Summer Update

This summer has been full of activity. One of the major updates from our family is that I have resigned from Press Ganey. Actually, I have resigned from working outside of the house. I have joined the ranks of the other stay at home moms of the world! While I miss the friends I made over the 7 1/2 years with Press Ganey, the clients I worked with, and the work that I did, this is the best decision I have made for our family.

There are quite a few things I have learned in the past 1 1/2 months at home. Jaden is the biggest cuddler you could ever want. Makayla can never get her fill of Mommy (even with me home all day!). Jonathan values me being home over going out to lunch (ask me and I will tell you the story sometime). The laundry will never be done and the floors will never stay cleaned. I think the biggest thing is the fact that we as a family are much less stressed and we have the ability to spend time together as a family now, instead of just trying to keep up with the household duties in the evenings and on the weekends.

Now that I have more time at home, I am going to try to keep up with this blog. I will get you caught up with this post and hopefully keep up from there!


Joe started the summer by taking a trip to Utah to race Mustangs. He really enjoyed himself.

Joe brought home racing shirts for all of the kids. I still think the little pink racing shirt on Makayla is just too cute!

At the end of June we drove to St. Louis to the Ciszczon family reunion. It was really nice to see some of the relatives we have not seen in a while. Some of them had never met any of our kids! They told me what the cake said while we were there, but I can't remember and I cannot read Polish...

The boys had a great time hanging out with their cousins. Jonathan and Jaden really love to "swim". I have a feeling I will be driving them to swimming lessons next year...

We went to The City Museum in St. Louis the second day we were there. It was this really huge strange place. It was made completely from recycled materials. It had all of these climbing structures, slides, ball cages, etc. It was really just a big playground for kids and adults. We were told that it is open to adults only from like 9pm -12am and that a lot of the 20 somethings in the city hang out there.

Joe got into playing too!

Here is a picture with Jonathan and Stacey in one of the outdoor ball cages. This was a huge step for Jonathan. He actually chose to go off with a group of the cousins (most of which he had never met), instead of staying with Joe, Jaden, Makayla, and me. We were really glad to see him stretch his comfort zone and go off with them. He was with them for about 4 hours and didn't have any attachment issues at all!

There were so many activities and heat (It was over 100 with the heat index that weekend) that the kids just crashed at the hotel!

In July Jonathan turned 6! He decided he wanted to have a group of his friends "come over to play in [his] backyard". Jonathan chose Star Wars as his theme, so we picked up the invites and all of the decorations. When we got to ordering his cake, he found out the only Star Wars cake they had just had a picture on the top, no toys. That would not work for him, so he decided that he would have a Finding Nemo cake with all of his Star Wars decorations. The Finding Nemo cake had little fish that squirt water. So that is what he got!

Here they are with the Darth Vader pinata. It was a beautiful day weather wise too!

It was a good thing we went with the large L couch. All of the kids would not have fit otherwise!

We played some games,

and ate a lot of food!

This summer Jaden has really gotten into dressing in costumes like his brother!

Now that we have more family time, we have more time for bike rides.

And camping!

I thought this was a really cute picture of Jonathan and Nathan during their visit. The way the blankets are makes them look like the shape of a heart.

Jonathan also started playing soccer this summer. He is doing really well. He is actually being aggressive and going for the ball. This is different than how he played basketball last winter.

Makayla has been enjoying the bike rides!

She also thinks her helmet is pretty neat. I just loved the fact that they had little helmets for her and it even has little flowers on it!

Now that I am home, I was able to hang all of Makayla's decorations. Her room actually looks like a little girl room. When Jaden saw the decal I adhered to the wall he said, "uh oh. Mommy we don't color on the wall. We color on paper." I had to try to explain to a 2 year old that decals Mommy puts on the walls is different than when he colors with crayons on the walls...

Basement Fast Forward

Well, it has been quite a while since I posted last. Lots of things have happened since then. I will post a couple of times to get all of the information out there, but thought I would start with our basement construction. We are done! Well, mostly done anyway. (We have to paint the doors, do some touch up paint after the carpet was installed, and start furnishing it. The furnishing will be slow, since we have to save up again. At least we have some additional space to live in. We almost doubled the size of our house!)

I'll start from the beginning. Here is the basement when we started. Joe was working on the framing, while I was sorting and cleaning all of the things we had accumulated.

Here is another angle of the main area with "stuff".

This is a picture when most of the cleaning was done. The electrical had not been completed yet, but it looked brighter just having the area cleaned out. You can still see the area where Takoda (our old dog) had torn off the vapor barrier and started eating the insulation...

All that is left now is a trash pile in the middle of the room from the framing scraps.

Okay, well there is more stuff "hiding" in the other room. We made the decision to join our neighborhood garage sale this year, so I stored the things we were selling in the other room until the sale weekend. We were able to sell quite a bit and dropped the rest off at the Goodwill around the corner from us. I told Joe once the items were out of the house and in the garage they were not coming back in!

The kids liked coming downstairs to "help" Daddy with the framing. It was good for them to get involved with the construction. Makayla just looked pretty and watched.

Now all of the framing is done, the insulation is installed, as well as the electrical. I can't remember if the duct work was completed in this picture too, but if not it was completed shortly after. You can also see one of the three piles of drywall Joe hung.

We decided to finish room by room, so we could at least see some progress as we went along. The bathroom was the first room we were completing. (I was tired of all of the dirty shoe prints coming up the stairs to use the one in the hall...) You can see a little of the tile we installed in the bathroom in this picture too.

This is one of the many nights Joe spent hanging drywall in the theatre room. (Where the garage sale items were stored.)

We put in a tray ceiling that will have rope lights in this room. It was also a decorative way to hide the duct work in the ceiling!

This picture was taken at about 1:30 in the morning as we painted the bathroom. We had to wait until we put the kids in bed and took care of the dinner dishes and getting things ready for the next day before we could get down to do some painting.

And one room is done!

It started to look messier than it did before we started with construction for a while. There was so much trash, equipment, parts, etc. all around the basement. However, the more drywall Joe hung, the more it started to look like a finished basement.

The next room we painted was the theatre room. We also put in a kitchenette in the back of the room. We will eventually have an oven and refrigerator installed. There is also tile in front of the cabinets.

We went with two different shades of green. We wanted to make this room a little darker, since it will eventually have a projector for movies. The green blended nicely with the blue bathroom too!

The last room we painted is the game room. We chose two different browns. Most of the walls are in this lighter brown.

Here you can see the darker brown we painted on the back accent wall above the stone work.

In this picture, you can see the blue bathroom, the green theatre room, and the brown game room at the same time. We were getting closer to the end in this picture. There are also two large storage rooms that we created, but they are not as exciting to see as the rest of the rooms.

The last pieces we were working on before the carpet was installed was painting all of the trim work. There is a lot of trim to go along the floor and around all of the doors!

This is it, we have everything painted and are ready for carpet!

I can't believe the difference a few months of work can make!

The last three pictures were taken the night before the carpet was installed.

The carpet installation ended up being on Monday Aug 3rd. It was just in time too. Sean, Amy, and Nathan flew in from Utah on Wednesday Aug 5th for a visit. It was great to have a space for them to sleep and for the kids to play!

Of course the kids spent a bunch of time in the play area under the stairs. They seem pretty happy with the space. I know we sure are! And I am sure happy to be done with all of the drywall dust...

I will be back with more updates on the family shortly. Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the end of your summers!