rachel's continued ramblings

so yesterday turned out different than it was supposed to. it wasn’t a horrible day, just a little odd, and frustrating at times. i had planned to do school w/ shane in the morning (my mom was attending a funeral) and then spending the rest of the day outside. perhaps making my way to the park playdate for a picnic lunch, if shane finished in time. nothing major planned, and i figured we’d just wing it and see what came our way. well… dave has been out sick for a few days now, and he finally decided to go to the dr. yesterday. so he asked me to drive him downtown to his appt. and then possibly back home, or to work. his appt. was at 10:20, so i gave shane his spelling test after breakfast, had him bring a book in the car and headed downtown. the kids need sandals, so i figured i’d do a little shopping while in the city. so i dropped dave off, and embarked on one of my least favorite things in the entire world. driving downtown. i know i sound like some weinie, suburban soccer mom h...

today, upon checkout at the grocery store, i learned the following: angelina walked in on jen and brad! prince william accused camilla of being a drunk! kate has turned from mom to monster! george w. bush is on suicide watch! certain mystery celebrities have had plastic surgery flubs! who is bikini-ready and who is not? paul newman’s mistress admits he loved his wife more! why do i need to know this? why is it that tabloids, gossip magazines and “entertainment” tv shows make millions by feeding this crap to the general public? why is it legal for photographers and reporters to follow people around, stalk them, crash their parties, etc.? why are these vultures, who make their livings off of dragging people through the mud and making up BS about them, protected by law? yes, i’m all for freedom of the press. i believe that the government should not control the information that it believe the general public should receive. however, what about privacy...

nolan came for a visit this weekend and we were busy! we picked him up at the airport on friday evening, came home and ate pizza and watched the mariners beat the giants on tv. you can see that micah took to godfather nolan right away. thought he was awesome! and yes, he is wearing a sparkly, pink cheerleader costume. layla decided she wanted to be a princess and if layla was going to dress up, then so was micah. it was about this point when i realized that some gender-neutral dress up clothes might be in order sometime soon. HA! but he does look cute, doesn’t he? on saturday morning, the boys (all of them) took off to hike mt. si. that’s it, behind that building.   they had a great time, and came home all blistered, sore and tired. but they made it. dave and nolan switched off with the backpack. micah was pretty antsy by the time they got to the top, and wanted to explore more than he was really able to. he took a little nap on the way back down. apparently, mt. rainier is suppo...

if you’ve known me for longer than 6 months or have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know all about layla’s potty issues. if not, you can be enlightened here , here , here , here , or here , should you so desire. the gist of it is this, layla has been potty trained since january of 2008, when she was about 2 1/2. she had some poop issues after that (the first ‘here’) but got over them relatively quickly, although it was incredibly annoying until she did. then in the spring, she started wetting her pants periodically. she would have ‘accident days’, as i called them. she’d be completely dry some days, and other days she’d have like 5 accidents. as we moved into summer, it became more and more often, and i started complaining to the doctor about it. he had her pee in a cup like 4 different times to see if she had a bladder infection. that always came back negative. then, it got to the point where she would be wet like every 15 minutes. like she had no control whatsoever...

give me a sunny, warm day and i’m happy, pretty much, whatever the day brings. so a sunny day that started with sitting out in the sun with friends, knitting, is just over the top fabulous! yes, i realize i am easily pleased. i’ve actually gotten a lot done since getting home as well. not that you can tell. i just love this phenomenon that goes along with having children. while i’m busy cleaning one part of the house, they’re busy trashing another. it is physically impossible for my entire house to be clean all at once. but oh well, right now i have clean bathrooms, and although the living room is cluttered with toys and other kid paraphernalia, it has been dusted and is about to be vacuumed. sigh. speaking of sigh… well, actually, si , the boys are planning a hike up mt. si on saturday. we’re looking forward to nolan coming up tomorrow evening for a visit. they will be doing this on saturday while layla and i go to a birthday party. then on sunday, we’ll be spending the afternoon at ...

