A Long Overdue Update!!

Gosh we have been so busy!!
First off, here's a sweat equity hours update!!
We need 89 more VOLUNTEER hours (these are the ones that can be done by friends/family and Bill and I)
I have 52 more hours to get for construction hours. the difference is, now Bill has been able to take over my construction hours. We decided that for health and safety reasons (my placenta issues and just being 8mos preggers!!) it would be much better for Bill to take them over for me. That's it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now here's for the house:
-basement is completely framed out (thankyou, thankyou Uncle Ross for hammering away at that!!)
-they made use of the space under the stairs and beside the bathroom to create a storage area (I am sooo thankful I spoke up about that and asked!!! It would've been such a waste of space otherwise!!)
-the majority (or all by now) of the heating and electrical has been done!!
-the outside is complete except for the rock decoration on the front and the veranda needs to be completed
-we have chosen the carpet/lino/paint and have decided where we want carpet and where we want lino
-the eavestrophing (ok don't know how to spell that other than phonetically!!lol) is done!

It doesn't look like we'll be able to move before Christmas and new baby, but it shouldn't be much longer after that. possibly the first couple of weeks of January.
We are still praying for a miracle though!!! I guess the next obstacle will be waiting on the guy who comes to do the 'mudding' for the drywall...apparently sometimes he is on the ball and get's her done and other times he takes a while to get moving.....guess which we're hoping for!!!
We were pleasantly surprised to find out about the heating and electrical though, because we had heard the same things regarding that and it worked our quickly!!

I'm hoping Bill will be out there tomorrow, but we'll see!!

For now, here's a pic:

We have a house number!!!!

Thankyou to Uncle Mike, Aunt Elaine, Uncle Ross, Aunt Linda, and Val for putting in some hours for us!! We appreciate it immensely!! You can never know what a difference you're making in our lives!! We love you!

God bless!!
Penny

Update!!!

Finally, a long awaited update!!!
First here's some recent pics!!

and...

*stairs that lead up to our living room*


*our basement*

So here is the wonderful blessings we've found out!!
-We will have a dishwasher!! Originally the homeowners had to purchase their own, but they recently decided that homes will come with dishwashers and we will have one!!
-we will have in-floor heating in the basement!! A company donates 6 systems per year to Habitat and we are one of the lucky ones this year!!!
-Our basement is being framed this week!!! We also learned yesterday that they will be adding a 3rd bedroom in the basement for us to make room for the new baby!!!
This is a wonderful blessing and brings the total to 6bdrms for us!


We will also be picking out our flooring and paint this week, as well as out counter tops!! Soooo very exciting! We also get to to choose where we want carpet and lino.
Both Bill and I will be able to work on our house this Saturday, so I will take pics and update after that!

Exciting things!!
God bless!!

Hours Update for August 5th 2008

Hurray!! Bill worked so hard this weekend!!
On Saturday he worked on our house and yesterday he got to work at the other site.
So, as of today, we need 301 hours!! I joked with Bill that couldn't he have just pushed the crew for ONE.MORE.HOUR! lol Next Saturday, they are planning on being at our house again. It will be awesome when I can start getting some construction hours logged, we're not too sure how we're going to be able to swing that......need to brainstorm on that one!

blessings!!

House Pics!!

These pics were taken today!!! Bill ended up working on it today and will be on Sunday as well!! Whoohoo!!














It's coming!!!!

Hours Update!!

As of today's date we need 321.5 hrs!! Getting there!!
That number will of course change again after this weekend! Whoohoo!!

God bless, Penny

Update!!

Just thought I'd post a quick update!
Our house has doors and windows!!! Bill will be building on it this Saturday, so I will get him to get some pics.
401 hours to go!! That will change this weekend because we are earning hours all weekend!

Keep us in your prayers that we will earn our hours quickly and the volunteers will be plentiful to get this done! I am praying every night for a miracle...that we can have a move in date of December 1st. It will indeed be a miracle, but nothing is beyond our glorious Father's ability!

Right now, the biggest thing is earning hours. Without hours, it doesn't matter if the house is built...we CANNOT move in!

Thankyou for your support, love and prayers!

Framing Day Saturday May 3rd 2008

This day was one of the most amazing days I've ever experienced. I still get choked up thinking about it and probably will for a very long time. The memories that were made that day are etched in my heart. I will walk through my house in the future and look at the roof or the walls and have such beautiful memories of watching people come together to build our house. It was such an awesome time, it's one of those days where I would go back and do it again and again.

We were able to meet OUR girls, well 2 of them at least. That was incredible, they are amazing people!
Anyways, as you will see in the pics, the 'skeleton' of our house is built. They will be putting it on hold until July, so as to enable them to work on the other projects. Which is great because we will get hours by helping at the other sites, as well as our friends. We are so very blessed to be a part of this whole experience.

So, here's the pics!!!
483 hours to go!!!!








I think if you click on the pics it will take you to the album to see the others!

God bless, Penny

House Plans!!!

