Eight Acres is the Place To Be

Last Fall, Kevin and I stumbled upon a little over eight acres of ground located on Marine Road between Alhambra and Marine. We weren't looking at the time, but knew that we would relocate in the future to somewhere with a little more space than our home has now. We ended up going so far as to make an offer on the ground, but in the end walked away. We weren't sure if it was the right thing to do or not, and it was too big of a commitment to end up regreting one day. So, we walked away and spent the next six months talking about and looking for ground. We decided that we wanted to be in the Highland or Edwardsville school districts and that Kevin's fifty minute commute needed to be shortened. He has said over and over that the drive never bothered him until we had Maddy, but with a ten hour shift and close to a two hour commute each day it was too much time away from his family. We combed through the paper and shopper each week. We spent countless hours driving with Madelynn napping in the backseat of the car looking for the perfect place to plant our roots and raise our family. We ended up comming full circle, back to the piece of land that started it all. So, in April we called our realtor, Bob Freeman, and asked him to show us that ground again. The owneres met us and we hiked the boundry lines, and that was it. We left knowing that it is where we wanted to be. It is a picturesque spot, and we have plans that will make it even better. In May the ground officially became ours. I wanted to take pictures to document the process of us building our new home. Kevin wanted a chance to play on his four wheeler (although I'm sure that wasn't too fun for him with a preggo wife on the back constantly telling him to be careful and to go slow) ans so we spent an hour or two looking at the ground and meeting the neighbor. Here are some pictures.

This is what the area that will one day be our drive way looks like now.

LOTS and LOTS of WEEDS.

The little road that connects to Marine Road, and more weeds.

This picture shows the majority of our property. It is right after the tree line and is most likely the view we will have from our back porch.

This is part of the front section of our land.
Unfortunately, a lot of these trees will have to be taken down to make room for our driveway.

The next step in our process is to get bids for excavation and the driveway after the farmers have taken their hay off. Hopefully this step will be completed with in a month or two, and we can move onto step three. Planting trees.

I know this was kind of a boring post, no pictures of our cute little Maddy Mae. I'll do more of those later today or tomorrow.