A Quick Trip to South Dakotee

John and I drove out to finally close on the lot purchase, and begin construction on the cabin. It was last June that we took our first trip to the Black Hills, and we were really anxious to get back. We really wanted to start a new tradition with our kids, and have a place full of memories to hand down to them. I used a floor plan I found and made some changes to accommodate more beds, and also fit the covenants of the Powder House Pass development. I found a reputable builder, and a good lender and we finally officially own the land!

We enjoyed our brief stay although we really missed the kids--Emily came to town to watch them for us. 

We drove 16 hrs wednesday night, got there Thursday afternoon, went to Deadwood to gamble and won a few hundred at roulette (my favorite), fri morning we signed the closing docs, and met with the builder who drove us all over to the design centers to pick out all our materials, styles and colors, then to several of his builds, including the home he is building for his wife. We are very happy with our choices and can't wait to see it put together:

 Here are the exterior choices for Heathered Moss green hardiplank siding, with Terratone grey trim, and cultured stone wainscoting.

This is a photo of the builder's home ceiling that we liked for our vaulted ceiling in the main living area. 

These were our interior choices--the dark greyish brown wood stain for the doors, trim and cabinets, with luxury vinyl tile in that grey/brown tone, and the minty green is the color I picked for the island cabinets, with butcher block cabinets. Also, the exterior stone will be used on the fireplace floor to ceiling, with a custom wood mantle.

We also had some good Chinese food with the builder, and Philly Ted's cheesesteaks weren't bad either :) 

The excavation begins next week and if I get updated pics of the progress I will post them. Proposed completion is June! 

Ancestry

I'm set to get my wisdumb teeth out next friday.. so that should relieve my stiff jaw. My dentist plans to get me fitted for invisalign to fix my deep bite and stop my grinding. I'm hoping to get this silent reflux issue under control soon, and I'm getting over the sinus infection.

    During the worst of the illness the past few months, I've been getting into genealogy and decided to do a test with family tree dna, especially since we know very little about my dad's side. 

    This is what came up as my origins, a pretty even split between my dad and mom :

 

Then I got to see a list of users in their database that show up as relatives. The closest relative was a possible 2nd cousin. This woman is filipino hawaiian, and I happen to be related to other relatives of hers, which is notable because her nephew was unsure of certain connections within his family (he's an engineer that does genealogy as a hobby). His aunt is his mom's half-sister, but they were not raised together, and she was adopted. Since islanders don't seem to have kept very good records and they adopted randomly, and changed names whenever they wanted, it has been difficult to trace back any line further than my dad's grandmother, who was named Phoebe Api. However, I was able through Ancestry, to find an old census of when she was growing up, and her parents came to Hawaii from China, where their name was "Ah Ping": 

I also don't know a lot (none of the family does) about my dad's birth. For some reason, his mom Mary Kalili, moved from Hawaii to the Philippines, and had my dad there in Cadiz in 1943, and I found this roster of the USS Brewster, leaving the Philippines heading for Honolulu on Aug 7th 1945, a day after we bombed Hiroshima. My dad's mom married very young and her name was Abarca, but she didn't go to the Philippines with her husband. Many tales were told about who my dad's dad is, but no one knows. He was 2 yrs old by the time they left. And his mom called him "Jerry Abarca" before she remarried another man in Hawaii named Gregorio Gallardo (not his dad). I guess I'll never know, but this roster was interesting, especially because someone wrote "caucasian filipino" by his name:

I was talking with the genealogy expert about my results and we used this oracle program on gedmatch that calculates based on your dna matches, what your most probably make up is, if you were only 2 things. Mine were "52% Malay-cambodian/47%scottish". He said that most Filipino, would show up as Malay/Cambodian. 

On my mom's side, there was a lot of documentation for several generations(each of which had 10 kids!) And we traced back to a Welsh semi-famous historical figure, who came to Pennsylvania and was working with William Penn to help Welsh immigrants get their own land. His name was Dr. Griffith Owen. Pretty cool! 

I started getting into John's side which was cool too, but there's too much to post, so I'll have to update later. We are waiting on both our 23andme dna testing :) 

Cabin plans

Ever since our trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota last July, we have been working toward building a vacation cabin there. We had some hiccups with our rental home here, and fraudulent tenants...and after eviction, and their retaliations during selling, we were able to close on the sale of our Savannah house last December.
      So we have been working with a contractor up there, and officially signed docs to purchase the lot we want, which is in this really cool development called Powder House Pass in Lead, SD. The utilities are built in each lot, and the roads are paved, plus it's very near the ski attractions which are popular there.
      Here are my drafts I made to get bids from builders:

 Then the drafts were changed a bit, and we are deciding on hardiplank siding color:

Here are the drafts the builder sent:

 And this is downstairs:
I've wanted to do built-in bunk beds for a while. So we decided to--which adds to the # the cabin sleeps for renting out :)

Here's an example of what I want:

We are looking forward to creating a family tradition and handing it down to our kids someday. South Dakota is really a great place to vacation!