rachel's continued ramblings

shane and layla had their first day of school on wednesday, the 31st! yes, both of them. yes, at a REAL school. it was the right thing to do this year.     6th grade and 1st grade.     after walking all the way to school, they had a little time to play on the playground. the 6th graders walking in… notice the lack of parents w/ them. I took this picture from a distance.      layla in her desk! aside from staying all day and having lunch at school, the most exciting part of being in 1st grade is that you get your own desk!     getting off the bus after school. layla was concerned about being able to remember which bus to get on, so I wrote the number down on a piece of paper for her.     there they are. shane was already saying good bye to friends… the social aspects of school are NOT going to be a problem for him!

sunday:      micah’s melon face. monday:      the doormat out the back door. apparently it’s completely commonplace to find tinkertoys and hair clips next to your garden clogs. tuesday:     micah eating ice cream. you cannot convince this kid that the cone is meant to be eaten. so he licks as far down into the cone as is physically possible… resulting in a chocolate goatee. wednesday:     costco’s latest product. thursday:      crayons on the warming tray! I will be eternally grateful to my mother for picking this up out of a rummage sale for me. not friday:      this is a random picture from some other time during the week. they made a fairground ride out of tinkertoys for the polly pockets. I’m SO glad that when I go to the fair, I’m not strapped, upside down, to the ride with a pipe cleaner! saturday:     shane got sounders tickets for his birthday from g...

okay, enough with this summer laziness! school starts on wednesday and I’m tired of feeling disorganized. not to mention that the diet my children have been ingesting for the last couple of weeks is NOT something I’m willing to publish on the internet! okay, so we’ve been a bit scattered w/ my mom in the hospital and all that, but still. enough is enough! monday: pork chops; oven fries; green beans (fresh from the garden!) tuesday: chicken nuggets; tater tots; carrot sticks/cucumbers(don’t judge! it’s a busy night.) wednesday: meatloaf ; mashed potatoes; green beans thursday: chicken vegetable soup; rolls friday: pizza and green beans saturday: hamburgers; veggies or salad sunday: waffles ; sausages yes, we’re having a lot of green beans right now. between mine (that didn’t get eaten by the deer) and my dad’s, we’ve got a lot of green beans! cucumbers too! I don’t need to do a ton of shopping even. I’ll have some fruits and veggies coming in my veggie box on thursday. ...

I haven’t updated in awhile because there hasn’t been a ton to report. no news is good news, right? this is especially true in this case. on friday afternoon, my mom was released from the hospital and moved to a care/rehab center in bellevue. she was not quite ready to be at home, but didn’t need to be in the hospital anymore. at this point, she is pretty much ‘over’ the procedure (meaning no pain/nausea), but still has a slight fever off and on (which was expected). she is also having to work at getting her appetite back to where it should be – which is necessary because the main reason she’s unable to come home yet is weakness. walking to the bathroom and back wears her out. so she is working with physical therapists at the rehab place to get her moving more and try to rebuild some strength. we went to visit her yesterday evening (and to bring her a slice of pecan pie and some starbucks coffee). the kids were excited to be able to see her (it’s been about 2 weeks). they also had fu...

copied from facebook update: soo... yesterday evening i had the BEST visit with my mom! it was so nice to arrive in the room to see her sitting up and eating! she's still got a ways to go to get back to normal, but having her 'back' was just about the best thing ever. she's still pretty weak, and last night i left just before she was about to have a blood transfusion. her red cell count was a little low, and they were hoping that, and getting back to a regular diet, will help her gain her strength back more quickly. if not, she may have to go to a rehab center for a few days before going home, just until she's able to get around better. they are trying to get her out of the hospital asap, which would make everyone happy. at any rate, i'm SO thankful for all of the prayers, well wishes, kind words and support from everyone. knowing that people who don't even know my mom are praying for her is amazing. thank you so much!

copied from my note posted on facebook: what a roller coaster! the last couple of days have been really tough. after a rough time this weekend, we were hopeful that my mom was getting better and that her 'mental clarity' would improve as her liver function normalized. well, those numbers continued to improve, but her state did not. this led the dr. to believe that it may be the medication, causing the problem. in one of those fun, chicken and egg scenarios, her liver was severely irritated from the procedure, but she needed to take medication to control pain and keep her calm. this medication needed to be processed through the liver. which was not doing so well in that function. the dr. believed that the medication may have been building up and she was not reacting well to it, so he spoke with the pharmacist to switch her medication to something that would be processed through the kidneys instead, thus giving her liver a break. we were hopeful that this change would allow her ...

I don’t have a picture for sunday… will have to have one of the kids draw something. monday: here, we have layla, expressing her death-wish. her newfound talent in hula hooping is manifesting itself all over the place, and in odd, and sometimes precarious, positions. here, she’s balanced at the very top of the big, metal slide, which is balanced on top of the little plastic climber, which is on the edge of the deck. maybe the magic wand in her hand has cast some safety spell around her. she lived, but succeeded in giving me a heart attack first.   tuesday:      layla, micah and I took a picnic to the park. on the way back, micah was determined to carry the cooler. you can’t see it very well in the picture, but it also has 3 filled water bottles clipped to the front of the handle. he didn’t make it very far before he gave it back to me. wednesday:      notice what’s going on in the background of this picture: our backyard neighbors were h...

