Cal and Ethan Visit

On Sunday, April 12, we got a text from Ethan informing us that he and Cal were on their way to our house. Apparently they wanted to go for a drive, and they decided to come see us. Michael and Rachel were really excited to see Ethan. Michael was excited to see Cal, but Rachel has, for whatever reason, never really liked McCallan. She'll intentionally snub and ignore him every time she sees him. If we hand her off to Cal, she will start crying. 

So, when the boys arrived, we were determined that this was the day she was going to fall in love with her Uncle Callan. It took about a half an hour of him trying to play with her before she finally warmed up to him. Now, she thinks he's the best thing in the world, and he is one of the few people who she will mention all on her own in her prayers. (Grandma, Grandpa, Papa, Nana, and Uncle Ethan are the others. Occasionally she blesses her parents and brother on her own too.). 

 We showed the boys our playroom first thing, and I was surprised that they turned into little boys and went up and down the slide. Michael and Rachel were in heaven! They had so much fun that these big boys were giving them so much attention! 

  

  

  

I was excited that they recognized my pathetic attempt to recreate Mom and Dad's mountains, and the best compliment I've gotten on that room was when Cal said, "Dev, this is pretty cool." And he said it so sincerely. Cal was one of my best friends growing up, but adulthood and life has put a little distance between us. I loved having him at my house that night and feeling like that gap is getting bridged. I love my brothers and I'm so grateful that we get to see them fairly often. Please come drop by again!

Of Dreams, Childhood, and Castles

There's a line in the finale of the musical Into the Woods that says, "Careful the wish you make...wishes come true, not free." When I was a little girl, I wished for a playhouse. Looking back, I wouldn't trade my childhood for someone else's, but I remembered the wish.

When Brian and I first walked through our house on May 5, 2011, we took note of a very large room in the unfinished basement. We decided it could be either a very large bedroom or a really sweet playroom, and from the day our offer was accepted, we began dreaming up this really sweet playroom--and wishing, you might say--and we knew there would be a really awesome playhouse built into it. 

 Somewhere along the way, we were talking about our dreams of this sweet playroom with Lea and Shayne when Shayne said, "You should make your playhouse a castle!" We loved this suggestion because a castle is cool for boys (knights and invasions) and girls (princesses!). We dreamed of a two-layer playroom where kids defend against "invaders." I wanted a tube slide. We were so excited about our dream. We have a very small yard, so we knew our house would have to be extra amazing to make up for it. Somewhere between November 2013 and January 2014, I designed our castle in a free program called Sketch-up using the dimensions of our space downstairs. It looked something like this:

Brian then took my 3-D rendering, tweaked it a little, made necessary adjustments, and got busy framing. The first wall went up on May 16, 2014. We could hardly stand our excitement! Our dreams were finally starting to become reality. Little did we know then how much work it would take!

Pretty much every Saturday (and holiday) took Brian to the playroom to frame. Brian's dad came out a lot to help, and he provided great wisdom and know-how with some of the important structural concerns. We couldn't have done it without him. He was even patient with all my whims about trying to take advantage of every bit of storage space, especially under those stairs. He helped Brian feel confident that the balcony areas would support the weight and wear of all the kiddos that would play there in the future. 

 At the end of August, we decided it was time to order the slide. We were so excited when the box arrived on our porch from Amazon. It was a bit of a pain to put together. See all those nuts and bolts? Yeah, we put everyone of them in using socket wrenches. Brian attached it to the framing with help of two others (we're trying to remember now who they were. We think it was Ethan and either McCallan or Kirt); we wanted to make sure that the framing was right. Once it was in Brian said, "I'm not taking that thing off again!" And so far, we haven't.

We had our four-point inspection with the city in October, and then we hung insulation. Again, the excitement level was high. This was really happening! We had a goal to finish it for the kids for Christmas. 

 After our insulation inspection, we got bids from a couple of recommended drywall companies, both of which came recommended to us by others. We went with the lowest, set up a time for them to come out, and practically did happy dances when they pulled up to our house to start working on it on November 13, 2014.

 We had our doubts when they finished hanging. It looked very rough and sloppy. They were not as gentle with our things that we have downstairs--they left soda cans and trash on my newly refinished buffet and scratched it up. None of the hangers spoke English. I was not a happy camper, but we were excited to have the sheetrock up.

