Announcing . . . a pile of dirt

James, Molly, and I are building a house (or rather having a house built by Hallmark Homes).

It's been quite the process for the last couple of weeks, but now there is photographic evidence that it is really happenigng. We first had a lot.

Then, two days ago there was a big hole in the ground.

Now, we have footings!

Pretty cool, huh! We are excited! Eventually it will look similar to this, but flipped around with the garage on the left side.

We hope to be moved in before Thanksgiving. The house will be red brick with brown stucco and siding on the outside and a lot of brown on the inside. Here is the floor plan with a few modifications (but again, flip it around, garage on the left).
Now what about all the other stuff? We're going to be renting out our townhouse near the end of the year. We closed on our refinance yesterday, so we can now legally and ethically rent it. Everything has kind of squeaked through and the stars have aligned for all of this to work out. We almost bought a house, then decided it wasn't the right thing to do. However, that process opened the door for us to build and building is something we NEVER thought we'd be able to do. We are very grateful for how everything has panned out (with a little divine intervention, I think) and we feel pretty good that we have made the right decisions. (Large sums of money still really scare me, though.)

As a side note, if anyone knows some good, clean, responsible people who would be in the market to rent a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath town home in West Valley near the end of this year, keep us in mind!