Saturday, June 5, 2010

then and now

Every now and then when I get to feeling frustrated with the pace of our building project, it helps to reflect on how far we've come.

One year ago yesterday, this is what we had constructed so far at our building site:


That's the formwork for our basement concrete walls. You'll note there is no snow on the ground and the aspens are starting the leaf out. Later, after pouring the concrete, we painstakingly took down all the lumber, stacked it, and later used it to build the rest of the framed house.

This is what our home looked like yesterday morning:
There's a lot of progress represented in one year here. Mixed in with all the lumber, steel, concrete, polystyrene, and silica in this home is a lot of love, blood, sweat, tears, a whole year of growth for all of us, muscles and skills developed and honed, decisions made, accomplishment and loss, dreams and hopes for the future of our family.

In fact, our home which just one year ago looked like not much at all now looks like a home. While the pace of our project can't match a production home in a flat development in a city without so much snow, I feel like we've made a lot of forward progress in this year. A lot to be proud of.

It's a treat to have such physical evidence of the labors my family has made in the past year, but there are so very many ways that families grow and develop. How has your family moved forward this past year?

1 comment:

  1. Wow, Travis your home building project is really inspiring. A family is such an organic thing and we have all grown separately and together in the past year in so many amazing ways. Ari's love of music has broadened to include both jazz and The Clash- all of her own discovery. Her exploits in anime have led to discovery of Go an ancient Chinese game (The first board game ever) and ballet, which she will start taking classes in about week. Mina continues to amaze us with her computer skills and her blossoming vocabulary. John and I are of course along for their discovery as well as my own adventures in gardening and John's continued discoveries in business management and leadership.

    You are in my thoughts a lot dear friend and may your project speed along happily.

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