Playing house

Michael spent I'd say 4-6 hours putting this playhouse together over his Christmas break. It came with about 1000 screws. I was totally impressed with my CPA-husband's carpenter skills. The house is adorable. It was our gift to the boys for Christmas. It has a working doorbell, a little bench and window for serving or puppet shows. Thanks to Michael's dad's sentimentality, we were lucky enough to get a little kitchen range full of 1970s play food and dinnerware that his sister Cheryl (now 40) played with as a girl and we even installed a real phone on the wall, with a long cord, thanks also to my in-laws.

It's been really fun watching the neighbor kids play in our playhouse over Christmas break. This morning the weather was gorgeous, and our little kindergarten neighbor called over the fence. As I made lunch, I had the windows open and could hear she, JM and Noah having a ball out there. They really like to play house in the playhouse. Noah, obvi, is the baby. And, they even have a family dog, Bella. Bella really likes to be in that house, for some reason. At one point today, we had 4 kids and Bella in the house, which is only 5x5!

Anyway, for people who were strongly considering moving last summer because we wanted more of a "neighborhood vibe," things have really changed for us. Because of the addition of two neighbors with little ones and also figuring out that JM plays really well with aforementioned Amelia next door, I couldn't be happier! We are definitely not moving anytime soon. It's fun to have the party backyard with our new little house.