Pouring the footings

Exciting progress over the last two days. Yesterday, the footings for the foundation were placed and today the concrete was poured and rebar installed.

When we just had the big hole in the ground, the house looked tremendously large. Now that we're seeing how the rooms lay out in real space, it doesn't seem so dauntingly large.

We've been going by the site so much that we've already made friends with our neighbors, whose house you can see in the bottom photo. It will be wonderful to be in a neighborhood with lots of other families. This will be a first for us.

We intended to make it out to Goddard today to look at cabinetry, but ended up bowling instead. I came in last. I guess it's a little too unsporting for me to use the bumpers, too.

Our GC says that, for now, we're the only house he has going. That's good news for us, since it means that our schedule should be pretty tight. He is thinking about putting in a spec house across the street from us soon, but has no plans until the framing is up and we're well under way.

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Given that we've moved to a large town in comparison to the town we're coming from, it's been surprising to have a few of those small town connections pop up. Our aforementioned neighbors are friends with our builder, and today we learned that our new doctor is a neighbor to Patrick's boss. Sometimes Manchester, VT, felt a little too small, but those connections--once you made them--helped you feel a part of the place. It's nice to feel that happening here. It's starting to feel like home.