DONE, finally. today: mac & cheese w/ hot dogs; peas tomorrow: chicken; rice; broccoli friday: pizza; green beans saturday: hamburgers; corn on the cob; chips sunday: waffles; bacon monday: ribs; oven fries; broccoli tuesday: tacos so i did my shopping differently today. this weekend, while i was a costco, i priced some things to compare. so today, since i had to go anyway to get milk, i got a bunch of other stuff too. cereal, butter, ground beef, orange juice, bananas, apples, blueberries, salad, chips, mac & cheese, and canned chicken. it means that i totally blew my grocery budget for the week, but it also means that a lot of the stuff i would be buying weekly, i won’t have to get for awhile. hopefully it works out because it means that i now only have $75 a week for the next 3 weeks. and yes, the mac & cheese is out of a BOX! my family is SO excited!

so i’m trying really hard to not live in a pig sty. i also live with 3 children, and anyone who has read more than 2 words of this blog knows that organizational stuff does not come easy to me. today i did all the things on my to do list (which i try to keep daily, and not make too overloaded, so it’s actually realistic to get it done) and looked around realizing that my house was still very much a sty and certainly not anywhere near ‘drop-by-able’, which is my ever-elusive goal. (hello, run-on sentence! but it’s my blog, so deal with it!) so i tackled a couple of my worst clutter catchers. the table behind the couch and the kitchen peninsula. today was one of those days where i was wishing that all of the flat surfaces would just disappear. so i threw away or recycled everything i could, and put all the rest of the stuff that i can’t into a bin. it’s the ‘don’t know what to do with it’ bin. i currently have several of those, in various places throughout the house. the biggest is t...

shane has been bugging us about setting up the tent in the backyard since the first nice day of the spring. we finally ran out of excuses this weekend and spent saturday night sleeping outside. we even built a fire in our fire pit so it could feel more like real camping. we neglected to put it away today, which has wound us up with a bonus night in the tent. oh yay. well, the kids are excited about it. dave and i are less so, probably because we’re old fogies and are actually aware of the fact that it gets darn cold at night still. that and how our nifty air mattress has a leak and is somewhat less than cushiony by morning. oh well, the sacrifices we make. it was, indeed, a beautiful weekend. dave got all productive this weekend and cleared out massive amounts of CRAP from our yard. there’s been this patch of CRAP (for lack of a better word to describe it) on the west side of the house, kind of going down the hill toward the road, since we moved in almost 2 years ago. we inherited it...

oh grocery shopping! i am so glad to be DONE with you for another week. wednesday: pork roast; mashed potatoes'; corn thursday: homemade mac & cheese; peas and carrots friday: pizza; green beans saturday: burgers; fries; carrots sunday: egg-potato-bacon scrambles monday: creamy italian chicken; noodles; salad tuesday: pork roast sandwiches; fries; green beans NEXT wednesday: leftovers! thanks to the recent addition of sophie to our household, i had to buy dog food today. that kind of ticked me off. not because we have to feed her, but because 1) i have to squeeze that out of my grocery money somehow, and 2) safeway only sells the small bag of the kind she eats, which means it’s more expensive.  so i’m going to have to work that out somehow.  does anyone happen to know the cheapest place to get iams dog food? this whole $100 weekly food budget is good, as far as keeping that spending under control, but the limited amount of cash i carry k...

so yesterday was mother’s day. my family was very nice to me. shane had plotted to get me an angel food cake pan, apparently ever since easter when we discovered i didn’t have one. so he used his own money and bought me one, along with a cake mix. then he asked if we had any strawberries and informed layla that she DID NOT get to help me make the angel food cake, he did. layla (and presumably dave and micah as well) got me a new willow tree statue to replace the one she broke a few weeks ago when she climbed up on the wood stove and tried to pull some pictures down off the mantle to look at. so that was nice. dave had a soccer game at 2:45 in greenlake, so i had the BRILLIANT idea that we should all go with him and i would take the kids to the zoo, which is right up the road. well, by the time we woke up micah, changed his diaper, discovered that layla was wearing too-big rain boots instead of regular shoes and then located a pair of regular shoes, grabbed a snack for shane who had n...

yesterday: french dips; chips; salad today: vegetable beef soup; sourdough tomorrow: pizza; green beans saturday: hamburgers; chips; corn on the cob sunday: pancakes; sausage monday: chicken; rice; peas and carrots tuesday: leftovers i made out pretty good. kept it under $100 and managed to get 2 bags of chips and 2 cartons of ice cream.  HOORAY! junk food has returned to our house!  halleluiah!

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...