Barrel of Monkey's

We 'officially' finished one of our multi-stage projects I was mentioning a while back!!!  Our climbing wall!!  Okay, so I want to finish off the triangle and back side of the wall but it is officially functional and that's all that matters to the hubs.  I'll take you through our process (there is not a picture for every step, but enough you can fill in the missing pics):

This is a picture from the home listing but gives you an idea of what the room use to look like.  One big, long room.  This pic is taken from approximately the middle and there's a bed on the other side.

Step 1:  Tear out carpet from storage room and ceiling boards.  Someone was not so careful tearing out either even though they were given the awesome suggestion to score the ceiling to make more straight lines; so eventually I will be doing some repair work.  

Then we got some helpers, my sis and bil and 2 of big J's friends, to help plan out and put up the climbing walls!!  Thank you, Thank you!!!!

Framing and putting up of overhanging wall

Here's where I came in.  We did some research and lots of websites said they used concrete paint that worked on wood.  So I found some really great, so far I think, paint (Sure Step concrete paint) at Home Depot.com that gives a textured feel to the wall.  I first filled in many of the smaller cracks with caulk and then put on two coats and we let it cure for about 2 weeks before putting holds on.  This is so the holds don't stick to the paint.  It was a long time for everyone to wait, but the finished product is so fun!......DRUMROLL!............

Barrel of Monkey's

So when winter hits we have an indoor playground.  AND, our storage area is more confined!  Yay!!  So, come on over and play!!!

Also, a shout out to big J sister and brother in law for giving us the boards and many of the holds you see here from their garage they renovated!  THANK YOU!!!!!  You made the project SO much easier!!!!

Happy (almost) Halloween!!!

I LOVE it when my crafts turn out!!  

(nevermind the spackled holes.  This room WILL be done by the end of 2013, yes '13; it has a lot of work to be done and I must have a goal I know I can do!)

We have also made these babies and they were superlota fun!  Next on my list is candy corn sugar cookies.  

The End Has Come

Soccer season is officially over for this household as of tonight!  No more trying to figure dinner in  before or after games, late bedtimes and overlapping soccer schedules.  The kids sure were all pretty awesome this year though!  Little J scored one goal, I believe (I missed seeing it by mere seconds) :(  We're noticing a pattern with him.....he appears to be a defensive player by nature.  Sweet little A came out strong her first game with several goals and then fell into more passive playing.  But by the end was doing a bit better.  I think she started to mostly look forward to the treats.  B did really great this year and plays each position pretty well.  Her favorite spot is midfield.  She really takes action on what her coaches tell her and we can see much improvement of skills even from last season.  Her second to last game we got to see her score not one but TWO goals--a difficult feat at this level.  I think her total for the season was 3 goals and a number of assists.  It's exciting to see her passing the ball and thinking more strategically.  Big J was assistant coach for both the bigger kidlet teams so he ended up coaching a number of the games when the coach couldn't make it.  And I know I was really enjoying myself coaching little Bugs team when I devoted an entire evening to make my little team members these:

Or maybe I'd just been on pinterest too much lately.  I knew they'd just rip right into them but I didn't care.  They were all stars and I wanted to do something special for them!

This one was my favorite star though

Yep, it's also the end of summer and really looking like beautiful fall

We went on a drive up Hobble Creek Canyon

And just kept going on dirt roads until we came out Spanish Fork Canyon

Can you tell what this guy's favorite activity was?  I'll give you a hint, this is a dirt road with plenty of rocks to throw into the trees or aim at one tree in particular if more of a challenge is desired.  I think he already throws better than I do.....

Love birds

Pretty leaves!  Fall is so pretty.

There's just something magical about Aspen trees

Go BYU!  We took the kidlets to their first BYU football game!

Cougar spirit