Finally the fun begins!

Well we finally jumped through all of the hoops for the bank. This morning we closed on the loan and fun began. The tree service came to take down the big monster ponderosa tree. The rest of the trees and stumps will be taken down by the excavation company hopefully tomorrow. It was impressive to see how precisely the man could drop the trunk, which shook the ground when it hit. We missed him climbing the tree and cutting the limbs and upper sections off. Andy said it's amazing and scary to see how easy it is to take out a beautiful old tree in just a few minutes with a chainsaw after so many years of growing.

Kip and Andy inspecting the tree.

Costa (Kip's yellow lab) helped to get the excavation started by chewing up some sticks and digging some holes.

Check out the interesting growth on the stump, must have been a fire many years ago.

Our little pile of rocks that we collected to start our drainage rock path down the side of the lot.