Henry Family!: It's a Doll House!

Abby was gifted a dollhouse from my friend Barb at work. It's one of the houses built from a kit and it has a bunch of vintage furniture in it (cast iron stove, wood beds, a tv that is a piece of furniture). The house was Barb's daughter's. (She is a little older than me, I think.) And so, the house came to live at our house (along with a Sing-a-Ma-Jig and a Leapfrog Learning toy). I brought in the house tonight and it has been ~~messed with~~ played with all evening. Abby has spent hours now rearranging the house and Ray has figured out how to take down the wallpaper, rewire the lights, and peel up the floor. In fact, I think that I hear him already scraping dollhouse scale linoleum out of the kitchen to 'expose the hardwoods.' I hear a lot of babble about paint chips, new window treatments and Minwax. I don't know who likes the house more. I think he might be picking out paint swatches. It's a DIY dream. A complete rehab. I like the wrap-around porch.

The front- the house is going to be white- I think

For some reason, this looks like a crime scene.... CSI, anyone? Even the lamp is awry here.

Not much has been going on around here. We are approaching midterms at work and things are getting a little bit bothersome with midterms, county exams and the end of the quarter. We are off Monday, so I think that I might go to the library to grade while Ray holds down the fort. Brooks now has five teeth (some are not all the way in) and he is climbing everything- chairs, couches, gates, animals, Ray. He rarely sits down and when he does it's only out of force to get a drink, cookie or to actually rest for a minute.

This is maybe the second time since he started walking that he laid his head down on me. It's a Kodak Moment- he must have been tired.


Do we both look tired? And Awkward? Maybe because he NEVER SITS WITH ANYONE.

On another side note, (to digress) I made dinner Saturday night (and tonight, actually). For those of you who are familiar with this house, I tend to not cook during the week because of my work schedule. While it is only two nights extra week now, it really stresses out the household sometimes and just adds that much more tired to everyone's schedule. Ray generally plans the meals and organizes things. I like to bake, but not necessarily cook. We were doing well with the crockpot and then for some reason we got into a rut of not using it again. So anyway, the weather was really nice this weekend and Abby was at Lael's. One kid is totally manageable. You almost feel like you could conquer the world with only one in the house. So, I decided to cook dinner. I made a honey, lime glazed Salmon with a fresh spinach, red pepper and warm blackbean salad. I don't eat Salmon. But, Ray does, and so I decided to appease him. I even went to the fish counter alone and talked to the fishman. He told me all about portion sizes and I bought a huge slab of fish. Gross. I was proud of this concoction (thanks Rachael Ray) since I just don't have the motivation to cook during the week. I think that Ray was appreciative too.

The salad- and some salmon (somewhere on the plate).

Tonight I made pretzel coated chicken with a cheddar, mustard side sauce. It was tasty. I do feel bad that Ray will notice that I picked out almost all of his pretzels from both bags of Chex Mix to make the pretzel rub....

Here are some other pictures for your amusement.