How Long Will This Go On???

Do you remember the saying one step forward and two steps back?  That's how I've been feeling.  For the past week we've painted, sanded, swept, vacuumed and then did it all again.  And again.  I'm so thankful to have my helpers - the little ones and the big ones!  Everyone has been working so hard, and no one is complaining about how horribly hot it is.  Except me... (hey, complaining is one of my talents!)

After priming all the walls we got to paint them all!  2 coats of paint each.  Fun!  All with no power and no a/c.  Ok, that's not 100% true.  I have an extension cord that I'm plugging into the outside power outlet to run the fans, radio, vacuum and lights (for those late night adventures in painting).  Oh, and the first "radio" I brought was only a cd player.  And I took it from the kids room so we had to listen to 90 min of the Fresh Beat Band over and over again.  The next day I forgot to bring a new cd, or a different "radio" so I had Austin pull whatever CD's were in my car.  Not much to choose from as the CD player in my car doesn't work.  The kids picked Yo Gabba Gabba first.  After 3 runs of that I asked them to switch it up.  There was a choice between a pretty lame Christian Rock CD or Hannah Montana.  Seriously I had never wished for HM more than that moment.  But the kids chose the Christian Rock CD.  It was bad.  I felt like sleeping, but the kids were happy and that's more important, right?  Needless to say the very next day an actual radio was brought.  :)

Austin saved me from the high up parts.  His height and arm span allowed him to get more done without moving the ladder.  And, honestly, it was killing my back.  Yippee Yay for Austin!  

It was super hot.  So getting the curtains up was priority as that afternoon sun is a killer.  It's hard to see in these pictures, but the curtains are "hung" ghetto style.  I used water bottles to keep them up on the ledge to help buffer the sun.  Yup, I sure did that and I don't even care. 

Ashley not only came to help paint, she brought Rapunzel cupcakes!  That were beautiful!  Yes, she's pretty awesome.  She didn't even complain about the heat!

After a few days of nothing but this, in addition to endlessly looking for cheap, yet nice flooring and something to hang the curtains up with that doesn't need water bottles we finally have painted walls!

See the curtains?  Austin came up with the awesome idea of buying a copper pipe and hanging them up.  The curtain rods were all too short, the copper pipe looks great and was less than half the cost of piecing curtain rods together!  

These are taken from the 4 corners in the shop.  

Now, I'll bet you're wondering what else we do in life.  Come on, I know you're dying to find out.  Well here it goes.  You see, the other morning I work up and checked my email.  When I got off my computer and walked into the kitchen to make breakfast I noticed this. 

Laptop, laptop, Ipad.  And just when you're thinking Ben was doing something else, he was at the computer on the counter...

You would have NEVER seen this in my house grown up when I was there age. Mostly because we didn't have a computer until I was a teenager... we were just happy with the 4 channels on the TV.  

Now I'll bet you're wondering what the kids do at the shop when they're tired of helping?  I lucked out and have the most creative kids on the planet.  Every one of them finds something to have fun with.  Here's Rachel's project:

There was a huge box of nails left in the space.  She spent hours painting them.  Why?  I have no clue, but she was happy and that's good enough for me.  

Once the walls were painted and the curtains hung properly I stuck the very first sign on the window.  

It's super duper official now!  

Now, we had been SO super busy we didn't buy any fireworks for the 4th.  Aaron wanted fireworks SO badly and had begged whenever we went to the store.  He was always pretty upset when I didn't buy them because he really wanted to make sure we were ready for the 4th of July.  We ended up working until 7ish on the 4th and then stopped into Walmart on the way home to get the arsenal.  Guess what... they were SOLD OUT.  Yes, sucky mom of the year award was in the making for me.  This meant, for the first time in my entire adult life, we went to an official fireworks stand.  This is what we came home with. 

This completely turned the sucky mom of the year into the my mom rocks award!  Austin and I were both pretty relieved to find fireworks.  And, for the record, we have enough to last us through next July 4th... Also, we have NEVER had such awesome fireworks before.  Well worth the money because they were seriously awesome.  

After celebrating Independence Day we were off to another work day at the sweat shop.  First we picked up the flooring.  We found an awesome deal on some laminate flooring at Lowes. It's by far the cheapest and nicest option we've come up with.  PLUS if we move locations we can take it with us. :)

See that?  .68 per Sq ft.  Plus a pad thingy underneath.  Thankyouverymuch Lowes! 

Here's the Lowes guys loading up the flooring into my car.  They were pretty positive I'd have to make 2 trips because "there's no way this is going to fit in your car".  Um hum.  Go ahead, tell me something isn't gonna work.. because:

Yes siree, it did fit.  

It was a pretty tight squeeze but it fit! And we made it back to the shop safe and sound. 

Spencer unloaded the car while Rachel L and her sister, Becky helped take care of other things, like painting a chalk board and filling in holes on the concrete. 

I found that stuffing the concrete filling into the cracks with my fingers was by far the fastest and easiest way to fill them up.  It was kinda yucky on my hands, but hey.  It worked great. 

Austin stopped by Home Depot on the way home from work and brought us the under pads for the flooring. 

The kids had a BLAST dancing on their new stage.  

And this.  Well, it's SO hot in there.  I wrap ice cubed in a bandanna and wrap it around my head to stay cool.  Today I did the bandanna deal and I wrapped some ice in a paper towel and cooled off... this way. It worked.  It felt great.  Probably TMI but what do you expect?  

And here's the outside of the shop after I cleaned the windows.  It's going to look amazing when it's done.  Hopefully that will be soon.  There's a whole saga of why we don't have a/c yet and in short, the city of Gilbert has wacky rules about this and that.  So I jumped through all of their hoops and the ONE inspector detector dude that's supposed to OK my paperwork is on vacation.  (seriously, there is only ONE guy to do this for the entire city... LAME)  but another guy took pity on me (or got really tired of my repeated phone calls) and talked the bosses into bypassing the system.  Tomorrow, early, someone is going to come check the space and then I can call the power co and, provided there's no more hoops to hop through, we will have power!  (Power = A/C = Happy ME!) 

Wish me luck on the power thing.  :/