Kids need wild spaces

...and if there aren't any outside, create them on the inside!

We discovered a space, about a week after moving in that we had somehow never seen before.  On the stairs going down to the third level of the house, we found a little room under the stairs!  We thought that it would be a perfect "hideout".  This week the kids went crazy getting it all fixed up.  They could hardly think about anything else! 

This doesn't show much of it, but is an idea of the space after the kids emptied it of all storage boxes and stuff:

They wiped down all the walls and swept it out really good and worked for HOURS:

As they worked, I heard BIG planning/dreaming going on.  "we should paint this up really nice and put some carpet in here!"  "Yeah!  and maybe we could make a drop down table and have snacks in here and stuff!" "and we could keep all of our weapons in here!"  etc.

Luckily I had lots of left-over paint.  Isabelle and Nolan primed the space:

Then on the designated paint day, Maddie had Bailey Marshall over and she brought her little sister, so Isabelle ended up hanging out with her and Nolan wanted to press on, so he ended up painting the hideout all by himself. Shawn and I came home from evening Parent Teacher conferences to a very dejected Nolan.  He felt like his paint job had ruined the "Hideout".  It wasn't too bad, but didn't live up to their expectations:

I was actually pretty impressed that he did THAT well, but I could see how disappointed he was, so I took a few hours the next day and fixed it up.  It was NOT an easy space to paint, and then I was even MORE impressed with how well he did!:

Then on Friday night the girls and I had a girl's night with the Harrisons, and while Shawn was home with the boys, they laid carpet and built a ladder to climb into the "hideout".


There's still a lot of dreaming going into this space, but meanwhile, it's sure a great place to sleep in on weekends!