and IN it. LOL!

Snow days mean MANY arguments over who gets the
computer/Ipad/Ipods. Oh and don't forget the remote!

The Nerf gun fight was a lot of fun and when Hubs got home we all attacked him too. I think he enjoyed that welcome home, maybe even more than we did!

It's not very often they are all sitting together and not killing each other.
It's so good when they get along. 

Today the boys had a scheduled day off from school so we decided to go sledding. Little Man has a bit of a cold so he didn't sled but the 3 older boys had a really good time with their cousins. We stopped to check on work at the house and to my surprise they did show up today for work, however at 2:45 there was not a soul in sight. :( There are 2 main beams and now 4 smaller beams in place.

Front with main beams and beam that will go under porch supports.

Small cross beam from exterior of house.

Stretch and Tank checking it all out.

Smaller cross beams in basement.

Cross beams resting on top of main beams ready to jack the old monster up.

Another view of Main beam with smaller cross beam on it. 

We will see what the next few days bring. The weather is causing us the biggest stress...we are to have very cold temps next week which is what is needed to move the house across the field while it is frozen. However, with the slow progress the movers have made we are worried they won't have it jacked up and slid over on the dollies for the move in time. Time will tell.

Meanwhile I will be drowning my worries with my dear friend and confidant...

and I'll be praying Mama Nature and God cooperate and help us with this next few days. :)

Oh, we just want to be ""Up On the Ridge"...ASAP!
Sometimes it seems so close we can taste it...others it just seems like forever away.
I guess we just have to keep the faith...Right? :)