Abby and Molly's Ballet Recital

Last Tuesday, the girls had their ballet recital. Their classes don't have a lot of students, so there's not very many kids in the recital. It was still a lot of fun, and they did really well (at least I think so).

Molly sings Christmas Carols

Molly has her own words for many of the classic Christmas Carols, but this one is my favorite:

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the Utah gay!"

She is so funny!!

Molly Part 3

Last night we were headed to Thomas' Cub Scout Pack Meeting (Thomas got 2 arrow points and will get his Wolf badge when it comes in. Good Job Thomas!), and we were playing an alphabet game. In the game, we go around the car and we go through the alphabet, with each person naming an animal that starts with their letter.

When we got to Molly, her letter was "H". Now since she can't spell, we help her with her animal. For "H" I thought "Horse".

Since she loves horses, and since she rode a horse named "Abby" this summer in Flagstaff, I thought that, that would be a great clue. Here's what she said:

Toby: You rode one this summer.
Molly: Ummmm...
Toby: Remember, you rode the other Abby this summer.
Molly: Ummmm...
Toby: Remember, it was named Abby?
Toby: What is Abby?
Molly: Ummm...A sandwich!!

Molly Part 2

As I was posting Molly's thoughts just a minute ago, she started calling for me. I hurried over to see what was so important. And I saw this...




















Molly: Arf ! Arf! I'm a doggie
Toby: OK...
Amy: Get a camera!!
Molly: Yeah, Arf! Arf!

Molly's sayings

Molly is at the age where she likes sharing her thoughts, and of course they're 3 year old thoughts. Tonight Molly said this:
Molly: Daddy !! DADDY !!!! DADDDDDYYYY!! (yelling)
Toby: Molly what, what????
Molly: Every time that we're going to Christmas, I'm goin' like it.
Toby: Ok,.. I'm glad you like Christmas

I'm not sure what going to Christmas means, but I'm glad she likes it

Busy, Busy

Here are the two reasons I haven't posted lately....

They are not the only reason, but I find myself much busier than I was before we got them.

Dollhouse art work

I wanted to post a couple pictures of the artwork that we made for the dollhouse. Everyone who wanted to, got to create a piece or two of art to hang in the rooms.

This first picture is of the exterior of the dollhouse. I finally finished the half-timbered trim on this wall as well.

In the attic, we hung this abstract by Amy.
This is the picture above the fireplace in the "den" on the 3rd Floor. It's a family picture from the Grand Canyon this summer. The day was cold and drizzly, but everyone had a good time.
This reproduction of a famous artwork is in the 3rd floor bedroom/family room.
Abby drew this picture of her and Barbie playing together for a 2nd floor bedroom.
This abstract is also Abby's work. It went in the yellow bedroom since it had yellow and red in it (as well as a bunch of other colors).
Molly contributed this art work (except the flower, that was done by Amy)
Here's the kitchen with a Barbie kitchen set added in.

This dollhouse was one of the largest projects and certainly the most time consuming that I've ever done. Overall it was a lot of fun to do, and I hope that she'll treasure it. The feedback I've gotten from friends and family (except for Santos L Halper) was so positive, thanks to everyone who commented!

The Dollhouse is Finished!!!

Here it is, all done and set up in Abby's room. The girls are playing with it as I type this. They love it!!

Here is the kitchen, complete with a table and chairs and food on the table.

The living room, of course blue barbie is sitting around watching tv, maybe that is why she has such poor circulation.

Here is one of the bedroom, Dorothy is not in Kansas anymore!

Toto is lost in the other bedroom!

This is the family room with a rope ladder leading to the attic. Anyone recognize the painting on the wall?

And finally the den, or apparently this barbie thinks it is a ballroom.

Dollhouse Part 5

I finished putting the trim on one side of the dollhouse and added the windows. Here are 2 pictures of the outside of the dollhouse.

Here's the interior of the house. We put the larger windows on the bottom floor, at Barbie's eye height. The upper 2 floors only have smaller windows, also at Barbie's eye level.

Dollhouse Part 4

Here are some more pictures of the dollhouse. We're slowly making progress..

Here are the shingles that Amy did on the roof. This side, with the chimney was pretty hard. The other side was a bit easier. Fortunately we didn't have to cut all the shingles ourselves. We bought them all pre-cut, and just had to lay them out and glue them down. We're going to leave the shingles their natural color and just cover them with a clear coat.

