Glad to know that now vs later!

I love having a basement.  Initially, I think it was one of those things where I wanted it because I'd never had one before, but winter doesn't seem as long when you have a place to inflate a bounce house, so now I REALLY love it.

Ours is just a big open room with two smaller, unfinished rooms.  One has the water heater and softener in it, the other is our workout room (which houses Hubs' old weight bench covered in the kids outgrown clothes).  These two rooms also make a great place to stash Christmas presents.  

Yesterday was a mad-crazy cleaning day.  At one point, I had three garbage bags filled with the kids' winter clothes that I brought down to store in Santa's Workshop.  The kids were watching tv, so I hauled the bags downstairs, turned on the light in the storage room, found a place for the bags, cut the light off, and headed back upstairs.  Strip was sitting on the floor next to the couch and said:

Strip:  I can see Christmas from here!

Me:  What?

Strip:  I can see Christmas!!  Come look mommy!  

leads me over to a vent in the floor

Me:  Sweetie, that's a vent.  You can't see anything in there.  Did you drop something down there?

Strip:  No!  When you turned on a light, I could see Christmas!

Me:  What did you see?

Strip:  I saw my Christmas tree and Nugget's Christmas tree, and the big train that Nugget got from Santa...

I realize she is railing off and inventory list of thing in the storage room.  Later that day, I went back down, walked over to where the vent would be and looked up.  Hello couch.  Hello basket. 

 

That night, we were hanging out on our neighbor's porch and I was telling Hubs.  He informed me that there was no way you could just see into the basement.  Something is wrong and there MUST be a piece missing.   I said, "Hubs.  Don't you think I would notice a large metal tube on the ground?!"

Hubs gets up and walks next door.  A few minutes later, he comes back, camera in hand:

 

                                      The hole where you can "see Christmas"

                           The large metal tube I walked past to look at the vent!

Ok, so score one for Hubs.  I'm just glad Strip noticed and told me now instead of on Christmas morning (hey...I saw all of this stuff in the vent....).