It's Really Coming Together! (From Last week... forgot to post!)

Another crazy weekend, another big leap forward in progress on the house.  The wood floors, tiles, and counter tops went in this week, not to mention the stone on the exterior, as well as all of the exterior concrete; front porch, back porch, sidewalk, and parking pad.  The house looks completely transformed, and we can really start to see what it is going to look like.  We love it more every time we go out there.  If AdventureDad didn't have to work every morning, I think we would just move permanently into the camper until the house was done, because it is also that much harder to leave every Sunday.  Thankfully, we can really start counting down the number of weekends left for making this crazy journey.  Toward that end, we are hauling full loads of stuff out there every time we go, and we reserved our moving van for mid-November.  We will be moved in before Thanksgiving, so that is a relief!  This weekend AdventureDad and I used part of the old horse shed to make a chicken coop (the rest is becoming a machine shed).  We will hang the wire on the chicken yard next weekend, and then the chickens will be joining the horses out there.  Pretty cool!  It also means that I can really start getting the grounds cleaned up here in Gig Harbor...something I definitely need to do before the rain settles in for the winter and the job becomes much more miserable.  I also started the ball rolling for M to switch schools in November.  That really feels like progress toward the move!
While we were working last weekend, a family from down the road stopped by during a stroll to welcome us to the neighborhood (quite a stroll considering it is about 1.5 miles to their house!).  It was a really nice gesture, and made me so anxious to settle into the community.  We have been strangely isolated here in Gig Harbor.   Our house is isolated on 7 acres, and although friendly, our neighbors are elderly and we don't have too much in common.  We have been so busy on the farm (and thus not home virtually every weekend), that I just haven't had the time or energy to "get out there".   Of course the farm is even more isolated in many ways, but at the same time there is a whole community on the county road that shares that isolation.  It  seems to draw people together judging by the number of people we have already met.  I really miss the sense of neighborhood we had in Germany, and I hope to fill that gap.  Time will tell :-)