We Have a Loft and a Decent Basement!

Well, I should rephrase that. We've had a loft and basement ever since we moved into our house over two years ago, but we were lazy and put a bunch of junk in the loft, like boxes that we didn't feel like unpacking. The basement had our exercise bike, punching bag, and my dad's desk that he gave us. Neither room was being used at all by any of us and I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. This past weekend, we gritted our teeth and got both rooms fixed up.

For the loft, we had to unpack or move all the boxes, take the wonderful gold chairs to the basement (they are from Jeff's parents when we moved in), move the desk upstairs (disassembling it in the basement and reassembling it upstairs), move the boxing equipment to the garage for later installation there, and finally take our old TV and stand from the garage to the basement.

The boxes were simple enough to go through - we unpacked most of them and moved a few of them into the office for later unpacking. Jeff took the chairs to the living room and he and Jordan then went down to the basement and took apart the desk while I vacuumed the now-empty loft. I then went down and helped them bring up the desk in pieces. Back in the loft, we reassembled the desk and it looks fantastic. I moved all our office supplies into it.

In the basement, Jeff and Jordan took apart the boxing equipment (punching bag and speed bag, all on a stand), and we took that out to the garage.

Then came the really hard part. We had to move the TV into the house from the garage, down the stairs, and into the basement. Our TV is an old 36-inch Sony Trinitron and weighs more than any TV I've ever encountered. It took Jeff and I quite a while to get it off the stand and onto the padded dolly. We then had to wheel it up three steps from the garage to the house, which took probably 15 minutes. The stairs to the basement took another 30-40 minutes, then we had to do it again with the stand (which doesn't weigh nearly as much, but it's still a ton). I think it took a total of about 2 hours to move both the TV and the stand and get them set up in the basement. But the results are fantastic. We got the PS2 and the Xbox set up. Both devices can play DVDs, so movies are now an option for down there.

Since completing the work over the weekend, Jordan has spent every evening (after his homework is done) in the basement playing games. Why he would never play them when they were upstairs, I do not know. He seems to like his solitude down there. He has also taken to practicing his trumpet down there. I don't mind hearing him practice, but he seems more at peace when he knows he isn't bothering others and that we're not eavesdropping. Whenever I am in the kitchen while he's practicing, I can barely make out the songs he is working on.

Having two more rooms in use for us is proving to be quite wonderful. While we still have some unpacking to do, the entire house is becoming more open and less crowded. It even seems much bigger now.

Here are some pictures of the loft. As you can see, there isn't a box or pile of junk to be seen now. Plus, the view from the living room no longer looks like it's all walled off up there. I'm so happy. I haven't taken any of the basement yet, but will do so sometime soon.

Loft as seen from the office

Loft as seen from Jordan's doorway

Loft as seen from the living room (kind of blurry, as I took this with my cell phone and apparently can't stand still...lol)

Halloween

We barely managed to snag Halloween this year as it raced by. We've been busy working and attending school, we were sick for a while, and household projects have taken plenty of our time.

Jordan has never been a big fan of any holiday, including Halloween. He isn't a big candy-eater, as evidenced by my finding last year's candy still stashed in his closet last week. While he enjoys watching others go door-to-door in their costumes, he can't stand dressing up. Perhaps the traditional freezing weather has something to do with his aversion. This was the first year that he decided not to do anything specifically for Halloween. On the night before Halloween, he went to a couple haunted houses with some friends and loved those. But he opted not to dress up and go trick-or-treating. Too bad he didn't want to go this year, since it was almost 70 degrees outside during the evening hours. It was the warmest Halloween on record in Denver since the 1950s. We have yet to receive our first snow of the season.

Normally for Halloween we completely decorate the inside and outside of the house with scary things, turn on strobe lights, black lights, scary music, eat a scary dinner (usually alien-green chicken & rice), hand out candy, and go trick-or-treating with Jordan. Because we were busy or simply unaware of the approaching holiday, all we did this year was hand out candy. Since Jordan chose not to go out, we gave him the glorious task of handing out candy to kids who came a-knocking. He didn't like this job any more than we do, so maybe next year he'll be more eager to do something (either go out or have some friends over).

During the week leading up to Halloween, we watched most of the scary or Halloween-like movies we have: The Addams Family, Addams Family Values, Hocus Pocus, and finally, Wait Until Dark. I've seen the first three many times over the years and didn't get much more out of them than usual. However, I haven't seen Wait Until Dark since I was a teenager and it was so much more enthralling than I remembered it to be. Jordan was mostly bored throughout it, but stayed on anyway, although he couldn't quite say why he kept watching. The DVD version of the movie has subtitles and I was amazed to hear (read) much more of the dialogue than I had known existed before. While the movie wasn't as edge-of-your-seat captivating as my memory led me to believe, the intricacies involved in the plot are so wonderful that I enjoyed the movie more than I expected to. Jeff and I were both thrilled with the story and how well it was told. Plus, it was one of Audrey Hepburn's first acting roles where she wasn't meant to simply be eye candy and she did a marvelous job convincing the audience that she was blind and terrified. It was a most memorable movie this time around, although I was appalled at how many people smoked in it, as though the idea that breathing stinky, sticky smoke into your lungs could ever not be bad for you apparently never occurred to anyone back in the 1960s.

Since we had no major happenings aside from a movie on Halloween and therefore didn't have anything important to take pictures of, I will reminisce about the holiday in past years through some pictures. I couldn't find any pictures past age 7. They are either located somewhere else on my storage drive or maybe in actual printed pictures. Either way, I can't find them at this time. Let's see - in 2005 he was a skeleton, in 2006 he was a pirate, and in 2007 he was a death eater from Harry Potter.

Halloween 2001 (Age 4)

He wanted to be a ghost for his first time trick-or-treating in the neighborhood and to wear at his preschool Halloween party. I searched all over for a ghost costume but resorted to making this one by hand. We tried it in a simpler form, but it kept slipping off his head, so it got more and more extravagant. The final result has elastic sewn into the head section so it would stay on Jordan's head.

Stirring the ingredients for pumpkin pies.
Filling the individual pie crusts with the pumpkin pie mixture.

Halloween 2002 (Age 5)

I don't recall if he wanted to go as a dinosaur or if we just gave him a costume to wear that year so he could dress up for school.

From the side

Halloween 2003 (Age 6)

He didn't like the movie much, but wanted to go as Superman anyway.

Two of the pumpkins we carved while visiting Jeff's parents.

Halloween 2004 (Age 7)

Totally enthralled with astronomy, he decided to be an astronaut. Here he is without his helmet on.

And with his helmet on.
Jeff's parents came to visit and carve pumpkins
We made tombstones out of styrofoam and engraved them with fun epitaphs.
Jeff's tombstone reads: Here lies Jeff. There's no place like 127.0.0.1. R.H.I.P.
Jordan's tombstone reads: Here lies Jordan. He ran out of numbers. R. I. P.
Tara's tombstone reads: Here lies Tara. I put my wife beneath this stone for her repose and for my own.
Our cat, Smoky's tombstone reads: Here lies Smoky. She had 9 lives but now they're gone. She wished she had another one!
Our late hamster, Mario's tombstone reads: Here lies Mario. His wheel came off.
Robert & Linda's tombstone reads: Here lie Robert & Linda. In perfect health, died in a sudden and unexpected manner while reading tombstones.

The three of us holding our tombstones (Jeff's in the Terminator mask and Jordan's in the other freaky mask).