Levi's Five!!

Levi turned 5 last month!!  He had a super fun birthday. I took cupcakes to his class, and we had a little family birthday that night.

We had a few gifts for him to open, and we asked him if he wanted to open them all that day (since he would later have a party with my family as well as a friend party). He thought about it and said he wanted to spread out his birthday and just open one present each day. That's some amazing discipline for a 5 year old! Interesting story about this Batman robot. I took Levi to Target for him to point out things he liked. Then I went back while he was at school and bought this. It was reasonably priced and looked really fun. A couple days later, I was cleaning out receipts and noticed that I had paid $65! That's more than twice what it was supposed to be. It was cool and all, but not $65-cool. I called the store, and they said to go in, and they would reimburse me. Apparently it had happened to several other people. So make sure you always look at your receipts!

I didn't have time to frost the rest of the cupcakes, so I had everyone decorate their own after dinner. Levi told me that was his favorite thing about his whole birthday. I love how easily amused he is!

I made a s'more cake for the big family party. I started with a graham cracker crust, covered it with chocolate cake, and topped it with marshmallow frosting. Then we torched the top. I've wanted to make it for awhile, and it turned out delicious! 

 He's always so good at posing for my pictures!

 

He wanted to have a skeleton birthday party (he was also a skeleton for Halloween), and we added a pirate element to make it extra fun. Spencer had a pirate party when he turned 4 that his friends still talk about. This was more low-key, but I made similar invitations. 

I printed them out, stained them in tea, burned the edges, rolled them up and tied them with twine. Cute!!

The cake was very similar to the one I made for Spencer's doctor party - just added the skull and decorations. The black fondant turned out very dark - I was worried it would stain everyone's clothes!

As you can see, my boys really get into dressing up for the theme.  

Luke and Parker

Tessa and her little sister Ivy

Braeden, Noah and Levi 

Levi chose a big "5" pinata. 

We had his party on a Friday night, since our Saturdays were all so busy.  

I love how excited Luke was for him to open his present! 

About a week later, he borrowed Luke's old bike (which is smaller than any of ours) and learned how to ride it! It's a great bike for learning, and he was able to do it his first try.

He's getting better and better and can now start and stop on his own and ride uphill and around the block. He loves it!

I'm going to close with a few words about Levi. First of all, he's hilarious! He says the funniest things and finds humor in everything. He's just a happy kid. He had his 5 year check up last week, and he was cracking up the nurse and the doctor. Then he didn't cry AT ALL when he got his shots. He still has a bit of a speech impediment, which we love! He puts an "f" in front of a lot of words; our favorite is "fwazy," instead of crazy. He has stopped sucking his thumb and needing his special blanket (he did that all on his own). He doesn't want a lot of stuff. For example, when I took the kids school shopping, I asked him what clothes he liked. He said, "I have a lot of clothes in my drawer. I don't need any." He loves Chloe and plays really well with her. I just thoroughly enjoy hanging out with him. This is an awesome age for Levi!

Cross Country

I couldn't believe it when Spencer said he wanted to run Cross Country in high school. First of all, he loves hockey, and he really only liked the actual games (practice was boring). Plus he never wanted to run track in middle school. He just finished his season, and he's really glad he did it. It was hard but very rewarding.

Dave and I went to most of his races - we just missed one. There were a lot of friends from church on his team, and I had fun visiting with the other moms.

The little kids and I mostly stayed in one place and cheered him a couple of times when he ran by. But Dave did what HIS cross country coach did and ran to multiple places throughout the course. He averaged about 5 spots per race. It really took him back to his high school and college races, and he loved it.  

I was a little worried that his asthma would get in the way, but it never did. He did puke after 2 of the races, though. They were after lunch.

Morro Bay Invitational  - this was his favorite race. The weather was cool, and he passed a lot of people on the sand. 

 There's Dave, cheering him on! He always looks up the course the night before or got a map when we arrived so he'd know where the best spots were.

Although he's glad he ran, he is really enjoying coming home right after school. He's got all kinds of time on his hands! He and Dave are trying to run together now. They're gearing up for a turkey trot next week.

Last night was the awards ceremony. All the runners talked about their highlights from the season. Spencer was funny, of course. The varsity boys and girls are both on track to go to state. If they both go, it will be the first time in the school's history. They have some great coaches!

