PICS OF KENNEL AREA + GUEST CABIN

First 2 photos are the kennel area...



Last 5 photos are the guest cottage area. It's been raining since March. "Arggg!" We're praying for a stretch of dry weather to pour the two slabs.

DRAFT FLOORPLAN of 1st LEVEL

CLICK SKETCH TO ENLARGE + VIEW:

It is close to perfect, but we're still having problems with the "SECRET PASSAGE" swinging door from the library to the guest bathroom. A sliding door on rollers might be our best option.

We have added 4' X 4' in either direction to give the kitchen more room for entertaining & give us more "elbow room" in the master bathroom.

Porches shall be 8' deep for ~360 degrees. The big house is now 3,750 sq. feet. Oh my! Karen wants to know: "Who is gonna clean such a monster?" Ha. It is now 1,000 sq. feet larger than our 5 bedroom house in the medical district of San Antonio.

GIRLS SWIMMING WHILE WAITING FOR LOG DELIVERY

Jenna and Amy and Mommy sure needed to cool off after tramping around in 95 degree heat up at Highwater this week. We camped Tuesday thru Thursday up at the lake to wait for the delivery truck which came from out-of-state and was a few days late.

Our timeshare is only 10 minutes from Highwater, and we stayed in the mini-log cabins and played mini-golf. Then we swam with mini-tubes in a mini-pool. It was a mini-vacation! It's certainly nice to wait for something when you can stay cool in the meantime.

We were on hand to tell the builders where exactly to pour the foundation for the guest cabin. Good thing, too... because they had the location strung-up 80 feet in the wrong direction by the time we got there. Dad was VERY relieved we were on-hand, as he had an Ocelot in surgery at the Zoo and couldn't get there in time for delivery.

As surprised as we were to see the size of the massive rig that delivered the logs for the guest cabin, unbelievably, it will take not one but THREE semi-trailers to deliver the big house in a few months. Holy Hounds!

LOGS DELIVERED for GUEST CABIN

Logs for the guest cabin got delivered JUNE 13th. The white pine smelled so good and fresh! It almost looked like a giant child dumped his whole box of Lincoln Logs on our street. Amy (bottom picture) posed on the logs, and phoned her Nanny in Canada, saying: "I sat on your house today!"

Road Work - Today - Finally!

Finally broke ground on the kennel road today! Whoohoo. Chris and crew dumped load after load of fill.

The bobcat got a workout too. Lots of trees removed at the kennel site. The kennel driveway even has a culvert now, in case it rains. We are trying to convince the creek to go where we want it to. Ha ha!

SHOWING GRANDMOTHER AROUND

We met the contractor, Bobby, and the kennel builder, Chris, up at Highwater on June 4th. Even got a picture of us "signing the contracts on the dotted line."

The kids had fun showing their grandmother "Nanny" where her guest cabin is going to be. All three men (and some teens belonging to Chris) helped stake out the kennel and big house. The trick was to find the high-ground and avoid the wet-weather creek.

"Private Property" signs were posted. The women-folk almost melted in the 90+ heat. Nobody saw a snake. It was a good day.

We went swimming afterward to cool down. Dad ripped the back of his shirt nearly off completely in the thicket (and got a very funky sunburn). And, somewhere in the forest of cedars, Dad's new pair of reading glasses are making some bugs very happy.