We got to see our house plans!! Whoohoo!!! It's a bi-level and I love the open concept on the main floor. Main floor has living room, dining room, kitchen, full bathroom, and 3 bedrooms. The basement will have a small little rumpus room type area, 2 more bedrooms and my laundry room. The windows for the basement are HUGE 48"X48" if I remember correctly. Our house faces north, so we'll have nice sun in our backyard all day for the most part. I love that my kitchen window and dining room window have east facing windows, it will be lovely making breakfast with the morning sun streaming through! Our front has a super cute little veranda that will be covered, I can hardly wait to sit on there sipping tea with my hubby watching the community..yay!!!!

Tuesday we will meet our family partner and learn more about how we go about earning our hours and how our friends and family can. Then Saturday is the big day...FRAMING DAY!!! I can hardly wait to meet everyone, it will be just awesome! I'm a little nervous of course, but it's that nervousness that you get just before going on stage, that totally excited kind!!

I'll post either after our meeting with our Habitat family partner or later this week.

God bless, Penny!!!

Update from April 18th meeting

Well, we signed our first batch of paperwork! We also were able to meet a few more Habitat staff!

We also learned a bit more about how things work and first on the list is our sweat equity hours. These right now, are the MOST important thing to get done. We CANNOT move into our house until ALL 500 hours have been completed. It is going to be a difficult process for us simply because of our limitations (not all fitting in our van, me not driving), but I have faith the Lord will continue to provide as He has done all along. We will meet at some point next week with our family worker (he/she will be the one who helps keep track of our hours and helps line up our volunteering to get our hours....I hope he/she is creative!!)

So, here's a breakdown of how sweat equity works:
~We need a total of 500 hours
~Both Bill and I must contribute 75 hours each ON SITE building for a total of 150hrs
~200 hours can be fulfilled by family and friends through volunteering hours at the building site (ours or the other families chosen this year) or at one of the two ReStores in the city or in the Habitat Office.
~Our Children (because they are 12 and under) can also contribute 25 hours each!!

Our biggest obstacle will be when both Bill and I need to attend classes or other things together....I'll need a babysitter, which can be hard to come by. Or, there will be times when we ALL need to attend something together and I will need to pull on someone to drive with us and take a kid or two. So, this will be a humbling experience for me on a personal level, besides the obvious. I am not one to ask for help, but to make this happen, I'm going to have to pull on everyone!!!

We also were able to see a picture of the beautiful young ladies who stepped up and made this happen. Four VERY special teenagers from a Christian Church in our city stepped up and raised approx$46 000 of the necessary $110 000. The church is raising the rest by donations and fundraising from individuals and businesses. I can hardly wait to meet these ladies and thank them so very much. It was awe inspiring to look at their picture as they presented the first cheque, it brought tears to my eyes instantly!! As one of the staff members said, "We cry all the time around here!!" No Kidding!!! I don't think I've stopped!!lol

They didn't have the floorplans/bluprints there, so she will email those to me as soon as she can, but we did get to see this:


THAT'S OUR HOUSE!!!!!


Amazing huh?!?!

Bill and I didn't take a drive up there, the weather was awful. These are pics that Habitat had taken.

So, as I find out more, I'll post more!!

God bless, Penny

Welcome!!! Our very first Post!!

Here you will find updates regarding the progress of our Habitat for Humanity Home.
First, I will share a bit of how we got here!

Last June in 2007 I found out that a cyberlist friend was having a Habitat home built for her and her family. They too, have a larger than average family. It got the wheels in my head turning and I thought "What if WE could do this?". Something in me really pushed to find out more about how to become a partner with Habitat.

We learned that there was going to be a meeting on September 12th (My birthday!!) explaining how Habitat works and how to apply. So, we attended! We were totally excited about how the program works and that we qualified to apply!! So, we began the process of gathering information and putting together our application.

After our application was accepted, we were invited to come into the office for a meeting with the head family worker (this is the first phase of acceptance). Our meeting went really well and we were told that there a group of townhouses that were going to be built and this is where we would live should we be accepted through the next phases.

In November, we received a call that we had been accepted and were now onto phase two, a home visit. Two workers came to our house to meet with us and the children. We talked about what obstacles were in our way in our current living situation and what we thought it meant to become a family partner with Habitat. We did a walk through the house and were surprised to discover that on top of issues we were already aware of, there are numerous other code violations in our rental house!

After that home visit we waited and waited to find out if we had been accepted as a Habitat family. I couldn't wait any longer and called Lili at the end of February. Apparently there had been a family emergency with one of the board members (they make the final decision after the home visits) and we would find out within a week.

Lili called back the first week of March, YES! We had been accepted as a family, however, our city messed with the plans and decided the garages needed to be bigger, thus eliminating the Chance of us being able to have 5 bedrooms. We were heartbroken. Lili assured us that she would keep us on file incase a lot became available before July. If not, we would need to start the whole application process again come September!

Which brings us to now. On Monday, April 14th shortly after 2:30pm the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw that it was Habitat, my heart skipped a beat as I pressed the answer button! It was Lili!! In that moment, our lives changed for the better. As her words came through the phone lines "We have a home for you!!" I was speechless..the tears started rolling. Tears of complete joy. The kids began jumping up and down and wooting. What a dream come true, what an answer to our prayers!!!

The group that is sponsoring us has no idea the joy they have brought to our hearts! I can hardly wait to meet them and give them all a huge hug! What a blessing!

PLease bear with me as I build this site, and join us on our journey as we build our HOME and our DREAM!

God bless, Penny