Angry Birds Room, Luke's birthday and home renovations

There isn't much to say about the boys room, except that it's finally finished. Well, for now. The yellow wall could use a few more coats of paint and the boys could use a small desk but for now, we're done! I need a break from painting.

Before

After

Today is Luke's birthday! We have this thing where we do a small family celebration on the actual birthday and a big party later--whenever relatives can make it. We get the best of the two this way. We also only do one present on the actual birthday but the kids don't mind. It's sort of a tease of what's to come and it helps them appreciate that one present a little longer too. Today Luke's one present was a gold fish.

Actually, he got two. A Bubble Eye Gold fish and some other type of gold fish. He named the Bubble Eye one "Monster" and the other one "Crazy Scientist."

He loves his fish. Sadly, he thinks of them as his only friend. I hope that one day he can have a real friend that won't go belly-up on him.

Later, he decorated his cake. We have a tradition where I will make a regular cake (they usually help) and then I let the birthday boy/girl decorate it any way that they choose. This means I need to literally walk away and just let them have their fun otherwise I would probably freak out over how much icing they're dumping on and sprinkles. I think next time I will measure out the sugar sprinkles though; it was waaaay too much. No cake should be crunchy.

 

That cake still makes me gag.

 

Later, we decided to go to the beach. This was sort of a spontaneous decision based on the heat and the renovations for the flooring but Luke thought this was part of his birthday. Good enough, it helped make the day special for him!

Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera. I wish I had because the pet store gave Luke a free alligator floatie for his birthday and it's the first time the kids have used any sort of floatation device in the water. It seems these days that there's hardly a beach out there that will let you use them. Luckily, no one is ever at this beach (not even a lifeguard) so the kids got to use the alligator floatie. They had a lot of fun! At first, they had no idea what to do with it and when I told them they could ride on it, they were astounded that it could float with them on it! Ah, these technological-age babies....

Oh, I also forgot to add that at daily mass, the priest gave Luke a birthday blessing. That was special!

So that was Luke's birthday and he has big one coming up in a two weeks to look forward to. In the meantime, we are getting ready for tomorrow...

...when the floor will finally be installed!

The living room

The dining room with all our stuff in it

We're back to living on cots and sleeping in basements (I feel like we just went through this) and I can't say I'm happy to be back to the packed-in furniture of one room and the bareness with no-where-to-sit living room. But it's only for a day or two, and it's all worth it for a floor.

Tomorrow we'll be hanging out with my mom for the most part, avoiding the house while the floor is being installed. Can't wait to get settled (again) in our "new" house...