There were some scheduling miscommunications and conflicts with the actual mudding. They were supposed to have it done before we left for Thanksgiving in Austin, but that didn't work out. They were several weeks delayed from where they had originally told us, but I suppose that's to be expected from contractors. This was just our first experience with them. They finally finished mudding mid December. We had a lot of frustrations with the drywall company we used. We would tell our contact at the company what we wanted, and he had me go down and mark on the walls what type of texture I wanted on each wall. But they guy we talked to never showed up at our house, and he must not have told his crew what to expect because I would have to repeat what I had already told him to the workers, most of which didn't speak English (at least we had one guy that spoke English well), which meant that no work could happen if I wasn't home to tell them what to do. And since they rarely came when they said they would, I often spent all day at the house just waiting for them to show up. And, despite writing what kind of texture I wanted up on the walls, they still messed it up. One of them even stuck a penny to the wall! (I'm sure it was just to get back at us for making them work in such cramped quarters, and we still laugh about it.) However, they were very good about making it right and working on it until we were completely satisfied, and we were pleased with the end result. They even ran their fingers through the exterior castle walls to make it look like grout. Unfortunately for them, we will not be using them again to do the rest of the basement drywall.

 At this point, we were (you guessed it) super excited. It actually looked like a real castle! We bought paint and primer and wood for trim and got to work--well, Brian got to work. I was finishing up Christmas projects.

 By this time, we realized that our dream of finishing it by Christmas wasn't going to happen. But, we were confident we could finish it by Rachel's birthday in January. Oh how naive we were !

When Brian was putting up the trim, we realized that we needed to install our built-in for the toys and books before he could finish it out. We wanted lots of shelves/cubbies to put toys, and we wanted doors over the lower shelves with locks so that we could store all of the toys down there without having to worry about them all getting dumped out at one time. We got a few bids from local craftsmen and cabinet makers. The lowest was for $2500 ($1000 for labor, $1500 for supplies). We decided we'd rather pay my dad to build it for us, but he didn't really have the time. We went back and forth about what to do, exploring lots of options. We wanted the shelves to fit these IKEA bins that are perfect for storing toys because they are so hard. We finally decided to just use the IKEA frames that are designed specifically to fit the bins we wanted. Our rendering of those bins looked like this:

We felt bad asking my dad to take off work to help us, and we figured that we could handle this one on our own. The drawback was that we weren't sure how to do the doors, but we figured my dad could help us with that later. 

But a funny thing happened when we walked into IKEA. Enroute to the children's section, we saw these pine cupboards that looked to be about the right size. They had weird doors, but they had doors. We picked up the three different sizes of bins we were looking for and tried them out. The cupboard was perfect! I called up my dad to see if he thought they would be able to work, and we asked him if he could figure out how to come down and help merge these cupboards into a nice built-in. We planned to purchase 5 of them. IKEA only had 3. That turned out to be fortuitous. 

My dad figured out how to get out of work, and came down on New Year's Eve, along with my mom, of course. Taryn and David also came to spend New Year's and help put these things together. I've already written a little about that visit. My dad and Brian, with a little input from me, planned out how they were going to do it and then got to work the next day. My mom, Taryn, and I put together the IKEA cupboards. The boys did the rest, but we did help a little bit. 

 After they got it all put together, complete with egg and dart trim to match the egg and dart trim we were putting up on the castle, I got to work filling holes and sanding. It. Took. Forever. I thought I was done, so I started priming. And then I found more holes to fill, more places to sand. So, I started filling holes and sanding again. I lost track of how many days I spent trying to get this beast primed. By the time I got it primed, I had to move onto something else...and I couldn't face painting it again. It hung over me throughout the month of February and the beginning of March. Meanwhile, Brian was hard at work with trim. Lots and lots of trim. The room itself wasn't bad, but there was a lot of trim work to be done in that castle. We started to feel like we were never going to finish.

 Michael and I decided that it would do a lot to lift our spirits if we painted the main walls. (We bought all our paint back in December, back before we knew how long this would take!) We wanted the walls and ceiling to look like the sky, so we painted the walls and the ceiling a nice sky blue, with the low hanging duct area to be white like a big cloud hanging over the castle.

 A level of enthusiasm was restored when we finished painting the blue. Then I started on some murals. Michael helped too. My vision was to have distant hills and then have grass blades coming up that would be the same color as the flooring. I wanted one section of hills to look like the mountains in front of my parents' house, so I had my mom go out and send me a picture. I also had this idea in my head for a tree. I think I impressed Brian with my skills. (I will confess that I was a little impressed with how much I remembered from that one semester of art I took my senior year of high school). I was disappointed with the hills I was trying to get to look like my Idaho mountains. A projector would have come in handy, as well as a little less laziness on my part.

