last day of vacation (saturday, august 21)

in an attempt to recover from depression over our early morning goodbyes, we picked up jordan, and drove back into sacramento one last time, to do something I’ve been wanting to do for YEARS! in connection with the california state railroad museum, which we visited on tuesday, you can take a short, scenic train ride, pulled by a working steam locomotive!

supposedly…

so I tried not to make too big of a stink, and enjoyed the fact that it was still a train ride, even if it was pulled by a diesel. anyone want to see the governator? there’s the capitol!yes, that is a real conductor, punching my ticket!

the replacement locomotive:when you get to the ‘end of the line’ in baths, the engine unhooks, switches tracks, pulls past the waiting train, switches tracks again, and then couples to the other end of the train to pull it back to the station.

and I had to take a picture of the really ugly gold bridge that is a landmark in sacramento. seriously. it’s metallic!

this was our train:after the train ride, we stopped through the old schoolhouse to explore.shane, jordan and layla, doing some writing on slates.dave, attempting to get suspended…shane, ringing the school bell: and then there’s the “rules for teachers”. this is a hoot!

after that, it was laundry, packing, one last swim, one last in-n-out burger,and then hitting the road. we drove all night again, and got home around 10:30 the next morning. it was a long trip, but totally worth it! we miss everyone so much.

thanks, gramma and papa, for putting up with all of us and helping us have such a great time! so many great memories! we love you and can’t wait to see you again!

Comments

did these people go to school? ever?

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another sign

i'm going to have to take more pictures soon, i'm running out. christmas movies! yes, one of them is a bob the builder movie, but the kids deserve to get in on the festivities too, right? we also have the polar express , but i'm not sure where that was when i was taking the pictures. and a charlie brown christmas , but that's on vhs and our vcr broke, so it will have to be replaced. i want to just keep building our collection each year. there are so many fabulous movies! and speaking of, i promised living-under-a-rock-kate a list of the absolute MUST SEE christmas movies... obviously, the ones in the picture (well, you can watch the bob the builder one if you REALLY want to, but i don't really consider that a MUST SEE!). in addition: it's a wonderful life, miracle on 34th street (the real old one, not the new one with the annoying girl), a christmas story, frosty the snowman, santa claus is coming to town, the year without a santa claus, christmas with the...

for my not-so-american friends

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Football!!!

so last night at 10, we got a pleasant surprise. a coworker texted dave and asked if he wanted 4 tickets to the seahawks game. after some quick thinking about who and where and how and all that, we got it sorted out and definitely accepted. so today after church, shane,my dad, myself and micah all experienced our first professional football game. (it was dave's second). if you're doing the math there, micah doesn't require a ticket which is why he got to go. layla was happily deposited with my mother for a nap and some 'school'. the first half of the game was great, but the second half got boring because the packers were the only ones doing anything exciting. micah napped through the whole second half - dave did too. well, not the whole second half, but parts for sure. shane decided that seahawks games weren't quite as exciting as he thought they were going to be (he's been lobbying to go to one for a while now), but it was a pretty good deal because he got ...

blessed with good oral health!

well, i made it another 6 months with no cavities! i had a dentist appointment today. my second in six months, but prior to that, i don’t think i’d been in 4+ years. oops. i was much less nervous for this appointment than i was for the last one. last time i figured my luck had run out and because i’d been bad about seeing the dentist, this time i’d really ‘pay’ for it. but no. other than a little excessive scraping of tartar (4 years’ worth), everything was fine. around the time i turned 20, i pretty much assumed, every time i went to the dentist, that this was finally my time for a cavity. i mean, how long really, can one person go without ANY cavities? well, now i’m kind of over that and figure that maybe my teeth are just impenetrable or something. at any rate, every time the dentist comes in at the end of my cleaning, pokes around for a minute and tells me my teeth look great, i breathe a sigh of relief and feel tremendous gratitude for my good teeth. the no cavities thing is only ...

rachel's continued ramblings

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