Lake house update

Here's some pics of mom and dad's house. These were taken a week or two ago. We got lucky and a bulldozer and skid loader were moving dirt around the house that day. I didn't take a good picture of their view of the lake from the house. I will have to do that next time. But truthfully, you can't see much of it because of the trees.

This is a picture of the back of the house

The basement windows are all below ground, so they all have little window wells like this. These are the windows under the kitchen.

In the basement, this is the circle in the back of the house.The light you see is a bedroom door.

This is a pic from the bedroom door (see above pic).The bathroom door is on the left, circle under the kitchen in the middle.

Stairs and other bedroom door

Storeroom/utility room with the insulation

This picture is upstairs and I'm standing right inside the front door, stairs are to my left.Ahead you see the back circle and mom and dad's bedroom door. The fireplace is the dark thing on the right.

Front door and porch. The boys loved playing in the sandy dirt.

And of course they thought the machines were way cool!

This picture is taken from the sliding doors in back. There will be a deck out here eventually.

Upstairs guest bedroom. You can see the sliding glass doors to the left.

Fireplace (two sided) and front door. You can see the dormer windows at the top of the picture

Picture taken from the living/family room. Kitchen on the left, front door and stairs to the right

Adam didn't care so much about the house....just the dirt. :)

Another fun suprise! They're installing part of the geothermal heating/cooling system. (that's the big concrete circle thing)

Kitchen. There will be an island where the red and blue wires/tubes are coming out of the floor.

I'm standing at the front door looking toward the kitchen/pantry.The door to the garage is slightly right of center and the guest bathroom is the little sliver you see. The pantry is far left.

I didn't get a picture, but the last day we were here, they had framed the porch so they could pour concrete so it wont just be dirt. :)

After they got the big circle thing into the ground, they dug a trench to the house.

They were in the middle of painting the siding. This is the color it will be (kind of a barn red). Mom recently told me they starting putting it on the house.

The other great thing about the lake is it has lots of room to ride bikes!

Chicago

A week ago we went and visited Andy's sister and her hubby. They live up near Chicago so we took the opportunity to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo. The boys had a great time playing with Jeremy and Natalie. But their favorite toy was a couple of boxes full of packaging peanuts. We coudn't keep them out of them! But they did spend time playing in the sandbox and with the other toys the house contained (mostly Jeremy).
We really liked the zoo. Andy and I were amazed at how close you could get to the animals. And they had areas to see the animals indoors as well as outside (like the cats). It's hard to take good pictures of the boys with the animals at the zoo, but I managed a few. :)

New Road and Riding Trikes

Alex learned to ride his trike in the last couple weeks. It's mostly due to the fact he finally grew enough to reach the pedals. :) Every day the boys just go out on the new concrete slab and ride their bikes. Adam rides his bike Flinstone-style and is just as fast as Alex. Actually, Adam can turn better than Alex. He rides around one handed and looking off to one side or another, yet he always turns at the last second and never hits anything. We use chalk and draw roads on the concrete for the boys to follow. Alex does a good job of staying in the lines. Adam just doesn't care and rides wherever he wants. Alex likes to put some tools in his orange basket and put in on his handles. That way he has his tools with him whenever something "breaks."

Fixing my washer and dryer

This past week they started paving the new road behind our house. They still have a ways to go, but it was exciting to see them working so close again. From what I can tell, they only did half of one side of the road. So I'm thinking they'll be back there again 3 more times in the future...

I dont really know what this thing did.

As far as I can tell, it just moved down the road and made a long hill of fine dirt.

View of road from the bridge.

These aren't in order, but the next few pics are of the paving train.This is the last of 3 machines. I think it puts the final finish on the concrete.

The first machine. The dump trucks were lining up to dump their fresh concrete into it.

Machine #2. Smoothed the concrete? So did all the guys standing around behind it.

The first machine again.