In the attic, the paper was too short. There was about 2 inches in the back that wasn't covered. So I built these (nonfunctional) boxes to cover the bare patch. The Molly had a lot of fun helping me paint these boxes.
We choose to go with a half-timbered (Fachwerk) look on the outside. We started painting the white parts. Once there's enough layers of white for it to look right, then I'll put the brown strips of wood over the unpainted parts. Molly wanted to help paint, and I was pleasantly suprised. She was able to paint inside the lines and smooth out her thick patchs of paint. Not bad for a 3 year old! Most of the rooms are carpeted in fabric. Here's one of the rooms with the fabric carpet, wood wainscotting and the papered walls. The ladder up from the lower level has been glued into place. The carpet has some sawdust on it, which I'll have to vacuum up later.

Another of the rooms with the wainscotting and edging around the doors in place. The girls really like the bird on this paper.

This will be the kitchen. The floor is vinyl, and also only goes back 12 inches. So the back 2 inches are just painted. I'm thinking about painting black spots on it, but I think that might be a little too much. Most likely I'll just cover it with a Barbie kitchen set.

Dollhouse Part 3

I've been working on the dollhouse slowly, as work and life keep interrupting. A few days ago the girls wanted to help while I was painting some of the trim.

Here Molly and Abby work together to paint what will be a piece of wainscoting.
And here I am supervising.


A few days later I started assembling the whole dollhouse.
This view is from the back of the dollhouse. I put the staircases in the back to try to protect them from little hands. So I'll leave the back off until I'm just about done with the whole dollhouse.

The Chimney goes from the attic (the fireplace will be added on the 3rd floor) through the roof. Cutting a vertical hole through a 45deg roof was pretty challenging.

The 2nd floor staircase. The stairs will be at the back of the house and have the railing against the wall. Hopefully that means they will survive kids playing with the house.

The white and black room will be the kitchen, with a doorway into the 1st floor Living or Dining Room


Here are the second floor rooms



The first floor rooms



The first and second floor staircases.

Dollhouse Part 2

In the last couple of days, I've got a little more done on the Dollhouse.
I got the interior of the roof painted, and covered the chimney with "brick". The Chimney will go through the hole cut in the top of the roof.

I also finished papering the back of the house. Here are the 2 side walls and the back wall standing up next to each other. For the attic, its been papered to look like bare wood. The footings for the roof are also visible on the top of the walls.

Abby has been wanting a dollhouse for her Barbies for a little while. Last week she went to play at a friend's house, who had such a dollhouse. She was so excited and REALLY, REALLY wanted one of her own. I'd been looking for a project, and last year I had thought about doing a dollhouse, so when she told me about how much she wanted a dollhouse, I decided to start one.
The house was built on a scale, that Abby's Barbies would fit. This made it a pretty big house. Here's the rough cut dollhouse. It'll be 3 floors and an attic tall and have 2 rooms on each of the 3 floors. The attic will be for the babies to play in (according to Abby, which makes me wonder where that came from).

Here's a view of the attic with it's chimney and the trap door (for the babies to climb up)

I built 2 stair cases for the lower 2 floors. Each one is big enough for the Barbies to climb

After I finished the initial cutting, it was time to decorate the dollhouse. We laid out all the "wallpaper" to plan which color each room would be. Abby helped pick out all the colors.

This is one of the walls. Each wall has a window cut into the wood, but they're covered with paper right now. Once the house is assembled, I'll add wainscotting around the bottom of each floor, which will cover up all the labels and the bare wood.

This is the other wall in the middle of being covered with paper.

And finally the back wall. Five of the six rooms have been papered, and each dividing wall will meet the back wall at the intersection of the paper.

I'll post more pictures as the project continues.

Road Trip post #2

Before we got to Sweetwater to stay for our first night, we started to drive through this windfarm. The kids really thought they were cool and it really made the drive less boring! Here is an oil pump with the windmills in the background.

If you look really close you can see just how many windmills there were on the horizon in this picture. They went on for miles and miles and miles!

Road Trip August 2010

Back in the spring we planned a trip to Arizona to see Toby's sister, Mitzi. After we let the rest of the family know our plans, everyone else decided to join the party! We hadn't decided if we were going to fly or drive, but after looking at prices of tickets we decided to make it a road trip. We left our house the morning of July 31st and realized that we would be in Austin at about lunch time. We had heard of this restaurant on the lake called "The Oasis" so we called our friends that live in Austin and they agreed to meet us there for lunch. This first picture is the front of the restaurant and gift shop. They had some cool statues and flowers and stuff out there.

When you walk through to the back of the restaurant this is what you see. It is beautiful. There are about 5 stories and most of the tables have a wonderful lake view.

After lunch with the Pullmans we got back on the road and drove until we couldn't drive anymore. We stayed that night in Sweetwater, TX in the middle of a windfarm. Pictures of the windfarm to come. All in all it was a pleasant first day.