Old home New look

We decided to move the girls upstairs together and make their old room in to the playroom.  

Pyper's new corner

Bo's half of the room

Loving that she is in the same room as her sister again

We moved the desk at to the top of the stairs

Check Out the new playroom

We also added the frames to the living room too.

We also finally got to painting the stairs white and they look 100 times better.

Now for the runners and print on the stairs, and we will finally have our stair way complete.

Loving the warm weather.

It has been so wonderful to have such gorgeous weather and a nice sized back yard for the kids to play in.

Setting up the bird feeders

Enjoying the slide with her pooch

Sharing the swing (sisters)

Ready for a ride Pistol?

Trying to fly a kite with daddy

Daily walks

Love this grass

Come on in!

Sister Love

Hanging out in "uncle Nieps" yard

Loving her puppy

Playing in the playhouse

Watching these two grow togther is amazing, I am excited to watch them interact even more this summer.

Our fence and backyard

When we first moved into our house we quickly put up a crappy fence to just keep the Pistol contained in our yard.  It never looked great nor did it increase the value of our home, but it did it's job, until this last winter.  Pistol started to jump on the fence and just plop his fat little belly over and start chasing anyone that would dare to walk by our house.  Granted, he never wanted to hurt anyone, but it sure was frustrating to to have to chase after him.  It also often scared the people that were walking by because even though he's tiny his bark can be a little scary.

So a few weeks ago our neighbor came over to see if Josh would help him take down his privacy fence, and told us we could have it if we wanted it.  So, we decided to refurbish it and create a fence over our fence.

You can see our old fence in the background.

Bo was a big help

She even had a hand in pounding in some nails

Helping daddy paint

Almost done

Done

We even moved the play set so we could see if from the back door.

And for your viewing  pleasure our slave labor.

King Time!

It was so nice to see Stevi, Chad, Van and Crosbi when they came up to meet baby Abe.  

We almost didn't get to see them though because our mainline in the basement decided to back up again.  Josh was such a trooper and just forged through while we went on ahead to Jamie and Emily's 

without him. 

Good thing we got carpet tiles.

 I love getting together and watching all of the kids playing together.  Each time we get together it gets more and more chaotic, but with chaos bring great memories.  

As Bo and Avery would say:  This is the best day ever.

Finally able to enjoy some warm weather

"The Kings"

Love this girl, and all her glory

I can't beleve he is almost a year old already

What Jamie you want peace and quiet while you eat?

Our Little Princess

We also celebrated Stevi's birthday too. It was so nice to see you guys, can't wait for Jess and Mitch to have their baby girls, so we can come down and stay with you guys.

Fight Fight Fight for Iowa

After getting new carpet into the basement, it really made our staircase looked awful.  So we started talking about what we wanted to do that would cost effective, but still look good.   

Our stairs when we bought our house almost 3 years ago

Our stairwell after taking the ugly orange carpet out about a year and a half ago

Josh started talking about making the staircase ceiling look like a Hawkeye helmet, and to his surprise I said sure why not. So the next day we headed to Maynard's and bought some black and yellow paint to start our project. 

We weren't really able to start it until last weekend when Josh and Bo got the first coat of black on the walls.

Josh preparing the ugly purple wall for it;s new coat of paint

Showing Bo how to paint

Such a great helper and artist.

Black paint on now it's time to take off the painter tape

Check out our new black walls

Then it was time to add our decals, so Josh got to drawing.   

Josh free handing the tiger hawk

 Then we spent some quality time cutting it out after the kids went to bed.

our template

Now time to trace the templates onto the walls.

America Needs Farmers

Tiger Hawk #1

Tiger Hawk #2 (check out the new lights on the side of the stairs, their motion censored, no more dark staircase)

Then time for some paint.

Starting to come together

This project is a coming along nicely, but we still have a ways to go.  

Several more coats of paint

The strip on the ceiling

Adding the number 11 to the back of the "helmet" as well as the USA flag

Painting the stairs black 

Put the stair treads on

Add the Iowa winning song to the rise of the stair case. 

(Just so you know taking pictures at night of a shinny black stairwell is hard)

Stay tuned as we finish our personalized stairwell.