rachel's continued ramblings

winkle winkle witto TAR! howa wuh-wuh what a ARE! uppabubba … HIGH! lika dima inna GUY!!!! winkle winkle witto TAR! howa wuh-wuh what a ARE!

so i appear to be having a halloween dilemma. i’ve always ‘celebrated’ halloween. you know, we carve a pumpkin, dress up in costumes, go ring doorbells and get candy. i did it when i was a kid. my kids have done it. but that’s not to say i feel entirely comfortable with it. i haven’t looked into it a lot, but i am aware of the sketchy, pagan history of the holiday, and it does kind of disturb me that that’s what we continue to celebrate. and i do remember at some point, my mom expressing concern over the holiday and kind of wanting to ‘quit’. that said, what most people ‘celebrate’ as halloween is a far cry from where it came from. i don’t think that putting a kid in a bunny costume and ringing the neighbor’s doorbell is all that evil. dressing up is fun. candy is fun. but the bible warns about associating with witchcraft and mediums and various evil stuff like that. ***edited to add*** and as a christian, i believe that following the bible’s guidelines is important. does this not qu...

otherwise known as, i have a lot of new posts up. i say i’m putting my foot in my mouth because i just finished giving mary a hard time about her 14 new posts. i’m not THAT bad, but i do have like 5. i wanted to get the pictures from micah’s birthday off the camera and posted, so i did that, but found a lot of other pictures on the camera that i had meant to post. so there you go. just keep scrolling down! and sorry mary! ;)

sunday afternoon was micah’s mini-party. i really didn’t want to have a big to-do, so we just invited a few friends to come hang and eat cake. and that’s what we did! but first we had to pry him away from his trains. when i asked him, “micah, do you want cake?” he replied, “no, i want thomas.” here trudy is attempting to convince him to come see his cake… eventually, we decided to bring the cake in there. we did manage to drag him away long enough to chow down! present time! Oballs are the best! the super soft, plush thomas ‘pillow’. we all want one. SO soft! books. and more train stuff. VERY exciting!    it was a ‘thomas’ kinda birthday for this 2 year old!

so micah turned 2 this weekend. ::sniff sniff:: posing for the traditional ‘last day to be 1’ photo: his birthday was on saturday, but with shane having a 4:30 soccer game (which they won, btw, and he scored) we decided to have his party on sunday. but the 17th didn’t pass without celebration. after the game on saturday night, we went to dinner at red robin and my parents joined us there. they did their whole sing and clap and yell LOUDLY thing for him and he was totally thrilled! i was a little afraid he might freak out because of it, but he loved it… especially that his sundae came with 2 balloons tied to it! when we got home, we made the mistake of letting him open his presents from gramma and papa before he went to bed.             the caboose plays the ‘thomas’ theme music when you push a button on top. so, of course, he would push the button repeatedly and then go dance! SO cute.     he was SO excited a...

so this was about a month ago, but i’m just now getting these pictures off my camera, so here we go. this was a little hike we took on a sunday afternoon at the paradise valley conservation area. it was a nice easy, kid-friendly assortment of trails. you can use some of them for biking and horseback riding as well as hiking. there was a cow pasture by the parking lot at the trailhead. so we had to check out the cows. well, some of us. for some reason, layla decided she was scared of cows. what’s that about? yup. the cow licked my hand. i always set a good example for my kids. yeah, those animals in there? we don’t know much about them, but you should totally stick your fingers through the fence and see what happens! the ‘nurse log’ photo is actually a reenactment of a previous photo from when dave and i were dating and a trip we took to canada. yes, that’s horse poo. the trail marker signs had pictures of horses on them, indicating that horses could use those ...

