Forty-sixth Passage

The Bed.

I can't brag about David too much. He is so brag worthy!
A few months ago we were talking about the boys, and beds, and Christmas. David said we should make them a triple decker bunk bed, and then his creativity went from there. This bed started as a drawing that came straight from David's head. Then he bought the materials, cut them out to perfection, and created a masterpiece. Seriously. I helped a couple days, but usually I stayed home with kids. This project took many, many, hours.
I just made a calculation, and it looks like the bed, all told, cost us $512.98. Most of that is wood and bolts and screws. But $60 of it is the cost of two mattresses I found. I went to Idaho Youth Ranch and found many twin mattresses for $30 each. We needed two, since Morgan and Owen had been in toddler beds until now, so I snatched them up. It turns out that I bought extra long twin mattresses. Who even knew there was such a thing! This made David have to do more creative thinking to get the beds to fit in the already started bed. He had to change how he made the shelves. He's brilliant. Anyway, the extra long mattresses made for a necessity to buy extra long mattress sheets, which I could only find online.
Oh, and the metal used was free to us! It would normally have cost a couple hundred bucks, but our friend, Steve, was able to get it for us from his work. Awesome!
Here are some shots of the progression.

This beast was an ordeal to set up. We had it all planned out. Scheduling to have all the boys home at Christmas time at the SAME time was tricky, but we worked it out so that Christmas Eve David and his dad would sneak away from Christmas festivities at the Poston home and take the bed over to set it up. They probably got started around 7:00 pm.  They expected it to take about two hours, I think. Morgan, Lydia, and I hung out with Nana Sugar and Great Nana. We left when it was time to pick William and Owen up at 10:00. The men still were working. I drove down every street in our neighborhood to look at Christmas lights to kill time. It was fun anyway. When we got home, I told the children that since it was a special day, they could stay up and watch a movie. But don't go upstairs! When I went to see how things were going in the boys' room, I admit, I was a little dismayed. The progress seemed minimal. The frame wasn't even put together. And it was already almost 11:00 at night. So I started to help.
The boys watched a second movie. Amazingly, they all stayed awake. (I put Lydia to bed around 11:30, probably.)
Getting the heavy bed all snugly in the corner was an ordeal. Then, when we realized that because of the shelf on the top bunk, the bed wouldn't fit snugly in the corner, it was an even bigger ordeal moving the bed away from the wall, now with the added weight of mattresses and shelves. But the strong men got it. I pretended like I was helping by standing in the way and sometimes touching the bed.
It was after 1:00 when it was ready. I hastily put a bow on it, then we called the boys in. We got their reactions on video, as they first saw the bed. I think they like it. :)

 

 The boys love the bed. We chose wisely when we put Morgan on top, as he is the only one brave enough to climb up there. :) The boys love playing in their room now, and usually the play with their new Christmas toys while sitting on their beds. Oh! Another plus about having the bunk bed is that there is now room in their bedroom for the toys. I removed them from the school room. Yay.

Lydia likes to play too, and climbs all over it. I think I've seen her play at the steering wheel more than the others.