team work!

it's not every day that an activity arises that invokes the cooperation of ALL of my kids. today we had one!

layla asked if i could bring the yellow table inside so she could set up a restaurant in her room. I said sure, but I would have to clean it up first. *sigh* that’s easier said than done.

back in the spring, we took the table outside so she and micah could have their lunch outside on it, and with all the wet, nasty weather and such, I just kinda left it out there, instead of bringing it back in right away so it would stay clean... which means it was dirty. gross, nasty, spiders, snails, etc. plus, because it’s an ikea snap-together set, it had various parts which had filled up with rainwater. which meant that it had to be all taken apart and dried out and cleaned and yada yada yada… all more reasons it just continued to stay outside because I didn’t want to deal with it. but I knew it needed to be done.

so I went outside with my bottle of simple green, a few cleaning rags, a towel, and a screwdriver. I put everything on the back deck and started prying tops off of stools, pulling legs out, etc. I had just gotten the table top cleaned when I hear, “can I help?” so I told layla to grab a rag and start cleaning off the table legs. pretty soon micah shows up asking to help. so I sent him to grab another rag and put him to work on the stool legs. I had been telling the kids to take all the clean pieces into the living room so they were out of the way until we could put them back together. shane walks in and sees all that and asks what’s going on, so I commissioned him to be in charge of reassembling everything!

all in all, it took about 30 minutes to get everything clean, reassembled, and moved into the bedroom. AND, it was really fun! I love it!

they’re currently ALL in there playing restaurant. (which, ironically, is not going nearly as smoothly as the cleaning portion… based on the bickering I hear down the hall.)

ah, yes. see layla’s pouty face? apparently there was some disagreement about who would be cook, server, and customer… oh well. hope they get it worked out.

but don’t the table and stools look nice? LOL.

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playgroup aftermath

we had playgroup here today. lots of fun, lots of MOMS, lots of kids, lots of mess! micah got up this morning before 6 and powered right on through until everyone left at 3. and then at… we had this: sleepy guy. we had to go pick up shane from the y, so i put him in the car and he napped until we were almost back home. a perfect little nap!

a tribute to layla

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THAT’S NOT FOOD!

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sourdough – installment 2!

well, i guess i did it right! today was day 4 since i made my starter. it had bubbled, grown, shrunk, and bubbled some more and was starting to smell more like wine than yeast. my experienced sourdough-making friend angie assured me that this meant that it had ‘soured’ and i could now use it. so i did. i decided to use my bread machine to do the mixing and kneading for me, but i wanted to bake it in the oven. i used the recipe for sourdough in my bread machine instruction book, and then used the baking instructions in a cookbook i have. at any rate, we have success!!! i was afraid they were a little too done, but actually, the bread and even the crust is still soft, even though it looks kind of dark. we dove right in and holy yumness! i think it could be a little more ‘sour’, so i’m going to leave my replenished starter out a day or two before i ‘put it to sleep’ in the fridge. but as it was, it was wonderful. i tried to take a picture of shane enjoying it, because his piece was big...

rachel's continued ramblings

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