surprising Pop

Around 10:30 or so Monday morning,

Brandon asked if I thought we ought to paint the shop to surprise Tyler.

They'd been priming everything, and were almost finished with that,

and they'd painted the ceiling.

I quickly calculated that Tyler wouldn't head out to the shop before Wednesday,

since he had a meeting that night, 

and Tuesdays are long days since the boys have TKD

and they don't get home 'til 7:30.

So I told him to run out and finish Kilzing.

Josiah went out to help him

and when they finished,

we went to Lowe's.

But first we stopped at Taco Bell for lunch

only to find out that they've taken their 99 cent 7 layer nachos off the menu!

So we went to McDs instead.

After we picked out paint (and grabbed $.50 icecream cones from Burger King)

we came back home and got busy.

We told the kids not to say anything to Dad about going to Lowe's or the shop or anything.

If he asked what we had for lunch

(he doesn't usually - and usually we have eggs... but every once in awhile he does ask)

they could tell him we had Mc Donalds 'cause we were running errands.

Nothing more.

They were also instructed that they'd have to do the 5:00 pick-up by themselves.

But when the house was clean enough that Mom would think it was clean, they could play Wii.

I was a little worried about our plan working.

We'd left the house messier than I realized and we'd have to rely on 4 kids, 4-9 years old to clean it up.

Brandon and I headed out to the shop a few minutes after 3

and by 3:37,

we had finished 1 1/2 walls! 

(the two sections that are the tan-ish grey color -  the workshop portion of the space.)

Impressed with our bad selves,

we decided to go ahead and paint the man cave grey also.

And by man cave, I am referring to both the section of the room,

  and the color.

Yes, the perfect charcoal grey I was wanting is called man cave. Which is perfect ;-)

(The 'shop' refers to the entire building, which they (roughly) halved,

and in that half, which they have insulated and dry-walled, and built 'boxes' into the rafters,

there is a workshop section, and a gym / mancave section.

The other half of the shop is storage.

All of it is a mess...)

I ran up to the house to do some dinner prep and check on the kids

and wouldn't you know it?

They had done a pretty good job!

I had them do a few things they'd missed,

and set a timer and told them if I wasn't back when it went off to turn on the oven for me.

Then I ran back down to the shop.

By the time Tyler called at 5 to say he was heading home,

we were almost finished with the first coat!

Brandon stayed in the shop to finish up

while I washed a roller and brush (and myself).

Brandon managed to finish painting and was in his closet changing out of his paint clothes when Tyler got home.

Yesterday

we touched up the tan,

painted a second coat of man cave,

touched up the ceiling

and cleaned up a bit in there.

Then we waited for our chance to nonchalantly get Pop out in the shop tonight :-)

(we had several scenarios in mind and figured we'd just go with what worked best.

What worked, was Brandon challenging Tyler to some pull-ups)

This time,

he was appropriately impressed ;-)

We love you, Daddy! It was fun to work together to bless you!

(and succeed in our surprise :-)