Barbie House Party

Ava got a Barbie house for Christmas. It's more like a set of Barbie rooms that you set up all together. My rule for the Grandmas: it has to be able to fit into her closet. Emily gets hungry for small pieces of plastic and I need to be able to put it away. I know it's bad that I just finally got around to setting up Barbie's house last Monday. Ava had a friend over and I promised them that I'd set up the house so they could "play Barbies" with it. I had no idea what an enormous task this would be. There are a million tiny pieces bound to cardboard with twisty wires and clear rubber bands. Some of the furniture required assembly. To Mattel's credit, every little piece is very life-like and most of them work...even the tiny up and down toilet seat. An hour later I was still wrestling Barbie's coat rack out of the packaging. An hour and a half later, I called it "good enough". I still need to put stickers on parts of the house and there are no less than 150 tiny pieces (silverware, cell phone, remote control, picture frames, etc.) still in a baggie that can be added later. Still, it was done. And I was was happy for the girls. They were beside themselves with excitement. "Wow! Look at that!" "Let's make our Barbies have breakfast!" "Yeah! That's awesome." Ava's little friend even told me that she loved me and thanked me for setting up the house. I took a couple of pictures of the house all set up. It felt like a big accomplishment.





I smiled with satisfaction and went downstairs to fold laundry. Another half an hour went by. The girls came down and I gave them a snack and carried the laundry up. This is what I found in Ava's room:


It must've been some party. The house was trashed and both Barbies were passed out. I'll have to look in that little baggie and see if they have tiny Barbie aspirin. These girls look like they could use a few.