There were many days when I would talk to my mom on the phone and lament that we were never going to get done. Brian only had Saturdays to work on trim, and I had an endless docket of things to be painted. I'd paint during Rachel's naps, which were never long enough. Sometimes, we'd work at  night after the kids went to bed. We were working every spare second we had, and we were running ragged, and our list seemed never to have a dent in it. My mom would listen to my lamenting and say, "I wish I could come help you paint."

Well, sometime in March, due to a lot of stress from her boss who was making her life miserable, my mom resigned from her job as director of the Eastern Idaho Head Start Program. So, since she now had time, I bought her gas, and she came and helped us paint. She finished caulking the built-in and then painted the whole thing--with two coats! Lea took the kids for a day, and my mom and I just went down and worked together. And we made so much progress! We felt good about setting a new goal of finishing by Easter. 

 After painting the castle the color that the grout would be, I carefully ripped both sides of painters tape and placed them on the walls of the castle where I wanted the grout lines to be. It took three days to get all the lines ripped and taped. I wanted the tape to be ripped so that it wouldn't look too uniform. Once I finished taping the "grout", Brian helped me rag-roll two different shades of lighter gray in two different sheens on top. When we pulled the tape off, we were over the moon pleased with ourselves.

 We decided that it was time to pick out carpet. We figured it would take at least a week for them to schedule the installation, so we wanted to jump on it. Easter had come and gone, but we knew we were close, and we still felt good about things. The kids and I met Brian after work the Tuesday after Easter to see if we could find a remnant we liked and to talk to an actual carpet expert to see what his recommendations were. We wanted carpet on the stairs and upper levels of the playhouse, and a carpet tile under our 3/8 inch soft tiles that we had ordered back in December for our flooring. After picking out a nice, low pile, nylon carpet remnant and a carpet pad and then agreeing on a price, the carpet store owner said, "I think I can have a guy come out tomorrow. Will that work?" We were stunned. We mentally ran through our lists of what needed to be finished and decided that we could go for it.

We decided that we needed to call in the cavalry. We texted some friends to see if they could come out and help (which is HUGE for us), and they came to work at 8:30 that night. Kirsten touched up paint, Brian and Brian Watson painted the window trim, and I finished painting the grass blades on the baseboards. They stayed until 10:30, and we went to bed around midnight. We were so grateful for our amazing friends and the huge boost the gave us.

I went down first thing the next day to work on touch-ups and things. I think that was the day that I told Michael that I would pay him a dollar to play with Rachel so I could work. (when I came upstairs to put her down for a nap, they weren't in the house, and I felt like a horrible mom. But then they came in the door, both bundled up in coats and beanies, snowpants and boots. They were so adorable that I couldn't even get after Michael for taking her outside without me). I moved all of our tools and temporary work benches out of the room and swept and vacummed the floor. I ran our Roomba down there a few times after sweeping and using the shop vac. The carpet installer called about the time he was supposed to be at our house to say that he was running late and couldn't come until the next day. I was so grateful...despite the efforts of our friends, we still had a lot to do. I finished touching up. Finally, we were ready.

 The next day, I headed to the Bean Museum with my friend Winnie, and Brian worked from home so the carpet installer could come. Lea had offered to come help that night (Lea came many days for just a couple of hours, really whenever she could. She took my kids several days as well. She was so awesome; she needs a shout out here). I told her that she and her boys could come help us install the foam flooring. Around the walls was not so fun, but once we got to the main section, even 3-year-old Skyler could help. They loved putting the big puzzle pieces together. Hunter and Lea designed the moat and Hunter decided where to put our "dirt" path. Prior to laying down the floor, Lea also helped me hang felt leaves in the tree.

 Brian installed the netting using fencing staples, a drill, and a hammer. And then we got to start moving furniture and toys in!

 We found this cupboard on New Year's Eve in Logan when we helped move Ethan back to school. It was in front of an antique shop, and I made Brian stop on our way back out of town. It reminded me of a cupboard that we had when I was a little girl. We measured it and figured out that it was the perfect size for the area in one of the turrets in the playhouse, it just needed to be trimmed a little and have a small repair and new paint job. I asked Michael what color we should paint it and he said blue. He helped with a lot of the sanding.

 I really wanted a play kitchen. I looked at dozens of them online, and found this one that I thought would be perfect. It's wood, so I figured we could trim/tweak it to fit the space. The microwave was originally supposed to be attached to the base, but I didn't want to cover the window. You can also see those storage areas I insisted on being under the stairs. Michael has turned the closet into an armory. He usually stores his wooden machine gun there as well.

