A Crested Butte 4th of July

Well I wrote these next two posts about two months ago.. figured I could just add some pictures and post them now anyways!  We decided that we enjoyed our last trip to Crested Butte for the Fourth of July, so this year we packed up and hit the road again to celebrate in Crested Butte.

We started off the Fourth of July with a fabulous pancake breakfast at the fire station.  It was held by all the firefighters for a small donation.  We ate a lot of pancakes and Noah really enjoyed his pancakes with sprinkles and whip cream.  We also got to see a fire truck and Noah and I got to climb in the fire truck and drive.  He was very excited!  He did not want to climb around the back of the fire truck, so we stayed in the front with the huge steering wheel.  Noah also wanted to talk to a firefighter, so we said hi and everyone was very friendly.

Noah playing in the fire truck

Watching the parade in the backpack

After breakfast we headed over to the parade route, we had Noah in his backpack and we took him out at the beginning of the parade.  He got pretty scared of the parade, so we put him back in the backpack and he had a great time on dad's back.  After a little while we caught our twinkies and headed to find some lunch.  Noah was all about some pizza  and after lunch we headed back for naps and a quiet afternoon.  Then we went and joined hundreds of other people to watch the fireworks!! We stopped by a bar to get some dinner to go and got to play shuffleboard.  We headed to the park to enjoy a picnic dinner and listen to a local band.  We then took turns to head back to our hotel to get warmer clothes on and get Noah some other clothes too.   Then it was time for the fireworks!  Noah did great, even though he did seem scared at the beginning of the fireworks, he really seemed to really like them once he got used to the loud booms!  After that it was back to the hotel day get some sleep before our camping trip.

Our little musician

Waiting for lunch

Happy Halloween!

I think we are just going to end up skipping the last few months and get back to posting.  I have a few blogs that just need pictures about our camping trip in  July, and I might try to write up a post about Oregon, but other than that, we don't have very many exciting stories.  So, Happy Halloween!

Noah choose to dress up as Super Grover!  He picked it about a month ago and has been super excited for Halloween to get here.  He wasn't super excited about wearing his costume, but he wore it at daycare for their Halloween parade and party and he wore it Trick or Treating.  I am not sure how he picked Super Grover, we have not even watched Sesame Street in months, but he was Super Cute!

He and his whole class had a parade in the parking lot and a pumpkin painting party afterwards.  I joined his class for the parade and he said thank you for coming about four times.  We enjoyed some Halloween stories and then were off for the parade.  Here are few pictures from before the parade and then the class getting ready and then the cold trip around the parking lot!  All the kids were so cute!

We also got to go to Mikey's work and Trick or Treat around his new office.  Noah has asked where Daddy works and were his desk is, so it was fun to be able to show him where Daddy goes when we say he is at work.  He had a great time wandering around with a few other kids and got a gob of candy.  

The next day was Halloween, and we had some friends come over for dinner so that their daughter could come Trick or Treating with Noah.  We only went to about five houses, but they really got it figured out at the third house and were very ready to dig into the candy bowl to get their treats.  Noah was good at saying Trick or Treat, but was so distracted by candy he had to be reminded to say Thank You.  After the last house he asked to go to more houses, but he had already received plenty of candy that we were okay with calling that a great first Trick or Treating adventure.  As soon as we got back into the house he was ready to take his costume off and start eating candy!  It was a really fun night.  We had a lot of Trick or Treaters and went through a huge bag of candy.

Our basement!!!

We finished our basement!!  It has taken us 8 years to getting it done and we are sooooo excited that we have all this extra space to now live and play in!   So, get ready for a ton of picture of walls!

The first three are of the pre-anything done pictures of the basement.  We got all of our materials delivered one morning and Noah was so excited to see a huge truck in our very own driveway!

Our to be tv/living room!

The other side looking towards the stairs, and Mikey behind the pole.

The to be new office!

We had all the framing done by two guys we know and they hammered it out in less than three days!  And then they started hanging the drywall and mudding soon after!

To be living area and first look at the new can lights!

Drywall!  It's looking good!

Archway over the office entry instead of a door

Mud!

Looking more and more like bookshelves!

Ready for PAINT!!  It took about a month for the framing, drywall, mudding, and sanding, but we were finally ready to get painting!  It was really starting to look like a finished basement!

Living area

The office from the hallway

My parents helped us paint!  Here were doing the primer!  And you can see the bookshelves.

Mikey priming away!

After the primer we had to pick the colors we wanted, and I picked purple for the back of the bookcase and we picked grey for the walls!  We were very pleased with the grey, but the purple was just a bit more than we expected.  We kept it hoping the the shelves and all those leather bound books would make the purple look good or hide it!  

