Ta Da!

The basement is finished!! It took a little longer than we expected, but it turned out even better than I had imagined. This is the family room at the bottom of the stairs. Eventually we will be installing bookshelves on top of the rock wall and on the sides of the speakers. In the middle of the speakers Chad has big plans for a t.v. projector, but that is probably years down the road. You can't see the colors very well because of the windows, but we went with a darker gray paint and a dark brown carpet throughout the whole basement, except for the bathroom.
No blinds yet. They have to be specially ordered, but Chad and I did the rock wall ourselves like we did the outside of our house... not too shabby, huh?
The back half of the family room.
The kids' playhouse under the stairs.
Archway leading to the cold storage and the hall.
One of the bedrooms. This is the one that my boys will be sharing. It is actually a good size room.
The hallway. The little nook will eventually have cabinet doors on it to hold all of our entertainment pieces (i.e. DVD player, Wii).
I just realized that the seat is up.. sorry. It really hasn't been used quite yet. Chad tiled it all himself, not bad for a first timer. The color on the walls is a light green.
That is basically it more or less. I for one am so glad that this project is done!! Now it is time to move all our stuff in.... any takers? :)

Henry

Tomorrow it will have been 2 months since my sister Erin gave birth to her first son Henry, whose life was tragically cut short. I know these months have flown for me, where they have dragged unmercifully for Erin and her husband Rob. Henry's absence has been felt in the family and it still hurts. Erin and Rob are as good as could be expected, and continue to amaze me with their strength and testimony. On their blog Rob has made a very touching movie with pictures surrounding the events of Henry's life, and Erin has just recently written a beautiful post of how they are doing now. You can view them both here.

Chad's Birthday

This week we celebrated yet another birthday. My sweet husband Chad turned a big 32 years old this week. Because it fell on a work day, Emmi and I surprised him by bringing in candy and balloons to his office, and then picking him up later on with all the kids to take him to dinner. This shows one of the things that I love about Chad. Chad is very low maintenance, and unselfish. He has a hard time buying anything for himself and will always try to spend it on me or the kids. I had a hard time thinking of something to get him because he never wants anything. So I got him something that I knew he would like... a new BYU coaches polo and a new book. Chad doesn't need a big party and prefers to stay low key. In fact, I had rented a movie that we both have been wanting to see to watch on his birthday, but he said that he would rather watch the Jazz game. I just love my Chaddy but sorry, no pics of the birthday boy. Since it was his birthday I decided to give him a free pass that night.

The most entertaining part of the night however, had to have been watching our boys on the bungee jump, which we came across after dinner. We hadn't planned on it, but it sure was a hoot seeing the boys take a turn. You wouldn't guess it by their personalities, but Keaton is a daredevil and will try anything while Sam is very cautious. Actually, it took us quite a while for us to convince Sam to try it and Emmi almost jumped instead of him.

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