I posted this over on facebook, but I know there are probably a few people out there who read this, but not facebook, so I’m copying it over to here as well.   okay, several people have asked what is going on with my mom. so here's the basic scoop. my mom as about 13 carcinoids on her liver (essentially, liver cancer). she has knows this for about 2 years. the course of action thus far, has been just to monitor them, as they are very slow growing, and treatment options are limited. lately, she has become very uncomfortable, and a ct scan revealed that her liver was very enlarged, and therefore pressing on her other organs. they determined that the best course of action would be to do a liver embolization, in which they basically cut off the blood supply to half of the liver at a time, in order to shrink the carcinoids. the did the first proceedure on wednesday, the 17th. (the second is roughly planned for a month later, depending on her recovery from this one.) the first couple of ...

so, our closest park is on the lake and there are paths and bridges that wander around the park, along the edge of the lake. during the summer, we like to go home this way, so we can look for frogs. there are several streams that run in or out of the lake at this point and there are masses of lily pads growing at the mouths of these streams, where the frogs like to sit and sun themselves. it’s totally cliché and a great place for frog sightings. we were successful yesterday and I snapped a few pictures. sorry christie!

very layla-heavy this week. camera magnet. sunday:     do not believe that crap about boys and girls being no different. I used to believe it. I did everything I could to provide gender neutral toys and experiences. and then I experienced reality. shane and micah play with cars in this way: they line then up. they race them. they crash them. they make outrageous wrecking noises and ‘vroom vroom’ noises. they build stuff like car washes and repair shops and off-road vehicle parks out of blocks for the cars to use… layla plays with cars in this way. (and may I add that this is all after the cars have had baby cars and taken their naps under the blanket… monday:     layla is super happy to have mastered the hula hoop! tuesday:     this magic little piece of plastic was in layla’s stocking last christmas. it’s a card holder and is SO awesome for little kids who want to play card games, but can’t manage a whole handful of cards. wednesday: ...

for real? in a consistent sort of way. if so, you’re lucky. or maybe you’re normal, and I’m in the middle of some decade-long, no end in sight midlife crisis… I seriously confuse myself. I never really know, from one day to the next, “who” I will be when I wake up in the morning. no, this isn’t some sort of schizophrenic, multiple personality disorder kind of thing. well, I don’t think so, at least. just kidding. I mean, yes, I’m rachel. yes, I’m my husband’s wife, my children’s mother, etc. that doesn’t change. but who I am as a mother. as a wife. as a daughter. as a generation x-er. as a christian. as a coffee lover. as a 12 years through college-er. as a former literature major. as a public school grad, parochial school survivor, homeschool advocate but homeschool ing chicken with TWO kids now enrolled in public school. as a former waitress, preschool teacher, tie-dyer, pizza deliverer, secretary. as a native washintonian and whatever else fills in the description of ME...

so I had a bunch of broccoli in the fridge. last night, I made angie’s sesame oil sautéed broccoli (with carrots) and I wanted another way to fix it, other than just steaming it. that paired w/ the not so warm weather had me thinking SOUP! so I went on a quest to find a good broccoli cheese soup recipe. a lot of them call for american or velveeta (gag). I want some good, old fashioned cheddar. the sharper, the better! found one on the food network site that looked promising. almost famous broccoli-cheddar soup I actually mostly followed the recipe (gasp), with the exception of using only half of an onion (so as not to upset dave’s stomach), and I used all 32 ounces of chicken broth, rather than just the 3 cups it called for. other than that, I did it exactly as they said. I made bread bowls using my w/w sourdough recipe (which, looking at my posted recipes, I see I will have to post soon). the only glitch was when I put the soup into the blender (my new hand-me-down cuisinart, tha...

it started in the spring… er… I don’t know if you can really call it spring. by the calendar, it should have been spring, but it really wasn’t. it was cold and rainy. then we hit june, edging closer to summer, and people got really hopeful impatient ticked off. spring was still not really showing up. gardens were floundering and people around here were getting concerned. so here we, almost at the half way point in AUGUST!, and we’ve had MAYBE a week of summer… here and there. I just looked at the 10 day and, while tomorrow is scheduled for sunny and 76, the rest of the forecast tops out at a scorching 71. what. the. heck? what’s even more ironic is that the whole rest of the country seems to be suffering through this crazy heat wave that won’t quit. temps in the 100’s and not just in arizona! now I’m not advocating for that, but summer in the northwest usually means 80’s. at least a good share of the time. it means short sleeves. it means brown grass because people around here do...

sunday: no pic, but I have a paper that micah wrote his name on repeatedly that I’m going to crop to 4x6 size. monday:     it finally occurred to my kids to put the slip & slide at the bottom of the big metal slide. they had lots of fun and no one wound up w/ a concussion from running into the trampoline. always good. tuesday:     who says you can’t style a buzz cut? layla was determined to put a clip in daddy’s hair. by some miracle, it actually stuck! wednesday:     I sent them to get their jammies on. they showed up a little later with odd looks on their faces wearing this. micah had this weird, guilty look on his face the whole time, and layla was all put out with this big long story about how micah MADE her put the dress on him and he made HER be the prince and that was just ridiculous because why did she have to be the prince anyway and I don’t wanna wear this stupid vest and micah should be the prince because HE’S the boy. it w...

sunday:     our neighbors, who live on the lake, invited us for dinner. we had a lovely salmon dinner on the deck on a lovely summer evening. the kids enjoyed their hot tub, we had an amazing fly-by by two hot air balloons, and then we took a little paddle on the lake in one of their canoes. it was a very fun evening. we are blessed with a lot really wonderful neighbors. monday:      looked out the front window in the morning to see this pair feasting on my neighbor’s huckleberry bushes. we watched quietly and took pictures until they made their way across the street and toward my garden… then there was much shouting, window banging, and shane chasing them out of the yard! tuesday:    well, not really. this was actually sunday, but I don’t have a picture for tuesday, but had 2 from sunday. the weather was FINALLY nice enough for shane (and micah and layla) to try out the slip & slide he got for his birthday. it was VERY entertaining to ...