Super Hero Saturday

Good Lord, this woman is Talented!  Gma Pat Loves to spend her spare time crocheting and thankfully for us, we get some sweet presents as a result.  In the past, we have received a winter hat that was a Frog, a crown and many pairs of mittens (cause they always outgrow them quickly).  The one I like the best is that Grandma couldn't watch how cold the boy's hands would get as they ate their frozen GoGurt yogurt pops.  So, solution solved!  What do you think? Do you think the kids like them?

She even designed something so the boys got to shoot lightening bolts from their hands like The Flash!  Amy tried them out to see if the lightening would help warm up her steering wheel, but Silly Girl... she wore them the wrong way!  Lightening bolts come out of your palms, Amy!

This past weekend was Batman!  Good thing Kasey was prepared in his Batman PJs when receiving his present.  Cape Included!  Karsten looked like a bit of a confused Super Hero, but he definitely had "the Stare" down pat!  Ready for Action!

We even got to go out in public in our PJs for dinner that night cause we were so excited about our presents!  Yup, we were totally the coolest people at Chilis that night!  Thanks, Gma!

Luck of the Irish

Although Karsten is of Irish decent; he has not been so lucky lately.  The week before St Patties Day, he came home with a rug burn on his neck.  Just playing too hard; kids will be kids.  The very next day, Amy received a call from school that started out with "don't freak out, but..."  Karsten had tripped on the playground and ended up with a fat lip and cuts across his face.  Concrete = 1; Karsten = 0.  I feel I had to explain that short story in this blog to explain Karsten's owie in all the pics.

Amy comes from a line of Mulvaneys and Kris has a Irish blood on his side too as a McLaughlin.  We are Proud to be Irish in this family and are excited to share this fun holiday with our kiddos.  We used to just go to a friends house and drink a lot of green beer... Well, now... um... I guess we still kinda do the same thing!  Thank goodness our friends invite our kiddos and puppies over too!  Kasey and Karsten were super excited to hang out with their friends at the "Leperchaun's Birthday Party".  Evidently, every party we attend HAS to be someones birthday.  After explaining ten times it was a holiday called St Patties Day; we got tired and said it was Leperchaun Pete's birthday (from Micky Mouse).  These are two excited kiddos below although poor Karsten's lip was hurting from his previous unlucky slip on the playground. 

Kyle also gets pretty excited about this holiday being from Irish decent and offered to host this year's get together.  Kids and Puppies welcome ... and boy, were they!  This house was flooded with new puppies and lots of kiddos to play with them!

Bella and her Daddy, Frankie

Amy lost Karsten for just a bit at the party, but it was a good thing Kasey knew where he was!  The kids thought it was pretty funny to have such a nice "Kid Door" (aka: puppy door) to let them in and out of the backyard.  Once outside, Kasey found a stake and decided he would go hunt vampires.  Wrong holiday, but ok, buddy.

Kasey, Tahlea and Julie

The grown ups had plenty of fun inside where it was warmer.  Lots of yummy food such as Bangers and Hash and of course Lucky Charms!

Jim and Sarah's new pup, Midnight

We even had to take a quick group pic to send to Big Karsten.  Karsten used to host the St Pats event until he moved to AZ.  Now, we just miss him terribly and wanted him to know we were thinking of him!

The kids started getting tuckered out with all that play.  Good thing we had a movie that captured their attention!

Definition of a great St Patties Day?  Well, Cute kiddos = Check; Great Friends = Check; Delicious Food and Beverages = Check....

And Two Tuckered out Kiddos = Double Check!

Signs of Spring

As I sit here with my cup of coffee warming my cold hands, I realize... we are not quite to spring.  We have sprung our clocks forward, but have plenty of weather left in the winter season.  But that just reminds me why we Love Colorado.  On Monday it was mid 70's and the very next day a high of 28 degrees and Lots of snow and ice.  What did we do with our mid 70 degree day?  Every Activity Possible!  I think we had the Spring version of A.D.D.

Kasey and Karsten both got bikes from Gma and Gpa Mattson for Christmas.  What a perfect day to try them out!

Kasey of course had to let his artistic monster out.  This is a yellow rocket exploding into colorful outer space.

Karsten never slowed down.  We went from his scooter, to slow pitch baseball, to running, to hockey, back to scooting, back to hockey, back to baseball... you get the gist.  Yes, we have Spring in the Air! (For Today Anyways).

Bob the Builder... Yes, We Can!

What?  No one else is singing that song in their head now?  Yes, we watch too much PBS, but is there really such a thing as too much building? Not for us!  We have been working diligently on our basement, using all our free hours and brain cells to make sure everything meets code.

First was plumbing in the bathroom... Doin' Great, George!  Wait, you mean Amy has to work too?  Ok, lets swing that sledge hammer! (who needs a gym when you are renovating!)

Good thing our boys tend to like to help out with the hard work.  The bathroom had Many, Many facets of work in order to complete the plumbing.  We had to build out the pipes, dig out the concrete, build a platform.  Wow, I am tired just describing the process.  Here are some of the in process shots with our hard workers.

Perfect! ... are we done now?

Starting to look like a bathroom!

Kris! The plumbing isn't hooked up yet!

Onto the next room!  Time to put some effort towards the bedroom and closet.  Lots of electrical, framing and drywalling to be done.  And evidently, Daddy had to make a race car track out of one of his tools in the process.

OK, all that seemed pretty fun, but now the real fun begins!  All that mudding, taping, texturing and painting!  Wait... did I say painting? Are we that close to being done with this room?  Oh Boy!

Amy looks like she is ready to land a plane in that gear

As is tradition for Amy, she always writes a message to her mom in the paint.  Hard to do on white walls so needed to make sure to do it on our one accent wall.  I call this color "Vs Gaming Center Red".

My boys were So excited to be a part of this process.  They each got their own square to paint and had fun artistically painting to their heart's content.  They both did a great job, stayed relatively clean (red paint - eek) and remembered not to take this painting thing to seriously.

Here is our finished room!  So, I admit... Not fully finished.  We need to trim out the windows, doors and our shelving units needs some pretty trim too, but... Looking pretty good. And Oh Boy ~ Look at all that storage in the Closet!!!  Why wait for closet doors!  Lets see if 100% of our Christmas items will fit in this closet!

We are by far not done with our finishing touches on this room (baseboard, doors, etc), but we are going to call it good for now.  Time to finish the bathroom and craft/work room next!