week 48 in pictures

sunday: in the church nursery, playing with some tools. micah had been using his pants as a tool belt… as in, shoving the tools IN his pants. I convinced him that his beltloops would work just as well. layla stuffed her tools into the sash of her dress.

monday: day 1 of homeschooling. still in the process of firming up what we will actually be DOING, but layla and micah busied themselves in the school room with some drawing and coloring.

also monday: layla is the teacher here. I have a kindergarten level math workbook that I have micah using. layla wanted to help out by reading the instructions to him and making sure he did the pages correctly. super cute.

wednesday: micah “wrote” a B book… he wanted daddy to read it to him, which proved to be problematic, as micah is the only one fluent in the language he used to write the book… no worries, though, the three of them had good laughs trying to make words out of all of the letters he had strung together. I’m loving this stage!

saturday (and everything following): the jazz band played at the WHS holiday bazaar in the morning. we poked around at all the booths, and then listened to them play some christmas tunes, and other music. shane is in the bottom right, next to the kid in the santa hat.

later that day: dave and shane, up on the roof, getting the rest of the christmas lights hung.

even later: my dad and I took shane over to seattle to a specific brass shop, where a guy, who knows a guy that my mom knows, had a trumpet for shane to try out. this is my parents’ christmas gift to him (along with some contributions from his own bank account). this trumpet is in awesome shape, and was a great deal. hopefully, he’ll get many years of use out of it!

and some skinnies to stick in: 1. layla, devouring yet another fairy book in bed. 2. watching the grinch for the first time this year. micah LOVES the grinch (and the grinch’s dog, max). 3. layla got a reindeer painted on her face at the bazaar on saturday. 4. putting lights on our adorable little REAL tree that we got for the family room since our big one won’t fit and we miss having a tree in our main room. LOVE this one! it’s awesome and smells great!

{book shots will be added later}

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books

so i have, what i’ve coined as, “book ADD”. basically, i love books. i love to read. i love the king county library system and their fabulous website. i love clicking the “place hold” button. i generally have upwards of 35 books checked out, a hold list a mile long, and a running ‘tab’ of fines for overdue books. but here’s the problem. i generally have so many books and i want to read them all, that i never wind up reading any of them. i’ll bring home a book, read a chapter or two, and then the next book on my list will come in. repeat. eventually, i will have read 2 chapters of a dozen or so books, they will be due to go back, and i’ll never get around to finishing them. ugh! well, i’m officially attempting to ‘kick that habit’. at my husband’s repeated suggestion, i’m learning to make use of the ‘freeze’ button on the library’s website. this enables you to keep your hold on the book, but not receive it until you want it. it just moves other people’s holds ahead of yours. this is

random diaper musings

do you ever feel at odds with yourself? i constantly feel like i'm a big wad of contradictions. and being the living-in-my-head, overthinking type i can spend years, i mean hours pondering things. it can really get me down. example: diapers. one would think that this was a relatively easy thing to handle. i've got 3 kids. i'm pretty familiar with diapers. it seems so simple; your baby needs a change so you take the old diaper off and put a new one on. done. right? no. i have this constant dilemma going on. cloth or disposable. i have 25 perfectly good fitted cloth diapers that i paid a lot of money for when i decided a couple years ago that i was done filling up landfills. so micah wears them a good share of the time. but it bugs me that they're so bulky, especially with the covers on and clothes fit funny and that totally drives me nuts. so at home, he just wears the diaper w/ no cover and when we leave the house, i put a disposable on him. not usually

but i wanted beans!

i have discovered something amazing. until recently, layla would never eat green beans. well, she used to, and then a little more than a year or so ago, she started pulling them apart and eating the seeds out of them, leaving the rest. yeah, i know she's weird. then she quit eating them all together. she would just leave them on her plate. well, a couple fridays ago, we were having our pizza and beans and something prompted shane to pull these 'trainer' chopsticks out of the drawer. i've had them for a couple of years - i think i found them at a thrift store and thought they were cute and the kids could use them when we had chinese food. but we'd all kind of forgotten about them since we rarely eat chinese food (which makes me sad). so everyone got really excited about these and layla used them to eat every last one of her beans that night. dave and i exchanged some raised eyebrows as lightbulbs were illuminating above our heads. last night i made chicken sandwiches

pink bubblegum goo, inaugurations and insomnia...

yesterday morning, layla mentioned again that her ears hurt. so that, coupled w/ the neon green snot and the vomit-inducing cough won her an all-expenses-paid trip to the doctor's office. dual acute otitis. aka, both ears were infected. AND, get this, the doc said she had blisters on both her eardrums. BLISTERS! doesn't that sound awful? funny thing is, this was not one of those situations where it is clear as day that your kid has an ear infection (usually revealed in the middle of the night) and you start debating whether or not you can pump them full of tylenol and pray they last until 7:30am when you can call the dr.'s office and get the earliest available appointment, or if you have to go to the ER at O-dark-thirty. (btw, i'm sure my 'critics' will have a hay day with that last one, but oh well.) she really only mentioned her ears a couple of times, but never really complained or moaned or whined or cried about them like i would expect. we've

bacon-potato chowder recipe

dave found this recipe at some point when we were living in ohio. he apparently had a hankering for some chowder of some kind. so I have no idea where the credit goes in this case. but we’ve been making it ever since, so it was definitely a winner! 1 lb. bacon cut in small pieces 1 cup chopped onions 4 cups diced potatoes 2 cups water 1 tsp salt (and some pepper) 2 cans cream of something soup (chicken or celery) 2 cups sour cream 3 cups milk **edited to add: apparently, dave says he adds a clove or two of garlic as well. chop them up with them up and add them with the onions.** in a big pot, cook bacon over medium heat. add onion and cook until tender. drain off grease. add water, potatoes, salt and pepper. cook 15 minutes. stir in soup, sour cream, and milk. cook until heated through. easy, but best to do all you’re chopping, dicing, and measuring ahead of time. if you like it thick, simmer a little longer… don’t make this if you are dairy intolerant or on a diet! lol. a

rachel's continued ramblings

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