House build: week 2

This week the goal was to get things ready to pour the pad. First they put down insulation under and surrounding the pad... in the form of these styrofoam sheets - which are put together to form blocks.

Kind of like lego... or maybe meccano! Burgess and Greg helped out for a while. Clicky-clacky... or more like squeaky-squeaky, so they tell me.
How cool is that?!

Then the styrofoam block things get filled with more concrete...

which gets leveled off by young boys (who get paid in ice cream).

The house build begins!!!

January 11th, 2010... and the foundations were dug...

Yes. It looks very much like an archeological dig, but it has been such a long haul getting to this point.

Not that the problems had stopped. It seemed like the phone rang every morning for Greg to solve the latest issue that was going to stop things for the day... but he got things sorted.

And the first week finished with the foundations poured.

Ahhh, bliss!

How we spent our summer vacation

This summer has been great! We're actually now in the middle of the season, but I have been back at work for two weeks and Burgess only has one more week before school starts (whoo-hoo!). Between managing the house (more on that next post) and an exciting business deal that he is working on (more on that some other time also)... not to mention managing Burgess, Greg has also had his hands full for the past couple of weeks.

So... perfect time to sum up what we've been doing this summer. And so I give you the highlights:

Mapua has got to have the most interesting roadkill!

We went for a hike to Mt. Arthur.

OK, so we were supposed to climb Mt. Arthur... but they put me in charge (at least Greg should have known better). I missed the turn-off on the path (It was really obscure!) and we ended up hiking around Mt. Arthur.

But we found some amazing spots!

5 adults, 7 boys... 24 km!!

Nelson has also had a lot of really amazing live music this summer. Great in itself, it also provides...
magical hippy dancing!! This picture says it all!

And then I give you, Tito the puppy. He's a delight!