Door painting (we never got a picture of our massive trim painting system that we had set up. LOTS of painting on this project)

 Our built-in turned out amazing! Brian made that top middle shelf so it would be the right height for my porcelain dolls. I had a wonderful trip down memory lane when I pulled those out of the wrappings I put them in 12 or 13 years ago. My dad fixed the weird gap in the doors. At some point, I think I want to router the edges of the doors so they look a little less modern, but for now, we're satisfied. Those bottom cupboards lock, and it has been SO nice! It makes clean up more manageable than it otherwise would be.

 We put a lot of thought into this closet. We were going to put a closet rod in, but then finally said, "When are we ever going to put clothes in here?" We opted for big shelves and open areas for big toys. We really loved Ben and Jenny's bonus room closet and how it had big shelves. Brian did a great job on building these shelves.

 Remember how I told you the drywall company kept messing up with the texture? Well, one of those mistakes turned out to be a huge blessing. We were going to do a toy cupboard next to the slide, but they did rough texture in there instead of the smooth that I had asked for. We decided to make that area a dungeon instead of a toy cupboard, which is way more awesome.  Brian made this awesome gate and my dad made the lock box on it. I painted it. Brian installed it. The kids love it.

 And here are all the murals. I took one of our green flooring tiles to Home Depot to match the color for paint. I really like how the murals turned out. Some things I don't like as well, but overall, the effect is really fun.

I had this idea about a tree with leaves that hang down, and so I made the leaves out of two different colors of felt and then tacked them to the wall and ceiling with green thumb tacks. The kids picked out bird houses and birds from Joanns and painted the birdhouses. I hung them in the tree. Michael's is the blueish one, and Rachel picked purple. I "carved" Brian's and my initials on the tree. 

 There are a few hidden things around the playroom that you'll have to find when you come see us. More will be coming soon. And my parents found this sweet skeleton key for our dungeon that is just waiting for us to find a hook that we can install and hang it on. Still more good/fun things to do down there.

 On April 20, we had an official ribbon cutting ceremony and invited some of Michael's good friends. They each took a turn cutting a ribbon, and then they got to play. They loved it!

So to recap, wishes come true, not free. This dream of ours took lots of work and expense, but we love it. We joke that our playroom is the result of dreams and a whole lot of naivety. It turned into a platform to put all of our creativity and imagination. Will we do it again? Probably not. Or if we do, we'll hire EVERYTHING but the really fun stuff out. 

Brian tried to take a picture of our progress from the same spot. There are so many pictures we wish that we would have taken (I'm sure you're thinking we already took way too many). Here's a quick look at our progress from dream to reality:

Easter Part 3: Easter Savillan Style

Sometimes, you marry into a family and, by default, get to experience amazing new family traditions that are so fun, you wonder how ever did without them. For me, some of these traditions come around on Easter. First, there is the hiding of the colored eggs. My family did this growing up, so this isn't new, but there is this excitement over it that died in my family about the time I became a teenager. Maybe it comes because Brian loves it so much, and his enthusiasm just runs over onto me. I'm not sure. I can't explain it. I love Easter, and I have made Brian adopt many,  many of my family traditions, and even though my parents hid colored, hard-boiled eggs, it wasn't the thing I looked forward to about Easter at my parents' house. Maybe it's because I don't really like hard-boiled eggs, or deviled eggs. Maybe it's because the Savilles roll their eggs and then make creamed eggs with them. Whatever the reason, this familiar tradition seems like a much bigger deal with Brian's family. 

 This year, Kirt and Julie hid a few plastic eggs with candy inside and one specially marked one for each kid containing quarters. It was pretty exciting!

 The anticipation for these boys was intense.

 Rachel and Skyler had free reign of this front room:

  After all the eggs were accounted for we gave up looking for that last egg, the party moved outside for the annual egg-rolling. 

 Shells were flying, a couple of the eggs didn't make it, and a good time was had by all.

Julie made her specialty, and Rachel watched part of it, loving to be in the kitchen with Nana. 

 We finished peeling the eggs that were so carefully cracked in the driveway (I feel like this picture completely captures the essence of get-togethers at the Saville home. I love this picture),

and then it was dinner time! Creamed eggs on toast. 

This year, we also had sticky buns and a trifle. It was a delicious feast! And Brian was excited to go home with leftovers. After eating, we watched more General Conference, and then Lea's crew had to head to their next Easter party, and we hung out some more, watching "Meet the Mormons" with Kirt and Julie. The movie was fun and moving; I highly recommend it. 

How grateful I am for the reason behind Easter. I'm so grateful for the Atonement of my Savior and for the hope that His resurrection brings. Without Him, I am nothing, and I know that the wonderful blessings in my life come from Him, including this wonderful Saville family and their traditions that I love so much.