What about the other kids???

Those of you who know me know I have 4 children, not just 1.  Seeing as my boys are older (9,12, & 14) I am going to be pulling them in on the fun with Pheebe as well.  My youngest boy has already decided that he will be in charge of any art work Pheebe (& Hally, though he doesn't know about her yet) may do.  The others are not as eager, more apprehensive that this can be pulled off.  I will enlist the boys in ideas and the actual pulling off of some of the adventures.  My 14 year old arrives home an hour before anyone else so he will be perfect for staging any adventuring that may have gone on during the day.

That being said I don't want anyone to think they are being over looked this Christmas.   I can assure you they are not. 

We are keeping the carpenter quite busy this month with projects galore.  My dad has his work cut out for him. 

My 9 year old, Noah, is easy if it's lego he will love it.  He builds huge sets in no time at all.  So he's getting a custom built lego table with lego storage. The lego tables they sell are small and over priced but with the purchase of a couple of plastic storage bins, some wood, & several large base plates he will have a biger table at a fraction of the cost.  Along with the table Noah will get about a million legos for building fun. Okay so maybe not that many, but sure feels like it with the money spent on them.  Those tiny things are expensive!

My oldest two are impossible!  They ask for nothing but expensive electronics and when pushed can think of only odd little things I know they will use once and toss aside or lose.  So what do you get for the impossible duo?  Insulation, drywall, and a heater/air conditioner. 

Why?

To build them a "man cave" of course.  We will be converting our detached one car garage into a hang out spot for them.  For their birthdays they got a decient sized pool table and an xbox along with some cool chairs they picked out themselves.   The pool table hasn't seen much use since it started getting cold and 4 kids fighting over 1 tv and 2 game consoles got old long ago. 

So I'm on the look out for a flat screen tv (apparently some games you can't play 2 player on an older tv) and anything cool for a "man cave". 

A lot of things around here can be repurposed and some things have already been given to them.

Currently they have the pool table the two chairs and a mini fridge in the garage.  There is also an old entertainment center and dresser out there.  I figure the dresser can house the video games, all there RPG books, some board games, and some of their favorite books.  We have a love seat in the living room that no one ever uses and a couple of lamps.  There is a dart board somewhere in the attic that's never been used.  And we picked up a full sized foosball table on black Friday.  There is a counter top section in the garage that we could build a cabinet for storage and set it on top of so they can have a place for snacks.

We also have a room divider that we will put out there to divide off the space until we can get a shed to store the lawn mower, bikes, weed wacker, rakes, snow shovels, and various tools in.

Then it's on to decorating the space.  I figure the walls will need to be painted a neutral color (something garage friendly in case the market ever turns around and we decide to sell) and a bunch of posters of various bands the boys like as well as some mine craft and other such games they like. 

I had bought Brian a buch of pool hall stuff, but I'm not so sure that would be good as I wouldn't want anything to be broken on him.  Besides if the boys had real glasses and plates out there I can only imagine the mess of dirty dishes.....  I think they can stick to paper for now.

Any and all suggestions are welcome.  If you can't tell by now I am using this blog post to brian storm ideas.  I do my best thinking when writing.

Noah's lego table