Life back to "Normal"

It's DONE!!! Steve finished the construction last Wednesday, we took the rest of the week to get everything clean and put back. I can't tell you how NICE it is to have our house back AND an awesome new room to enjoy. As usual Beave did a great job and the room is wonderful.


This is the basement before... way before. These are pics from Steve's buying of the house. We changed some things along the way but it mostly looked like this until last month. The sliding glass door is gone, three new windows are now in its place. The curtained shelf above the door was taken out a year+ ago and Beave put in an attic storage with a pull down ladder...




2 months ago Beave remodeled our laundry room, he switched out the bifold doors for a pocket door and put in some DEEP shelves for me! During demolition we discovered that at one time this ENTIRE room was the blue of the doors...
The month before that he redid the stairs...




There is now a door where this window and wall heater used to be.




Drum roll please... This is it!! I tried to get the room from every angle, more info and more pictures than most of you will want but I am really excited about it all.




New stairs and laundry room door.





One of my FAVORITE parts about the new room is the toy "room". It has not even been a week but I love it! Johnny's favorite game is "dump 'd out" and he does just that, dumps out all the toys into a big pile! With this set up I am not walking through the "toyses" pile all day long. I still don't love it as we have to clean up all the toys which were never played with other than their brief moment of glory as they were dumped out of their bucket. BUT this makes it so much better.




The toy room even comes with walls for writing on. We got the idea from some friends and Beave had to do it. For the most part the marker has stayed on the walls...
The window we took out to make room for the new door found a home here. I love all the natural light in here now!




And speaking of light, here are the new windows. They are great, we wished they faced the forest though instead of the road...




In case some of you were concerned about the fate of Bucky the Beaver, here is proof that he is doing well. Someone suggested he should find a new home, in the attic or something but don't worry the idea was promptly shot down.




Oh yeah, here is the one thing left to do, before next winter we have to tile behind the fire place. Beave was worn out and I was done with construction so we opted to wait on it.





The new door, I am a big fan of blinds inside the door.




The desk's new home along with coat hooks and shoe bench.




I am really happy about this room being done even though Johnny still calls it the construction... I am extra happy because the rest of the projects for the summer are outside things!!! Oh and "have a baby" moved to the top of the to do list...

Johnny's Birthday!!

Our little Johnny Boy turned 2 on Saturday! It was an eventful day with daddy doing construction and mommy in charge of a primary activity but we got it together for the party that evening and he had a great time.
He is such a cute kid, you also get to see his new hair cut, yes I did it myself and yes it will shortly be followed by a second hair cut to "fix" the first one.



Kyla and I put the decorations up during Johnny's nap on Friday, when he saw them he called the decorations his birthday. When he walks into the dinning room he says "my birthday!" The decorations are still up today, I just love how excited he is about them. Not many more years I can get that kind of reaction from a little crete paper...



Johnny is into cars, trains, and balls. Oh and dinosaurs, trucks, airplanes and dogs. I couldn't decide what kind of party to do for him, he gave me a different answer every time I asked him. He finally decided at the store, he went with "bally balls." I have to say the basketball cake was a lot easier than the princess castle I did for Ky's b-day!! I got a little off on one of my lines and it doesn't look quite right but the black gel frosting was not going anywhere so I let it go. Exactly, I let it go that is why I am explaining myself to you two days later... Anyway, Johnny loved the cake!



I promise I didn't pose this, he was just hanging onto two of his favorites while I did last minute prep for the party and I thought it was super cute!



SQUISH! I love that he still has baby cheeks. He is looking older and more grown up everyday and I am sure when we have a really little one around in a couple months he will seem even older but in a lot of ways he is still my baby boy.



He had the right idea but not enough umph behind his blow to get the candles out, Beave helped him after a few tries. He pulled the candle out, licked off the frosting and wanted to stick it back in for more. When I didn't let him he tried to eat the candle, for some reason the wax didn't get the same response as the frosting... next he went for the cake, while Steve was cutting it Johnny leaned over and licked the side. I think we got that piece on his plate...



Johnny opened a train present first and was not interested in anything else, he just wanted to play with his new train. We talked him into opening another present and he tried to give it back, "here, here." Kyla finally convinced him that he could open ALL the presents and play with ALL the new toys... She really is a great big sister!

ESCAPE

Steve went to Yuma for work this week and we decided to go with him. Tough choice, stay in Flag with our unusually cold spring and house under construction OR hang out with dad and go swimming...


Ky is fearless with this life jacket on... makes me worry about when she takes it off. Swim lessons are on the list of things to do before the baby comes.





Beave has a tough job eh?! We were glad he got to swim with us before going to work.





They were like this for all of 10 seconds but I thought it was so funny and somehow had my camera in hand...

"Calipators"

We had kabobs for dinner on Sunday and Kyla said they looked like caterpillars. She had just played with two caterpillars the day before, she brought them leaves to eat and made a "home" for them. Sunday when she looked for them they were gone, and so was their food!! She is sure they turned into Butterflies.