There was this moment as Alan and I were sitting next to each other at our computers.

Then there was this. I walked in and the kids were sitting just like this neatly arranged by Isabelle. They then had their cereal right there under the blankets all propped up.

Then this. I saw a picture of gingerbread cookies online which sent me off to the kitchen to make cookies. But Isabelle wanted to decorate them. I am not so great with the decorating and Isabelle doesn’t usually like the icing so we used some food markers instead.

I love her decorated cookies.

With our leftover dough I made one big cookie. Isabelle drew a story on it about a monster king and the guy who slays him.

And finally this moment, Alan with a sticker earring on.

Oh noes!! I shouldn’t have waited. But there was a reason I wanted to wait for Friday or Saturday night. It was so Alan could wake up on the weekend at the same time as Isabelle. I was sure he’d like to see how happy Isabelle was to see what the tooth fairy left her. But then we forgot all weekend so we did it Sunday night. And then this morning…CRAP!

Isabelle said the tooth fairy didn’t come because she didn’t sleep all night. Which, of course, she did. I’m just glad she wasn’t upset. Parent fail!

When I was little I wanted a big dollhouse. But I don’t remember having one. So, I really was not adverse to getting one for Isabelle. Well, last year sometime, I think, my memory is so bad, we were at a store and they had a dollhouse out for the kids to play with. It was a tiny little plastic thing. Tiny expensive plastic thing. Isabelle had such fun playing with it that I thought I’d get a dollhouse for her.

Oh wait, I went digging through pictures. It wasn’t a year ago. It was a little over half a year ago. Wow, my memory IS crap. And how do I know it was that long ago? These pictures.

So, back to what I was saying, I wanted to get a dollhouse for Isabelle. I wanted a wooden one, not too small and not too big. My friend Veronica offered an unfinished one for us but it is ridiculously large. Like I don’t even know how it fit through a door large. Her father was building it for her when she was little but he never finished and Veronica wasn’t a dollhouse kind of girl I guess. We turned it down, though I’m sure Isabelle would have loved it. I had to say no, it wouldn’t have fit in our car or in our door.

I searched around, did some research, asked for Isabelle’s opinion, and we ended up with a Plan Toys terrace dollhouse. I ordered it and the furniture online. The furniture came first and that’s why in those older pictures you can see the kids playing with a little cardboard dollhouse. As all the furniture was coming and the kids had no house to play with I made a cardboard one. It didn’t stand up to Nathan’s rough housing though it was fun while it lasted.

So, why is this post called a boy and his dollhouse? Well, Isabelle enjoys her dollhouse. But Nathan LOVES it. I am positive he’s played with it more than Isabelle. Tonight me and the kids were playing and imagining the family was going bowling. When Nathan heard that he toddled off to grab his toy bowling ball to put into the dollhouse! Ha ha! That’s what prompted me to write about the dollhouse today, over half a year from when I got it.

The other morning as I was finishing up in the bathroom, I walked out to this.

My boy. Sitting IN the dollhouse.

And as I’m sitting here writing this I can hear him behind me playing with it, “lock the door! lock the door!”. Imagining little things and having a blast. With a dollhouse. He really has fun with that thing.

What is up with the gack and bloop? We’ve been learning about dolphins and whales this week. In our curriculum they had a game that is like Marco Polo except it’s Dolphin-o Polo. I close my eyes and say “Dolphin-o” and Isabelle says “POLO!” and I try to find her. Nathan did not like this game. He stands there and makes distressed noises. But Isabelle loved it. She had so much fun with the game, that when we read that dolphin babies copy what their mothers do, I made up a game. I call it Baby Dolphin game where the “baby” has to copy everything the “mommy” does. That resulted in one of us running around making weird noises and strange gestures all over the house. And then the other person would copy the same thing. Gack! Bloop!

And the toy on my head? Well, sometimes, all Nathan wants is, me to hold him. Or sit right nearby while he plays. And I was having the hardest time reading to Isabelle. So, the solution? A toy on my head. It sooooo worked.

I haven’t talked about film in a while. So, today, I’d like you to meet Em. She’s a new (to me) old Nikon EM. I got her from an ummmm antique store? Thrift store? Ummm…a store that had old things, whatever you call them.

She takes lovely 35mm film. Here are a few photos from Em from when I first brought her home. I was making sure she worked.

The prints are all quite lovely in person. Crisp with nice colors. But these scans are ho hum. And they look a little blurry to me. I scanned the photos on a flatbed scanner and I’m not happy with the results. I have a film scanner attachment for an older scanner somewhere. But I do not know where it is! When I find it I’m hoping the scans from the negatives will be nicer.

What are my impressions with using 35mm film so far? There are positives and negatives.

Sometimes I’m stifled with the limitations. I think, only 24 shots? Oh I need to save the film for something good to take a picture of. And then there’s conundrum of getting it processed. I have film, taken weeks ago, that is just sitting in my purse. And then also exif data. I like exif data. I like knowing when I took something and, with film, I have no clue. I think the above pictures were taken in September? August?

But on the whole, I think it’s fun. Even with the negatives I am really loving it. I like the anticipation of seeing what I’ll get. I like the challenge of trying to get the shot. So, basically, Em is awesome.

Crazy eyes back there thinks so too.