T-Ball Time!

A couple of weeks ago Anthony started playing T-Ball two nights a week with the Youth Baseball Association.  He is having a blast and his team (all kindergarteners this past year) is so much fun to watch!

Anthony is up to bat…


Heading on home!


Eyes on home plate!


They rotate positions – Anthony started out as the pitcher!
See my hubby in the upper left corner?  He’s one of the Assistant Coaches.


Got it!


Up to bat…


Heading home again – check out that tongue!


Little more tongue action – this just cracks me up!


Score!


Patiently waiting for his turn to hit…


I put this picture on Instagram last week – are you on Instagram?  My username is momsgonnasnap.


Anyone want to come watch a game with me?

The Family Room!

The end of the school year has brought on a new kind of chaos for our family – the start of T-Ball!  With T-Ball games two nights/week, hubby’s softball, the deck project that was squeezed in, and camping, progress on the basement has really slowed down.  Once the deck is done, we can focus a little more on the basement again, but it’s going to be slow going this summer.  Oh wait, it’s been slow going all along!  Slow and steady wins the race, right?!?

Since I last posted about the basement, we have made some progress.  Initially we started with the green paint, and we have since continued on with more color!

Here is Anthony having some fun painting next to the fireplace, where the TV cabinet will be built-in, covering this entire wall.


Anthony created quite the masterpiece!  Notice the A, heart, and Sonic (for Sonic the Hedgehog).



Then it was time for some more COLOR!


At first these colors together made us really nervous.  (Especially me!)  Hubby let me make the final decision on paint colors, although he was quick to remind me how much painting and trim work it would require to change if we didn’t like it.  When we started working on the basement, I decided it was time to have some fun and just “go for it!” with the design.  When we built our house 9 (!!!) years ago, we were very cautious and it took years to make changes to the house to truly make it “ours”.  With the basement, we are having some FUN and creating a style that is much different from the rest of our house.


The funny unpainted corner will be covered by the wet bar cabinets.  With the blend of woods and white trim we have planned, we are pretty sure we are going to be very happy with these colors.  So far, so good!


Once we pulled out the blue paint, Anthony was also sure to get in on the action!


Most of the outlets have been installed and we can actually leave some of the power on in the basement now!  This means that we can turn the lights on with the wall switches, instead of making a trip to the fuse box!  PROGRESS!


Here is the fireplace/TV/bookcase wall.  Can you see Anthony’s artwork over in the corner behind the ladder (that I was too lazy to move)?


The rest of the basement (bedroom, bathroom, closets) has been primed and is just waiting for us to find some time to paint.  It may be another couple weeks before we get to it.  The doors have been ordered and should be in any day now too.  Hubby is planning on my help when he installs the doors – hopefully we can make that process go smoothly!

In addition to the basement, we are also stripping/sanding our deck and will then re-stain it.  Of course we have to work around the weather, and this past week there have been lots of storms working their way through MN.  This next week looks PERFECT for deck staining, so I am envisioning some hard and hot work in our future.

Any volunteers to help?  You can pick the project you want to help with!!

Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Father’s Day to all of the Dad’s I know, but especially to my own Dad, husband, father-in-law and step father-in-law.  I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful day today!  Thankfully Father’s Day does not hit me with the same emotions that Mother’s Day does.

This weekend we celebrated Father’s Day by taking our camper out for the first time this summer (gasp!).  Usually by now we have been out approx. 4 times, so it’s really late in the MN camping season for us to be just getting started.  The basement has been taking up all of our camping time...  We need to work on finding some balance between work and play!

Today I am celebrating with one of the GREAT father’s in my life, and here’s what I can tell you -

Great father’s always dress up funny…  (playing with a photo booth at a wedding)


Great father’s always cover their son’s eyes on rides….  (the smile on Anthony’s face shows that they were clearly having a great time!)


Great father’s go on roller coasters…  (Anthony LOVES this coaster at Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America)


Great father’s scare their children to death on big rides…  (for the record, later in the day they tried this one again and he LOVED it!)


Great father’s are gentle, kind and loving!


My husband is such a GREAT father – don’t you agree??

He was a Slippin’ and a Slidin’!

Last weekend we had some great weather, which called for a little more water fun in the front yard.  Of course while Anthony played, I had some fun taking pictures!

It probably doesn’t take much to figure out that I was a little too close for this one… Since I was in “position”, I had to take a picture!



Run for it….






Seriously, this was fun stuff!



Eventually he decided wearing his goggles would keep the water from spraying into his eyes…



It was another successful summer Saturday!

Who wants to come over next time?!?

Kindergarten is OVER?!?

It’s hard to believe that Anthony is officially done with kindergarten!  Where did this school year go?!?

First day of school (July 27, 2011)


Last day of school (June 7, 2012)


Anthony is THRILLED to be a 1st Grader!

Basement: Before and During

It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, when we started working on the basement, it looked like this:



While painting this weekend, we reflected back on all of the work that has been done in our basement over the past few months.  There was the plumbing work that started our house on fire, purchasing materials and some demo, the fireplace install, preparing for the inspection and the to-do list, insulating, ready and waiting for drywall, drywall installed, the drywall dust (oh, the dust!), and the beginning of the painting process! 

I wish I had an “after” pic, but we have months to go before we will have a real “after” photo of the basement.  Here are a couple during photos to show how things have changed:





















Here is a pic showing the first color we chose for the basement! The green wall on the right will be the wet bar wall. It’s definitely GREEN, but so far, we like it!


Looking back, there sure were some phases where there was a lot of stuff EVERYWHERE in the basement!

What do you think of the progress we have made?

Priming and Painting

It was a productive day at our house today – we started the painting process in the basement!  I realized how much work painting the basement was really going to be when we figured out how much primer and paint we would need.  This is definitely not a 2 coats of a pretty color and you are done kind of job.  Today we primed the entire family room and stairs area of the basement - both ceiling and walls.  Initially we were going to prime/paint all of the ceilings first, but once I realized we were going to run out of primer (8 gallons!), I decided we should change gears and prime the walls of the family room so we could start putting real color on the walls today too. I am so tired of white primer and "ceiling white" paint.  Lucky us, we still have the bedroom, bathroom, and a couple of closets to prime both ceilings & walls and then 2 coats of paint….

Here’s a sneak peek at the first COLOR we put on the walls in the basement:



What do you think?

Just a little drywall dust…

Okay, little is an understatement!  The drywall process is officially done, except for the cleaning phase that comes after.  When I left for work this morning the guys were hard at work sanding in the basement and when I came home, nearly 10 hours later, this is what I found covering the entire main floor of our house:

Of course it’s easy to imagine that we have not cleaned in months, however, I assure you, this cabinet was dusted just 7 days ago.  This is fresh, fresh from today. 

I have been working hard to wipe the layer of filth off of everything upstairs while handy hubby is in the basement using the shop-vac to vacuum every inch of the new walls – using a 3 in” diameter brush.  Needless to say, he has been at it for awhile…

Wish us luck that we might actually finish priming the basement and start putting some color on the walls this weekend!  Want to know what colors we picked?  They are FUN and BRIGHT!