Well, like Jason said, I went out to our site today and took some pictures of the start of the excavation. Unforunately it was raining quite heavily in Calgary today, and that caused some problems in terms of getting really close with the mud and all, but I got a few decent photos to at least give everyone an idea of how things are looking right now. It's so exciting to see the work actually starting to progress! It felt like we were at such a stand still for a long time, and as you read, Jeff informed us of the delays, but it's definitely a relief to see the work being done!

There are a couple of other plots of land that have the actual cement walls up in the basements now, which means the cement guys are close by, which hopefully means our basement will be framed in soon too!

Things are definitely starting to become more of a reality for us, and I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am! Wedding preparations are going very well, the house is starting to come along....Such big changes and so much excitement!

Hopefully we'll have more news more often now that the process has begun! Thanks for your patience!

They've started excavation on the site today! Hooray! Ashley will be driving by tomorrow with the digital camera so she'll try and get some quick snaps. And so it begins!

Next week we have an appointment with Nu-Way Floor Fashions to make our choices for the house interior - they'll help us pick the flooring, paint colours, etc. I'm hoping the interior designers they have on staff will help us make the right choices for the style we want. Ashley and I have a vision of the style of interior we want to have, but interior design isn't something either of us are good at. I'll see if I can upload some photos of styles and designs that we like. But here's a hint: Asian/Euro minimalist. Sounds like a painting style. ;-)

One of the nice things about Bay West is that they're not so big as to make us feel like a cog in the machine - so far, we feel like we're important to them, which is a nice change from when I was involved with building my condo. Jeff from Bay West emailed us today with this bit of news:

"I thought I would keep you up to date on the start of excavation. After talking with the developer as to when we can get in and start digging, they informed us that the contractor they hired to construct the retaining wall ran out of stone and had to bring stone in to complete the wall. In the big picture what does this mean? Well about a week to 10 day delay as of Friday last week, so we are not off to a great start, but not to worry once we are, you'll see things take off. If you have any questions feel free to drop me a line."

Not exactly great news, but being told about it right away is nice - building a house is a wild ride where things don't always go as well as you'd expect, so the best you can hope for is to be well-informed.

On Sunday I was talking to a friend of mine at church named Phil - he's a framer (the guys who build the wooden frames for the house after the hole is dug in the ground), and we were talking with him about the shortage of framing crews in the Calgary market right now. He said that there's a massive shortage among most builders, and that we'd be VERY lucky to get into our house by Jan 25th. I'm hoping that the month of "padding" we have on the possession date will allow us to absorb minor snags like this, but we'll see...