{Mercy Meadow: Stakes Driven}

"Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain."  Psalm 127:1

Today was a BIG day!  We had the final closing on the construction loan, drove the first stake in the ground marking our front door {more on that in a moment} and our builder laid out the entire home with stakes and paint for the foundation to go in early next week.  We also have power approved and hooked up and the portapotty should be delivered today.  ;)

The kids and I met our builder at 8am to drive the first stake into the ground marking our front doors...a little back story needed here:  Mercy Meadow is old farm land with about half of our 10 acres being pasture and half being woods. The portion of our land that we are building on used to be divided into two separate fields for the cattle.  The front field is a touch smaller than the back field with the two being divided by a beautiful, mature cedar tree fence line. {Both fields are both entirely surrounded with the cedar tree fence line, too...which makes it very private and is literally an exact answer to prayer as every single open field property we looked at for 10 years had zero privacy and my hubby would comment every single time how he'd have to plant cedar trees...yeah, God hears everything and has immeasurably more.}  S and the boys have spent many hours painstakingly clipping the old barbed wire out of each tree and them trimming them up as the land hasn't been used in many years.  So, we decided to use that middle tree line as to how we would position the house.  The driveway comes up the left side of the front field and then our home will sit just beyond the middle tree line centered between the opening of the old gate in the middle of the back field...where there is a larger space between the trees...the perfect space to see the front doors.  So, all that to say, our entire home is placed around the front doors being smack dab in the middle of that old gate tree opening.  ;)   It was, obviously, very important that I drive that first stake to mark the door except that doing so seemed much easier in theory than it actually was.  I tried several times but was barely cracking the dirt (hard red clay and rocks) so I handed the hammer to my oldest and let him do the honors.  He got it a little further in before we let our builder take over :) 

We came back to the land after closing at the attorney's office to see it all laid out and ready for digging on Monday...let's hope!