i’m ashamed to admit it. i’m in a major art funk. i’m having major trouble coming up with art for the kids to do. no. strike that. i’m having major trouble coming up with the motivation for the kids to do art. it’s not that there are no ideas. ugh. i don’t know why i hate doing art at home so much with my own kids. when i was teaching, this was my favorite part of the day. my favorite thing to plan. the ONE thing i would never let my assistant help with because i wanted to be the one to watch all the fun. but at home? not so much. maybe it’s fact that i’m pulling out a bunch of stuff for only 3 kids (assuming micah is able and/or shane is willing) to use. maybe it’s the fact that i don’t have an assistant to clean up for me when we’re done. (i can’t possibly describe how much i HATE washing out paint cups and brushes. YUCK!) maybe it’s the fact that i don’t have a preschool art cupboard to raid full of all sorts of fun supplies. maybe it’s the fact that any time i DO plan...

so we have this cat, not our cat, that lives on our roof apparently. i guess it likes it up there. we discovered it up there a few weeks ago when the neighbors heard pathetic meowing one afternoon. after looking around all over, under cars and bushes, we finally spotted it up on the roof. assuming it was stuck, we tried to coax it down. dave finally climbed up on fence, and grabbed it when it came over for some lovin’. our neighbor teri, says it is a stray that the people who live behind her have ‘adopted’ (they feed it). so it was down, and it went on it’s way. a couple mornings ago, shane went out to scoop the poop, and discovered the cat was back on our roof. so, being a 10 year old boy who likes cats and climbing on things, he shimmied himself up on the fence and attempted to coax the cat down. it’s a very friendly cat and would totally come over to him and rub around him and let him pet it and and was purring like crazy. but he couldn’t manage to grab it. i assured him that it w...

we are in the midst of soccer season here. actually, it seems like we’ve been at it forever already and we’ve still got forever to go…  shane’s team, nysa dynamite, because of their success in recent years, got selected to be a part of a new program that nysa is trying out this year. i’m still a little fuzzy on all the details of it and how it works, but basically, they’re still technically a rec team (as in, no tryouts, no outrageous, take out a loan, price tag), but they’re playing almost as though they were a select team. their opponents are ‘similar’ teams from around the area. i guess they’re kind of like a traveling team, in that they don’t just play teams from our league. at any rate, they’re doing well. last week, they had their first tie of the season, 0-0 against a bellevue team, and all the rest have been wins. this is very much in dave’s realm and he’s totally living it up as the assistant coach of the team. it’s fun for him and shane to have something like this to bo...

it’s so amazing the differences between children. layla loves to write. she spends most of her time making cards lately. her favorites are happy birthday and happy valentine’s day cards. (not sure why she’s thinking of valentine’s day right now, but whatever.) she doesn’t know how to ‘spell’ per se, but if you tell her the letters, she can write the word. well, i finally got so sick of telling her how to spell these ten thousand times a day, so i wrote it on a piece of paper for her to copy and stuck it to the lid of her box of markers. well, just this morning, she’s sitting at the table with a pencil and a piece of paper (no box of markers), writing a valentine’s card. she says to me, “i can’t remember the rest of the letters.” so i look at what’s she’s got and see that she’s written HAPPY VALEN… wow! all that from memory. so then i say the next part of it, but not with letters. i give her the sounds and she gets all the letters right (i told her about the silent E) in valentine’s...

just have to share this. usually i’m on here expressing my frustration about the challenges of parenting, but today i have to share a triumph! and yes, you’ll laugh. last night my amazing and wonderful husband (assisted by yours truly) pulled off the most amazing thing. micah had gone to bed and fussed for a good hour.  unusual, but not unheard of.  as usual, we ignored him. about an hour after he quit, we were getting ready to go to bed so i was moving some folded laundry off our bed and into their room to put away. as i walked into the room, i smelled a major STINK! he was sleeping face down, on his knees, with his butt up in the air (as only really little kids can do – i love seeing them sleep that way – it’s cute), so i lifted up the blanket and could totally see the bulge in his diaper through his jammies. GREAT! so i went in and told dave that micah had a load in his shorts. so that’s why he had been fussing so much! poor kid. (don’t you love it when they do somethin...