Countdown to basement

Josh and I have been extremely busy in the past few weeks, only to get worse in the next few weeks.  As many of your know, Josh's brother Shawn who is a contractor, is coming to Colorado March 14th, for 10 days of working to finish our basement. 
With the anticipation of him coming, we have been working very hard to buy all necessary items for the basement.  The biggest cost is probably the bathroom.  We found a sink at Resource 2000, with brand new faucet fixtures which match our upstairs bathroom for only 20$ !!!  ITs very nice, and so far, the "best buy" of the basement.  We also got a toilet at home depot, and floor tiles on sale too!  The floor tiles are a ceramic tile, which is a creamy light goldish color....Warm tones are the theme in the basement, and this will fit in well.  We still need lights, a bathtub, and a counter for the sink.  
This week we will go to the discount Lighting store we recently just heard of.  We had to watch the entire hour of Fox News, waiting for their promised home remodelers wholesale stores in the Metro area....  (we wrote them all down, at 55 minutes into the hour show, and will be visiting them this week...
Josh put in all new windows in the basement in the past 2 weeks.  Each window was taking him about 3-4 hours because the old windows were sealed into the concrete (it was poured into the window frames) so he had to grind down the concrete for each window to get it in straight.  The downside to this; we could have gotten taller and wider windows maybe 2-3 inches bigger.  Oh well. 
He also is in school, dont forget, so has been busy doing homework, projects, and etc...2 more weeks of class takes us to the week Shawn gets here.  Josh is going to be BUSY in the next 2 weeks!  
He is not alone, I have been taking as many (or more) sewing orders that I can handle in order to offset this basement cost.  We have been saving money for 3 years to get this basement done, but I dont want to use all of our savings to do this, and the extra money is helping out a lot!    The countdown is on, less than 2 weeks until Shawn comes, and 4 weeks until we have a BASEMENT!!!!!!!

Here is the Sunday project:  The french drainage system:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-french-drain.htm

WE are already getting water in our basement, under the new floor.  We knew this was going to be a problem, and when the weather warmed up (this whole week it was above 50 degrees, topping off at 73 degrees on SAturday) So we were finally able to have ground soft enough to dig 1 foot down.  Of course yesterday we had a snow storm, getting 8 inches, but that didn't deter the guys too much.  Jeff, Russ and Josh were all out there digging, and with the 3 of them, they were able to get it done MUCH faster!!! I am sooooo thankful for their help, it would have taken josh all day to do himself, but with the 3 of them, it really only took about 3 hours!  THANKS!   I would look out the window, and each time they would be significantly farther.  I tried to dig, and couldnt even get the shovel in very far. 
The pics below



The start of the ditch on the West side of the house, which is higher than the east side.  There is a perforated pipe in the ditch, so its deeper than it looks! 



The length of the trench, which is the length of the house, east/west.  The ditch is not complete because we didnt have enough rocks.  Josh grossly underestimated how much we needed for the project.  Though everything else went really well!  Despite the snowstorm. 









You can see how the ditch (left side of pic) rounds the tree, and slopes down the side of the house, and is piped out near the road.  IT will be covered with rocks, then the dirt will be shoveled back onto the top of it.