Bookshelves between the hallway to the office and the stairs

Living area

I think this next step might have been the hardest for us to pick, but I am so happy with how it turned out and how it looks.  CARPET and fake hardwood flooring!!  We had to move some stuff for the carpet to be put in so, it is all in the new office so you can't see the flooring in there very well, but you can see all our junk!  We are so excited to start moving stuff down there and are so happy with how it all turned out!  We just need the trim/baseboards and we will be completely done!  If you made it this far in the blog there are a few pictures of Noah playing downstairs.  I am not sure how he is going to handle furniture down there because he is loving the room to run around and around and around.

The LIVING ROOM!

Purple Bookshelves and a crooked picture :)

Here is the laundry room with fake tile flooring and then the office with a lot of junk and our new hardwood flooring!

 

Noah and Daddy went straight to playing in the basement!  Noah also likes to hide from us in the basement, he isn't too hard to find since he tells us to "Come on in" and giggles from time to time.  This is the only picture I took of our preexisting/finished bedroom we had in the basement, but now it has new carpet!  It is a room we had some water come through the window well in last year so we are so glad to have the drywall all fixed and new carpet!  That's our new basement!  Hope it that wasn't too boring for you!  Come on over and run around down there before we move the furniture!

A June Recap

Where did June go?  I have no idea...  life is just blasting past us.

June was a good month, we were busy with basement stuff, painting, fixing flooring, building shelves, moving stuff, getting carpet installed and some more painting.  BUT, we are almost completely finished with it, we just need baseboards!  I'll post another blog about all that in a bit, but for this post just wanted to let you know what we were up to in June outside of our basement!

The first weekend of June, Mikey and I made our way to Vail for the GoPro Mountain Games.  We have gone for about five years now, I think.  We decided we would compete in the Disc Golf competition, but we did really poorly so we don't need to talk about that much.  Since we were competing we decided to let Noah stay at Nana's house for the weekend, which made it easier to compete, watch movies outside after dark, ride our bicycles around, and do some yoga outside with a hundred of our fellow yogi friends.

Noah and I made a trip to the zoo and he saw some other kids line up to get their picture taken so he lined up for his to be taken too!  I think it is one of the cutest pictures we have of him!  We also made a trip or two or three to the ice cream store just down the road from our house, he loves his with M&M's!  He eats his cone separately and then usually just picks the M&M's out of the ice cream!  And we also get to take a walk to the park about every day, as long as its not raining we have made our way over to play.  He is pretty good about taking a water and snack break while we are out playing when it is pretty hot out.  The last picture is on one of the colder days we have had, but he still likes to have a snack break with me and watch what other kids are doing at the park.

We also made our way out to two Sky Sox Baseball games last month.  Noah had a lot of fun looking for Sox the Fox and he was really excited to clap along with the songs that were played.  At the second game we got to see Noah's cousins from Wyoming and he had a great time playing with them.

Here are just some other pictures from last month.  He is growing so fast.  He loves the Minions and wears his Minion or Lightning McQueen shirt every chance he gets.  The first picture collage is when he got to share some of Daddy's Father's Day Twinkies.  It was his first Twinkie ever and of course he loved it because he loves sugar!  The second picture is when he helped me make some blueberry muffins, he loves to help pour things!  Then he had some phone calls to make, usually he calls a girl from daycare or his cousin Breckin.  And the last picture is just him pulling the wagon around my parents driveway.  He didn't want to get in at all, he just wanted to pull it around!

A post for May

Whoops, time really just gets away from us.  We have just been chasing Noah around and haven't stopped to write a post.  He has been sick more than we like this month.  He had an ear infection about three weeks ago and then this last week he and I have been fighting a mean cold.  Lots of snot in our house, I'm sure you wanted to know that!  We have had a lot of fun this month even though we had to spend lots of time inside because of all the rain.  We got outside when we could, even if every picnic we went on ended up in the back of Jeep while it rained or hailed on us.  We spent a lot of time inside singing songs, building with legos, playing with stuffed animals, practicing handstands,
lots of time playing with cars, and even got some painting in a few times.  We did get one trip into the zoo, which was chilly, but nice to get out of the house!

Other than Noah, we have been trying to get our basement ready for carpet!  Everything is painted so carpet is the last big thing and we will be able to start moving some furniture down there!  We got it measured last week and now we just need to go pick it out!  Once we pick it out they said they usually can get it installed with about two weeks.

Well that has been what is keeping us busy, hopefully we will have some fun posts over the summertime!

Watching the fish in the bear exhibit!

Handstands are fun for everyone

His new favorite car to ride in

Noah watching it hail during our picnic

He's ready to help get the basement finished!

Second picnic, Noah still wanted to stay in the back of the Jeep!