basement

Yay!  The basement is finished! (mostly)  The important parts  are finished.  My friend's Dad, Gary Singleton of Singleton Construction finished it for us.  Most of the dry wall was already put up when we moved in.  We just had to tweak some things a bit.  We moved around some of the heating, electrical, and some walls, put in some closets.  When I say we, I mean Gary... we watched.  Really the only part I contributed was the painting.  The awful wretched painting.  Ben gets home pretty late with his new job in S.L., and has been a bit busy with his new calling, YM president.  So the painting fell to me. Which is great, because I just like to do things my way anyway.  My Mom came to help one day, and Sharla babysat another day.  Most of the time, my kids were watching t.v. and eating a large amount of whatever snacks they found.  They were pretty much on their own for a week.  When things got back to normal, they didn't seem to like me telling them what to do again.  They had gotten too used to their freedom.   Here is Luke's room and the family room.  We still need to get the fixtures in the bathroom and computer room shelves in.     

 

family room before

 

 

Luke's room before

 

 



 

Luke's room before

 

 



coming down the stairs.  You can see the bathroom wall though the door way, we moved it to the right 15 inches to make the bathroom bigger.

 



We took out the wall with the picture on it to make the family room bigger.  Ben ripped up the tile on the landing and put down some new tile just in front of the garage door.

 

looking into the bathroom through the laundry room

 



family room

 

Now looking down the stairs is much more open

 

 We have since put up blinds, got the rest of the door knobs,  and moved in some furniture (I just don't want to clean again to take more pictures :))

  Our downstairs isn't that big,  more like cozy, but I was adamant that we find room for a game closet.  That was the first thing I moved downstairs were all the games. 

 You can  see the computer room door through the laundry room

 Luke's room

 

 We decided he should get this room because of the shelves on the wall.  Now he has plenty of space for his legos.  Luke and Abigail were a bit sad to part at first, but they soon got used to/excited about the idea of having their own rooms.

 don't you just love storage?  I love his closet.

 

Ben put some shelves up in our space under the stairs.  I love it.  You don't get to see the before picture of this closet, it's quite embarrassing.  Now I just need to fill up the shelves some more. 

One day I was putting some groceries in here and

Luke said, "Is this the food for when we don't have any more food?" 

 Me- "Yes, some of our food storage"

Luke-"I don't see anything I like, I'm going to starve!" 

Me- "well you like applesauce, and chicken noodle soup, you can eat that"

Luke-" Oh, and there's ketchup!  Ok, good I won't starve, I love ketchup!"

 

Maybe only family thinks this is funny, because they know how much he loves ketchup.

 

 



Easter

 We had a great Easter this year.  It's probably the only day when I love having 1:00 church.  We played all morning and ate tons of candy.  Then the kids got all gussied up for church.  After we went out to the Dawson's for a delicious Easter dinner.

Birthday Boy! Luke is 8!

 

Luke is eight!  I can't believe it...

 

Luke is smart, loving, caring, funny, dependable, and all around great kid.

I'm so glad he's here to balance the scales a bit.  Sometimes it gets a little too overrun with girl stuff in our household. 

 

Luke's favorites-

 

Toys- Legos and weapons.  There are a bunch of neighborhood boys that usually show up daily for some fighting in the backyard, they have quite an assortment of weapons... guns, lightsabers, drumsticks, wands, swords, etc...

Sport- baseball to play, football to watch

Books- Harry Potter and anything Star wars

Song- Les Mis soundtrack.  He's obsessed.  We usually wake up to Luke turning on music in the kitchen to listen to during breakfast.  He has seen parts of the broadway musical, but only the parts with Javier, the bad guy.  That's the only reason why he really likes it I think, because he loves the bad guys.  My girls love it too, they just like the girl songs, or the sad songs as they call them.

Subject- Math, Art, and reading (I Guess he can't pick a favorite)

Goal in life- be funny and be a cop

Favorite thing to do- go places with Dad

Food- hamburgers

Color- black and red

 

Luke's bday fell on Easter weekend this year, so it got a little hectic with all the activities. 

Friday night before his bday, we had a friend party.  He wanted Harry Potter, and a million kids.  I got him to narrow it down a bit, and only invited 12 I think.  I have been a bit consumed with our basement painting, so I was a little behind on getting the party organized.  Luckily 12 boys don't care what goes on as long as they can eat and run around. 
We had wand decorating, potions class, frog hunt outside, golden snitch piñata, and pizza, cake, and icecream.  Luke said it was a great party, so as long as the bday boy was happy, so was I. 



 

 

Shelley came and helped me since Ben was still at work, and I was very grateful for her.  It's nice to have some moral support when things get a little crazy.  

 

 

 

On Saturday the 30th, Luke's real bday, we went out to breakfast with G & G Dawson, they took him to the store to pick out a present after,  then we headed over to G &G Jenkins for an Easter egg hunt/bbq/birthday celebration.  Luke got a million (it feels like a million) lego sets and some money, with which he would like to go and buy more legos.  I told him to hold out and see if there is something else he would like more... fat chance I'm sure.



Luke said it was the best birthday ever, thanks to everyone who made it special for him!



March 2013

 We started March with a farewell party for Eli.  He has left the country again to work in Afghanistan.  We all miss him so much, It's a little lonely being the only ones for Sunday dinner at the Dawson's. 

 

The whole family (besides the Dawson's in Indiana) went bowling and then out for Chinese.  I love getting together with everyone, and so do the kids... they miss their cousins.

 

 

 

 

 Hailey has now moved to a big girl bed, so no more crib snuggles.  She loves being in a bunk bed with Carly.

 

 

sweet girls

 

Abigail requested a picture with a new headband

Luke's looking so grown up.

Ab really likes her picture taken

So do all the girls :)

February 2013

Wow, it's been a while.  I usually never get this behind with my blogging, but I have an excuse.  My laptop fizzled and made some popping noises, then I saw some smoke.  So that computer was out.  Our desktop was surrounded by tons of junk while we were finishing our basement.  I also misplaced the camera cord for a while. 

 

Well... here we are, I will do a recap of February.  The girls LOVE posing for pictures.  They are constantly asking for me to take their picture.  Most of the times now I just pretend and make a clicking noise, which, they disapprove of.

 We got a new bed.  Aunt Courtney never had any girls, so we got her cute day bed from when she was little.   The girls love it, and we finally figured out the switching of the bedrooms and it now belongs to Abigail.  We might do some fun stuff and paint it, but I might never get around to it either :)

 My parents got the kids pizza kits from papa murphy's this year for Valentines.  They kinda freaked out about it.  Seriously, I should get these a lot, because they kept talking about how delicious it was for days afterward.  I think they just liked making and eating their own pizza. 

 

February was pretty random, but great all the same.