Our Addition

Now that our addition is complete, I want to show you how it all happened. Here is our "before" picture. Our house has a raised foundation, so it had a slanted dirt crawl space underneath. From the moment we bought this house, we wanted to dig down a few feet and turn it into living space. With 6 kids and just 3 bedrooms, we really needed it! There was a wooden platform which we put storage on - the boys removed it before construction started and used some of the wood to make a fort. 

We started talking to contractors a few years ago. We had to scale back what we originally planned to do. Instead of using the entire downstairs (which would involve deeper footers and a retaining wall - all very expensive), we would just do the front half. On Friday, May 9th, construction began! We were so excited! First they enlarged the outside door so they could fit the excavator down there. Levi camped out on the back fence, watching all the excitement. The other boys ran home every day to see the progress. 

They took out a ton of dirt! It took about a week to do the excavation. We had to leave the house for two of those days in case there were dangerous exhaust fumes from the excavator. Chloe and I hung out at my mom's house. 

Next came demolition. They took down the cinder block wall between the addition and the staircase leading from the garage up to the rest of the house. It was so loud, and I loved it. In fact I've never been more excited to hear power tools and pounding right under my feet!

They also cut out the windows 

with a HUGE round saw.

I loved it already. It was bright and spacious and certainly didn't feel like a basement.

The boys got home just in time to see the massive chunks of cinder block crash to the ground.

We especially liked this guy - he was really funny and reminded us of Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs.

Next came cement! I'm telling you, we got excited about everything. I was constantly texting pictures to Dave at work.

They removed the old supporting beam and built a temporary one a few feet further back. 

There's the new cinder block wall for the new support beam.

Next they prepped the floor for the cement. 

Yay, more cement! This one showed up before Dave and the kids left for work/school, and they didn't want to leave. 

They poured cement under the stairs as well. We'll use that as a food storage room, which we'll access from the garage.

This went very quickly. 

This guy stayed the rest of the day, smoothing it all out.

After a day or two, we were allowed to walk on it! The boy on the left is one of Dallin's best friends, Nick. He just moved away :(

Now on to framing! They built the support wall above the cinder blocks and took down the temporary support wall. We were grateful there were no major earthquakes before then!

They framed around the windows.

Then they divided up the rooms. They had to put the bathtub in before they framed it or else it wouldn't fit.

It was really starting to take shape - here come the walls!

We were happy to have the windows installed - our house felt a lot more secure!

After framing came electrical, plumbing and heating/air. Those parts were slower and less amazing to watch, so I didn't take pictures. Insulation took all of one hour.

Drywall went up while Dave and the boys were at scout camp. Another major transformation!

Now it was our turn to put in some work. We did most of the painting (he had the professionals prep the baseboards and door frames and spray the doors and cabinets). We went with choice A (Wool Skein) for the walls. It took us about a week to get it all done, and we saved about $3000 by doing it ourselves.

The carpenter guy built this great big cabinet in the bathroom. This was Dave's idea, since there was plenty of open space behind the bathroom wall.

This is my favorite bathroom ever. I love the modern tiles and cabinets. 

Carpet! It is the softest, plushest, most beautiful carpet I've ever walked on. We can't wait to replace the carpet in the rest of our house with this stuff! As you can see, Dave installed our surround sound speakers. We still need to paint the covers before we put them on. He also installed the projector on the ceiling. Kristen got new couches, so she gave us her old one. It is super comfortable, but we will eventually want to get something bigger for more seating.

  

I love this light fixture! In fact we loved everything down there so much we decided to move our bedroom there and give the 3 oldest boys our master suite upstairs. It's a very small bedroom, but it's like a little retreat, separate from the rest of the house. We love it!

There are so many things I love about the bathroom. I love the granite counter top (which our contractor gave us for free because it was leftover from another project!), I love the light fixture, and I love the rectangular sink and modern faucet. It was so fun to choose these things! It was cool because Dave and I went to Sacramento for a business trip and stayed in a nice hotel. We loved the bathroom so much we took pictures and sent them to our contractor. It was good timing because they were about to order them!

We asked them not to texture our theater wall, and we painted it white. Dave needs to put together our other shelves (they sent us one black and one white, so we had to return the white one).

We have thoroughly enjoyed watching movies down there! We couldn't be happier with the whole project. It took about 4 months and came in under budget. Thank you Rob Potter! It's a dream come true.