Kenzie's new dollhouse!

Our little girl is lucky to have such an awesome Aunt and Uncle!  Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Craig surprised Mackenzie with a gorgeous, hand crafted doll house that is out of this world!!  The craftsmanship and interior design in this doll house rivals anything we have ever lived in.  In fact, I think it should be more appropriately referred to as Kenzie's new Doll Home!

She has been quite busy playing with it, situating her tiny dolls throughout the home.  Jackson has also been enjoying it, although we don't need to put that out there for public consumption, as he would be upset about the hit to his rep!

Thanks so much Cheryl and Craig!!!

Family room, with hand stained hardwood floors and custom crafted fireplace mantel (and tiny Werner family portrait)

Mid century era kitchen

Nursery

Master bedroom with Juliet balcony

Entryway with ornate floor design

Bird's eye 

Shake roof and brick chimney

Street view.  Covered porch for drinking ice tea and listening to the ball game on the radio

 Wired for electricity... real functioning lights!

It even comes with its own view of the lake from the backyard!

Tinkerbelle and Captain Hook

The whole family had a swell time this Halloween.   We joined our next door neighbors, who were all dressed up as ranch-hands of one form or another (cowboy, cowgirl, cowgirl princess, farmer's wife, and suburban dad with a fedora hat mean to be something of a cowboy hat.)

Steph and I dressed up as ourselves, accompanied by Tink and Hook.

Mackenzie likes Halloween.  Jackson loves it, talks about it constantly, counts the days down, sings about it, generally obsesses about it.  So she had a fun time, he had an epic time.  They got a pretty solid haul of loot, and we were lucky enough that the one dry window amidst a week of rain fell right during trick or treat prime time.  In general, it was a perfect evening, with only two "Halloween Problems":  I got pixie dust all over my jacket from carrying a little fairy home from trick or treating, and later that same fairy cried because her cheeks were tired from chewing skittles.

 Happy Tinkerbelle with her light up wings and pixie dust!

The dread Captain Hook!

The full squad of trick or treaters ready to get some loot!

Enjoying the spoils from their adventure...

too many skittles = tired cheeks = crying fairy :(

Dad weekend again

After a long week away from home, it's good to be back with the kids, where I am solo dad for another weekend while Steph and my sister are in Spokane.  Once again, I sit here blogging on a Saturday night.  Last time I did this, I followed it up by looking at pictures of Mackenzie in chronological reverse order, ending with pictures from her birth.   I won't be repeating that one tonight... I was a mess by the time I finished!

While there's a lot of refereeing, and it's light on adult conversation, I love the time the kids and I share with no distractions.  The rainy weather has kept us inside all weekend, which is fine, as we have turned it into a crafts weekend.  Both of them are dealing with colds, but they don't complain.  The only real issue is they constantly ask for cough drops and sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the desire for cough relief and the desire for candy.  I think I'm doing okay though.

We're doing a lot of halloween projects, interspersed with reading a lot of halloween books.  This is in addition to a school project I did with Jackson, where we decorated a posterboard doll to look like his halloween costume.  Of course Kenzie loved it, so I repeated the project for her a couple nights later.

Captain Hook, with his school project...

I think we, I mean Jackson, has a good chance at an A!

Tinkerbell...

Today Kenzie decided she wanted "to make a picture for my brother".  Of course, it was a pumpkin.  Jackson was then inspired to create his own halloween artwork.

We all miss Steph, especially me, as I haven't seen her for a week.  But we get her back tomorrow!

One last random pic... I happened upon Jackson reading Pinkalicious.  He is really getting into reading recently!

 

Pumpkins

The pumpkins are keeping busy these days.  Their latest noteworthy adventures include separate field trips to the  pumpkin patch, "dad day", and learning to dribble a basketball while driving mom crazy with the noise.

Basketball practice

Pumpkin patch: I dunno much, I wasn't there, but they came back in plucky spirits! 

 

Jackson was excited to have his mom along for the fun

This is the best picture Steph was able to come up with from Kenzie's trip... not sure what that's all about.  But she did a great job buying Kenzie a sparkly pumpkin shirt that she really loved, so that's good.

"Dad day":  I took a random Wednesday off to just enjoy being dad.  I loved dropping the kids off at school and picking them up.  Because Wednesdays are early dismissal, we took advantage of the free time to take them to Family Fun Center.  We were almost the only people in the entire park!  The kids got to drive their own go karts and Jackson got to ride his own boat.  Kenzie frequently crashed her car, due to the frequent need to fix her hair (sounds like her mom's driving from her high school days), but had fun doing so.  Jackson blew us away when he expertly executed a 5 point parking job with his boat, all by himself.  We ended the day with movie night at home, eating popcorn and watching Beauty and the Beast.  Jackson found it too scary.  Mackenzie loved it.

Weekend strolls with the kiddos

I love morning walks with the kids in the fall, when we take Smokey out to get his exercise  in our neighborhood.  My favorite is the walk we do to an adjacent neighborhood called Rock Meadows.  The homes are all on big spreads with pastures for horses, and there is a central equestrian area.   Sometimes, if we are lucky, we get to watch equestrian practice.  The kids love watching the horses learn how to jump.

Last week we got a close up view.  The kids learned that "ho" means "stop" to horses, and that "hi" sounds just like "ho".  So they learned to wave at the horses each time they ran by, instead of saying hi.  They also learned that horses get jittery around sudden movements, but they don't mind little kids yelling and screaming. They did not learn these last two facts by trial and error, thankfully!  One of the participants in the equestrian practice was kind enough to teach them these items.

Maybe the kids can get a summer job some day working with the horses.  They like the idea of brushing the horses and feeding them apples... but not so excited about the "mucking" part!

Shiny and Clean!

They are just barely still in that bath time is cute age...  it's like watching a beautiful sunset.  Time passes too quickly.  How I wish I could freeze it!  Or that humans aged in redwood years.  Well, I'm just glad we had the presence of mind to remember to enjoy bath time while we still can.

Squeaky clean!!

mmmwahh!!

Jackson has already moved on to showers.  Sniff... ... think I got some dust in my eye.