Halloween festivities

Life just keeps getting busier and busier. This year Halloween snuck up on us and I wasn't even prepared. So many things were happening all at once. 

Jack had a piano recital. I had Josie on my lap and she kept fighting me for the phone and she finally took it out of my hands at the best part.

Josie and I had to spend half a day getting a flat tire fixed, so we had some fun with snapchat

Then each of the kids had Halloween parties at school. Jack and his friend were dressed the same

One night we took the kids to Treatslyvania at the Farm. Last time we went was a couple years ago and I never wanted to go back because it is always so crowded

But this year Jack's school had a "door" so Luke was there volunteering and handing out candy

The kids had a great time and got their first big stash of Halloween candy

The Saturday before Halloween, the neighborhood had a Chili Cook Off. I had been planning this event for months and we were able to use the school cafeteria and friends of ours found a band to come play

As part of the chili cook off, we had a neighborhood bike parade. It was pretty fun. It is a lot of work so hopefully next year I will have more people to help

On Halloween day the kids had school like normal, but then after school we headed over to Luke's work. I'm so thankful my kids don't really care about costumes... I hate the idea of buying new costumes every year when we have plenty of dress up clothes and old costumes anyways. So here is what they came up with:

After trick-or-treating through the cubes at Luke's work, we headed home. It was a nice (but chilly) evening so we pulled out the fire pit to our driveway and handed out candy right at the side walk. We were able to meet many neighbors and it was a great time.

 Josie didn't even want to go around the neighborhood, she was happy passing out the candy right here

Jack was so proud of his candy stash. Right when he got home he filed up the drawers in his room

The next morning Jack had a definite candy hangover.

I ended up buying all their candy off them for $5 each. I have it all in the freezer, ready to use for random parties and Halloween next year

Girls Birthdays and Rockstar Party

The girls decided last year that they wanted to do a karaoke party for their birthday. They love singing and dancing so it made perfect sense. Lily requested a stage for her present. So we decided to throw a joint party for them.

Having a karaoke party in our dingy basement didn't make much sense... that was one of the catalysts for our basement update. It is definitely what pushed us to work nights and weekends to make sure everything came together in time. 

In order to make it work, we did have to push the party to mid-October.

In the meantime we were still able to celebrate each girl on their actual birth day.

For Josie, we had a small little party

Even Jack's classmates wrote Josie birthday cards

Josie modeling her new outfits

Nani and Papi brought her a smash cake

It is becoming a favorite tradition

On Lily's birthday, we brought Chick-fil-a and met her for lunch at school

Then, by request, she went to get her ears pierced. We took her to a tattoo parlor who does hand-piercings (not ear piercing with a gun). I was just as unprepared for this experience as she was.

Hand piercings looked incredibly painful, and I could barely watch. If she had not wanted to get this done, I could never have put her through that.

But, alas, she was brave and got both ears pierced!

Then we went home for cake.

A week later, the basement project was finished and we were preparing for the big party. My aunt, uncle and grandpa were all in town that weekend. The morning of the party we had a fun run that the kids and I were able to do with Kristi and Farrell.

Then, that afternoon all the little girls started showing up for the party. We had made these super cute lanyard invitations:


We had all sorts of crafts for the girls to feel like Rockstars, including hair chalk, makeup and henna tattoos. In no time, the girls were downstairs performing on stage

The adults had to fight for the microphone with the kids. Everyone loved singing on stage!

It was super loud in the basement so those who wanted to escape the noise had to head upstairs. I guess this is where the girls were for a while taking all these selfies :)

All the kids on stage

It was one heck of a party! It was a ton of planning, cooking and cleaning to pull it off, but watching the girls faces while a whole group of friends came around to celebrate them was priceless. 

I've already told Lily... I can only do a party once every 2 years. Next year she picks one friend and does something easy!

Basement Project

The basement is one part of our house that is completely disgusting. Right now, we use it as storage and a place for all the kids junk (aka toys). It is not a place anyone really wants to hang out.

We had hoped to have some money to redo our basement, but our major kitchen remodel last year sucked us dry. So until we are able to save up for a total basement renovation, we decided just to spend a couple thousand bucks and "upgrade" the dingy basement.

What seemed like an easy project of painting concrete walls and floor, turned into a month long ordeal.

First here is what we started with (well after I had already cleared out all the toys/junk, washed all the concrete walls, vacuumed 25 years of dust/spiders from the walls, ceiling and swept...) This is what we had, still a pretty dingy looking basement

The next step was to prep the space for painting. I had to seal off the area where we would make the utility room with plastic, then taped all the floors with painters paper

Next, we rented a sprayer for a couple days to spray the ceiling. Since it was a mixture of bare wood, plastic & metal, we had to spray a few coats of primer over everything:

After the primer dried, we were able to spray it all black:

Then, I continued on to paint all the pipes on the walls black

Next, it was on to the floors. Originally I wanted to polish or stain the concrete floors. But after many frustrations we discovered that was not something we could do ourselves and it was not in the budget to hire someone to do it. So we had to move on to plan b, paint the concrete. You can see some of our paint choices in the picture above... 

But before we could paint, the floor had to be prepped. Meaning I had to scrub every inch of that floor, multiple times. I had to buy a shopvac to assist in the process. It was scrubbed with soapy water, then 3 coats of TSP water, then back to 2 coats of soapy water. This was the worst part of the whole job...

And after all that cleaning, I finally painted the floors with several coats of concrete floor paint. And then I forgot to take a picture before I moved all basement junk back in. Here you can kind of see the painted floor underneath everything. You can also see the next part of the project which was framing out the wall for the utility room. 

We had someone frame out the utility wall, and then Luke took on the task of drywalling that wall, as well as drywalling the previously framed section under the stairs

And then I totally forgot to take pictures of the finished project.

***UPDATE*** November: here are a few pictures of the basement, it is still holding up nicely. 

And to compare how far we've come, here are a few before/after shots: