Visiting the lot is more expensive than you might think...

They poured our foundation on Thursday (I'll add pictures when it stops raining or when we board the ark, whichever comes first!) Anyway, we went out to see this very exciting time in the building process. So, as we stood there in the rain watching these guys work (which actually, now that I think of it sounds sort-of mean, huh?) we start talking to our contractor. He is also building his own house right now. I am asking questions about the whole concrete process and he starts explaining how they'll pour his house differently because he's having all concrete floors. He's having them dye the concrete before it's even poured, then they stamp it to look like stones or they use a large stamp and come back after it's cured to cut it into stones. This is fascinating to me because it seems so - crafty. Very un-macho. Almost girly. To think of these guys working their rear-ends off out there in the rain to go about stamping was humorous to me. Like later they might make a scrapbook of their time together making floors- yeah, probably not.

I do have a point, I promise, I'm getting there. So, the contractor goes on about how the stamping of all their floors and then we are side-tracked by a conversation about a well house. I then must leave the lot to go to Duncan's end of school picnic. After having a water gun fight in the rain and feeding Duncan pizza while I sat in a First Graders chair (and they say the life of a SAHM isn't glamorous!) we returned to lot to- well, basically to gawk at the very large rectangle of concrete that we are spending all of our money on. And that's when it happened, all the thoughts from earlier in the day became clear in my mind. I cannot have the lovely stamped concrete floors in my house because we have already agreed that's too hard for Duncan, and really it's probably too hard for all of us. However, that doesn't mean I can't have them on my porch. My beautiful back porch where I will sit and blissfully watch my children play in the lovely, tranquil swimming pool. Shhhhh! You don't have to ruin it for me. Right now it's simply a pile of dirt so we can pretend all of that is true. My back porch! Suddenly, I need stamped concrete porches. I explain my thoughts to my husband who was all TOO eager to go spend our money. As they back the cement truck up to the back porch to begin pouring, Casey runs to the foreman of this crew. He begins explaining -which I'm thinking went something like, "Look, my wife is a pain in the butt. She has changed her mind AGAIN!" So, I stand there and watch back and forth- the cement truck, Casey,the cement truck, Casey, and on and on until the foreman yells something in Spanish and they stop just before they were to pour the cement into the form for the back porch. And now we wait until Tuesday when both our front and back porch will be dyed, poured and stamped to look like stones. And we look at the budget and scratch our heads.