birthday presents in action

shane and layla on the trampoline... yes, she had to jump in the princess dress. it's more fun that way, apparently.

dave and shane in the trampoline... bigger kids get bigger air!

layla w/ her new fishing set. she would get impatient if she couldn't catch a fish the right way immediately and she would grab it with her hand, stick it on the end of the fishing pole and then pull it right off again and put it in the bin, followed by, "i caught one!!!" well, sort of...

the 2nd hand car my parents found for her? where? i'm not sure. but she likes it. so does shane. he's found a way to play with it even though he's not allowed to drive it. so far he's strapped her tricycle to the top with bungee cords, attached the wagon to the back (also with bungee cords) to make a trailer, loaded up the 'cargo area' with 'stuff they might need', and pushed her all over the yard and neighborhood, calling on neighbors. can we say dennis the menace?

shane driving his new rc boat. the description on amazon called this a 'blazingly fast speed boat'. we knew that was the one for shane. this is at the bellevue downtown park. they have a great pond... i figured that would be a good place to try it out because if it got out of range or ran out of battery charge, it would be a small wade to rescue it, rather than having to jump in the lake.

layla's water table. micah likes it too. he's just started pulling up and this is the perfect height.

shane's fuzzy john deere taggy from gramma jackie. he hid as soon as he saw the camera.

layla's hsm taggy.

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for my not-so-american friends

i didn't have an actual roll w/ the green plaid on it, but i found a refill and an empty roll in my junk drawer (yeah, i know, that should tell me something). but even the empty one says 'scotch' on it. there you go! SCOTCH TAPE!

a blue period...

i'm feeling really lazy lately. well, some might think i'm lazy all the time, but it's worse right now. i always get really down on myself when i'm having trouble keeping things organized, when my house is a mess, when we eat mac and cheese for dinner, etc. usually that's appropriate motivation to get me off my butt and make me keep things in some sort of relative order. but night now it's really bad. i don't feel like doing anything. there are toys all over, and i purposely make myself not see them because i just don't want to pick them up. same with the dirt behind the door in the bathroom. the pile of clothes that need to be ironed, the mess in my bedroom, the crap falling out of the drawers in my bathroom, the garage. i don't want to go grocery shopping. i don't want to cook. the floor needs to be swept and mopped in the kitchen and dining room and the sink is dirty. the backyard is a total disaster and i just don't feel like ...

how to clean your room

i was discussing this sort of thing w/ my MIL recently and she said there were some books she had when the boys were young that explained things to kids that adults often tell them to do w/out giving them explicit instructions. so i thought about it and decided to write my own. i mean, really, if i expect shane to clean his room, i ought to tell him HOW i want him to clean it, so he knows what i expect. so i wrote them out. keep in mind, these are 9 year old instructions. they would have to be adjusted accordingly. i actually don’t expect him to do much less than i would expect of myself. (bummer for him!) How to clean your room: strip your bed. put all dirty clothes in the laundry basket put all clean clothes in the closet or dresser put all shoes in the rack on the door. pick up everything off the floor and put it on your bed to sort. start by throwing away anything that’s trash. return anything that doesn’t belong in your r...

holiday?

so i’ve had a skeleton of this post bouncing around in my head for a couple of weeks now. i’m not even really sure what the point of it is, or what my opinion on the matter really is, except that it’s something that’s kind of irritating me. have you noticed that christmas has been, more or less, completely deleted? listen to your radio. watch the commercials on tv. read the ads in the paper. nothing. it’s like ‘christmas’ has become a dirty word. now before anyone gets their dander all up, this is not a particularly religiously-inspired post, not that i disagree with the idea that ‘Christ’ should remain the center of ‘Christ’mas. but that’s not what this is about. i’m a ‘word person’. i love language. i love the idiosyncrasies that that come with spoken and written language. i love that humans have the ability to string letters and words and sentences together to create something beautiful, or funny, or clever, or ANYTHING! it’s just a wonderful thing. i love that we can trace say...

finally!

here are layla’s curtains! actually up on the window! i have to say i’m quite pleased with myself for actually getting this done. but i have to give credit where credit is due… so thanks to my MIL for going to the fabric store w/ me and helping me with measurements and all that. AND, thanks to debbie for letting me use her sewing machine and for ironing all the hems for me! YAY!!!!

rachel's continued ramblings

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