Brenna's dollhouse

For Brenna's birthday she asked for a bike and a Barbie guitar (thank you, Grandma!), but I had lots of other ideas. She had lots of dollhouse furniture that she loves to play with, but she had long since outgrown her toddler-sized dollhouse. I'm hoping to get her a collectible dollhouse kit when she gets a bit older, but she needed something to play with now. So in my internet research I ran across this. Adorable and just what I wanted, but did you catch that price tag? So I kept browsing. And browsing. Until I came up with this. I started cutting out pictures to hang on the walls, but I only did a few because I knew Brenna would have definite ideas about what she wanted so she is adding to it (already she's had me cut some fabric to make tableclothes and rug, make a couch, draw a fireplace and make a tv (but she drew the show). I kind of want to make one for myself now, but Brenna says she'll share.

Time to catch up...

Even for me, it's been awhile since I posted. We've been busy, busy, busy over the last month and a half. We wrapped up school for the year and we're taking the whole month of June off to catch our breath. Since summer is so miserably hot, I'm planning to start next year in July, right after the 4th, and take a few weeks off in August/September. The weather then should be perfect for some little trips and lots of playing outside. Almost accidentally, I managed to work out our calendar for next year so that we have some time off around every child's birthday (except Jack who still will get his big day off).


While we've been off, we've been busy relaxing:) Casey had some time off to go with us to Dauset Trails and Indian Springs! It was so good to get away even just for a little bit all together. We will definitely have to plan another trip!

The kids and I took another short trip with my family to the beach. We had a wonderful time with my parents and grandparents and favorite sister. As a kid, I was blessed to get to spend a lot of time with my grandparents and I'm always so thankful for my kids to get to do that, too. We attempted to take some family pictures on the beach, but some of us were less than cooperative...

We did get some good pictures, though, and we had a great time. Watching the kids see the ocean for the first time was so good for me. I was surprised at how refreshing even a short trip could be - we may have to squeeze in another quick trip before too long! And I'll definitely have to post some more pictures later.

And now I'm ready to jump back into life at home. I have so much planning still to do for next school year. I'm so excited about everything we're going to study! And I'm debating about squeezing in a yard sale. I would love to haul everything to the Salvation Army and be done with it, but our thrift stores are terribly disorganized - tons of good clothes get sold for rags because they simply don't have the manpower to sort it all. So I would rather have a yardsale with extremely good prices and just donate some of the money. I'm just trying to decide if I have a free Saturday and if the kids will need to be relocated:)
We still have fun stuff planned. Father's Day, Brenna's birthday, VBS and the fourth of July are coming right up, after all. I'm already looking forward to the relative slowness of our school schedule!