rachel's continued ramblings

well, layla is a happy little girl. she has her very own GIRLIE, big kid booster seat. we had a little bit of a dilemma. the car seat that layla has been using was a traditional 5 point harness CAR SEAT. you know, ages 1 and up. it had the little seat belt guides in it, so you can use it as a booster for kids over 30 lbs. that’s all fine and dandy, except when you’re 5 years old and a BIG kid, you don’t want to be see with ‘baby buckles’ in your seat. the other problem is that the arm rests on the seat were so high, she couldn’t reach the buckle to fasten or unfasten her seat belt herself. so a couple of weeks ago, I put her on the scale. I wanted to see how close she was to the 40 pound mark. the magic number where you can ride in a backless booster seat. this is only magical because we happen to have THREE of these seats floating around. I did not want to have to buy another booster seat. 33 pounds. it’ll be awhile. so, out of curiousity, I put micah on the scale. 32 pounds...

sunday: I stayed home from church with the boys, who had colds, and dave took layla. after, they stopped at the brown bag for a brunch date. layla was double fisting her water and apple juice. monday: layla brought home one of these breyer horse books from the school loved it. so I looked up at the library to see if they had them and ordered a bunch. she was SO excited. and apparently this is what she does, when excited… tuesday: no picture, but layla drew a picture of her missing the bus to go along with this , which I included in the book. wednesday: tried out my dehydrator. dried apples are sooooo yummy! thursday: layla doing homework and micah ‘helping’. friday: it was moms night out for me, so dave took the kids to cold stone. they love it when I leave. saturday: a little game of sorry. micah is not really ready for it, but with some help, he managed for awhile. it’s tough because he really wants to play. there was also a 8x10 collage of extras and another which include...

several months ago, my aunt gave me the food dehydrator that my uncle built. I have to admit, it is a bit big and formidable, and I was intimidated by it. which is likely why I haven’t used it until now. well, I had bunch of bananas that were getting a little ‘ripe’. since I already have a freezer full of ‘banana bread’ bananas, I decided to slice them up and see how it would work to dry them. so I did. 3 whole trays of sliced bananas and slightly less than 24 hours later, we have this: I’ve tried them and they’re pretty yummy. my kids think they look gross, so we’ll see how successful I’ll be at getting them eaten… I learned something though… if they’re too ripe for me to want to eat normally, they’re probably too ripe for me to like them dried as well. oh well. they’re just a little sweet. but I did eliminate the gag factor by drying them! always a bonus. since that was so successful, I decided to try some apples. I had some granny smiths in the fruit bowl that now look like ...

I woke up this morning with a migraine. got up, took some tylenol, drank some water, promptly threw it up, went back to bed and stayed there all day. well, almost all day… dave was a saint and got the kids all sorted out and taken to their various destinations before going to work. micah stayed with my parents, and my dad volunteered to meet layla’s bus and then take her back to their house until dave came and got them after work. that way I could sleep in a quiet house all day. everything SHOULD have gone smoothly. around 11:55am, approximately when my dad would have been waiting for the bus to arrive and deposit my daughter, I get a call from the school. “hello, this is so-and-so, an assistant at (name of school). layla missed the bus today.” seriously. she missed the bus. the mid-day, kindergarten bus. my response was, “how is that even possible?” the lady on the other end told me that the mother of one of layla’s classmates was in the office and had offered to bring layla...

sunday: layla and dave rockin’ out to a song layla was learing in sunday school and dave happened to know how to play. monday: mcdonald’s play place. this, of course, is a cage, and they (at least layla) are obviously dogs. tuesday: getting to work on project life! so much fun! love love love! wednesday: walking home from the bus stop. thursday: layla wanted to roller skate, but wasn’t going to be deterred by the fact that she didn’t actually own any roller skates… friday: check it out! that’s my bedding from junior high! found it in my parents’ linen closet and brought it home to see if layla liked it. saturday: shane and micah, playing some mario kart together. there are also 2 missing 8x10 collages with all the extra pics from the week.

you may recall that shane got a cat for his birthday. as it turns out, toby is absolutely the BEST cat we could have hoped for. he is a very nice cat. he is SO tolerant. seriously, the kids just haul him around and impose all sorts of ‘love’ on him, and he just deals with it. layla, especially is very fond of toby. micah loves him too… he especially loves to feed him. ahem. all the time. shane is well bonded to his cat. he sleeps with him every night, and has taken over shane’s room as his own. sometimes, if shane’s not home, I’ll find toby asleep on his bed, laying on the shirt he slept in that night. awww… shane also likes to ‘play’ with toby… he recently decided to dress him up… how he accomplished this, I have no idea. but like I said. amazingly tolerant . his most recent moment of brilliance was equipping toby with a head (or should I say, chest) lamp. it was flashing. not sure this was toby’s favorite, but the kids thought it was hilarious. so yes, everyone LOVES toby. ...

just the average, every day… dave and micah have quite the little bond going on right now. it’s very cute how ‘daddy’ oriented he’s become lately. he even sneaks in every night to snuggle up and sleep with him… yup. that’s his lap top. layla likes dogs. a lot. in fact, she wants to BE a dog. every day, she has a new scheme for how she will BE a dog. here, she took tupperware containers out of the drawer, and set up food and water bowls for everyone on the kitchen floor. then they drank out of them. another day, she made a dog bed for herself… in the shelving unit. the latest is that she wants to be a ‘working dog’, so she made herself a cape… I guess if she must be a dog, she may as well make herself useful… and then there’s micah, who stuck these foam square things on his face and declared himself to be a cat. (those are the whiskers.) and then he climbed into the cat crate. yes, he fit. of course, then everyone tried it. all shane could fit was his head. micah is ...

I know I’m one of those people that, when I get excited about something, I get REALLY excited. it is one of those things that dave and I like to tease each other about. he’s so even-keeled, that it drives me nuts when he’s not jumping up and down about stuff he’s supposedly excited about… and he thinks it’s odd that I have reactions of ecstasy over things like… really good strawberries, for instance, or when the daffodils push their little green heads up out of the ground (which they are doing right now, btw. **you can’t see it, but this is me jumping up and down**) at any rate, I’m SUPER excited about something right now: project life! mary turned me on to this, and I was totally skeptical at first. I didn’t get it. she started this last year, and kept raving and raving about how wonderful it was and all that… so, of course, I was intrigued. I started following becky higgins’ blog , and I started to get excited about the prospect of doing this myself. SO, what is it? well, it’s ...

sunday: in the book, actually have a collage of all the picture from our visit with kat and cole. this pic is part of the collage, but the collage itself is one of my missing pics. monday: layla making a dog bed in our big shelf. it’s a pet store and she’s for sale. anybody want to buy her? tuesday: snow is predicted! the kids are trying out some of those ‘old wives’ tales’ that claim to work to make it snow. pajamas inside out, spoon under your pillow, and of course, flushing an ice cube down the toilet… wednesday: it worked! we have snow! thursday: micah at NKCC indoor playground. I think it was a MOMS club event, but we were the only ones that showed up. friday: being dogs, as usual. they have food and water dishes set out on the floor. saturday: dave’s company party at hard rock café. fun night. good food. terrible weather! on the way out, the wind totally turned our umbrella inside-out! it was just like in mary poppins!