Its happening so fast!

So I almost don't want to post these because they are already out-of-date; but oh well. I'll take more tomorrow (maybe)! As near as I can tell (cuz my server doesn't let me lay out the photos very easily) the pics are: the front door from the porch, the front door from inside, the back door (which used to be the front door), under the deck (with the dog), and the front view.

Another pic

Another update on the addition...although right this moment we have about an inch of snow all over things. It didn't seem to enhance the look, so I just went with the pic I shot Friday. It is really cool that we can go up on the deck (easily) and I can envision the railings and stone around the columns - then I get all overwhelmed about decision-making. Seems like things are moving fast now!

Books

Wow, I see the picture I posted last week and realize we need to get an update up there! But that will wait until tomorrow, for now I have this somewhat disturbing list of books I haven't read too many of:

Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
Instructions:
Look at the list and color red those you have read.
Italicize the books you LOVE or if you can't put a note at the end.
I am adding those that I have partially read in bold.

1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. A Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

2nd floor

Promised picture! Notice my fabulous porch! It will go all the way down the front, then steps up to the (non-exsistant as yet) deck. Apparently our house is completely not square, and it seems they did not measure anything. The roof is 2 inches shorter on one side than the other - good thing they didn't get the prefabbed trusses! Also see how the entry is 4 feet out, so the new door will be in a different place. Anyone who has been to the house will appreciate being able to walk in and close the door before going up the steps!

porch!!

I am so excited because we can walk in the front door again; and it goes out to (part) of our new porch! It is turning out great (although I think we could have had narrow windows in the basement...but oh well). I will try to post some pics tomorrow, right now the two floors are framed with boards over the solid parts (so you can see all the windows/doors). Next I think is the roof.

pics!

I promised some pics so here they are: first just after they poured the footings last week:




and then today some of the framing - they are making a ton of progress (but it is supposed to snow tonight...)




and just because heres the king of the hill with the fabulous "new" snowblower.

Concrete

Today they poured the floor for the west wing! They did the footings last week, and this should be the last of the concrete work. Now it can snow (and apparently it will!) without bothering the project too much. Our contractor was going insane with the 5 feet of snow we had in Dec - it's still heaped up all around but the roads are all clear. Inside I haven't done as well, I have all these ideas for where to put the piles of stuff, but we don't have the space yet. Also it is time to decide on carpeting and rocks (for the fireplace and porch), and paint etc. So if you have any ideas let me know!