week 30 in pictures

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 watch. shane was probably a little too big for it, given that he slid off the end every time. micah was probably a little to small and couldn’t figure out how to dive onto his belly. he kept doing these knee land/belly splats which were hilarious. layla decided she was feeling well enough to try it out a few times too.

wednesday: I was making a blenderful of smoothies in the morning, when I heard a ‘rattling’ sound. then the contents of the blender stopped mixing. I lifted up the pitcher and saw this! crazy!

thursday: I decided to try my hand at making some beef jerky. used angie’s recipe and a roast I had in the freezer and put it in my dehydrator. turned out pretty good!

friday: I posted this before. the kids playing restaurant after team-cleaning the table and stools.

saturday: after several days of rain and cold weather, it finally got warm enough to swim again. layla, in her stack of tubes.

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christmas eve

christmas eve is probably my favorite church service of the year. our sanctuary is gorgeous with the trees and the poinsettias, with ALL 4 advent candles lit AND the christ candle in the middle… it probably helps that this is the church I grew up in and I remember waiting for all that stuff as the season progressed, and how exciting it always was when it FINALLY got there. And then there is the music. growing up as the kid of the organist, who did christmas eve “right”, I have high standards. we MUST start with “oh come, all ye faithful”, and we MUST end with “joy to the world”. the church is always packed, so the organ is played at full blast, with all the extra bells and whistles. it is unbelievably awesome. deanna, our new organist, does not disappoint. the music is always wonderful. near the end (right before ‘joy to the world’), we always turn the lights down and sing “silent night” by candlelight. I don’t know what it is, but I have NEVER made it through that without tearing up. ...

Piano Concerto #2 In C Minor, Op. 18 - Adagio

I got tagged by Mary so here it is. Let's see what your music has to say about you... Here are the rules: 1. Put your iTunes on shuffle. 2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer 3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS 1) IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY? My Dreydel - Raffi 2) WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY? Slip Away - The Commitments 3) WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL? Sweet Talkin' Woman - Five Iron Frenzy 4) HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY? Nocturne #20 in C sharp minor - Chopin 5) WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE? Haru Ga Kita - Raffi 6) WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO? My Style - Black Eyed Peas 7) WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU? Swinging on a Star - Frank Sinatra 8) WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN? Undignified - David Crowder Band 9) WHAT IS 2+2? Shake My Sillies Out - Raffi 10) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND? Five Little Pumpkins - Raffi 11) WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE P...

random diaper musings

do you ever feel at odds with yourself? i constantly feel like i'm a big wad of contradictions. and being the living-in-my-head, overthinking type i can spend years, i mean hours pondering things. it can really get me down. example: diapers. one would think that this was a relatively easy thing to handle. i've got 3 kids. i'm pretty familiar with diapers. it seems so simple; your baby needs a change so you take the old diaper off and put a new one on. done. right? no. i have this constant dilemma going on. cloth or disposable. i have 25 perfectly good fitted cloth diapers that i paid a lot of money for when i decided a couple years ago that i was done filling up landfills. so micah wears them a good share of the time. but it bugs me that they're so bulky, especially with the covers on and clothes fit funny and that totally drives me nuts. so at home, he just wears the diaper w/ no cover and when we leave the house, i put a disposable on him. not usually...

revisiting the 2010 bucket list

a month or so ago, i posted the beginnings of my ‘to-do’ list for 2010. i’m totally stealing this from kate and debbie, but it’s a good idea. i had a good start of 6 items… but i know there’s way more i want to add to it. spin my own yarn spend more time in nature. read all of jane austen’s books. can my own veggies/fruits acquire a sewing machine re-learn to play the piano exercise regularly (more days of the week than not – really!) finish reading the entire bible make an effort to spend time individually with each of my children mellow out philosophically (if you don’t know what that means, just read a few of my posts and you’ll likely find some crazed post where i’m ranting about my strong disagreement about something generally accepted by the status quo) beat myself up less (again, just read a few posts) take better care of the dog. she’s 13 now and i need to make the most of the years i have left with her. (okay, this one i...

how to make a bad situation worse:

around 7:30 on thursday evening, we had a situation like this: not a good scenario. about 2 hours later, we were in this situation: awesome, right? so how do we get from point A to point B? like this: see the awesome metal ‘edge of death’ on that bowl? yeah. that’s the weapon. in my effort to speedily get the bowl under layla’s face, I actually HIT her in the face with it, and the edge SLICED her upper lip open. yup. right open. it was NOT awesome. I freaked out, of course. she’s still in the middle of feeling terrible. dave was not home yet from a meeting. yeah. mom is majorly freaking out. fortunately, dave walked in the door just as I was sending the “GET HOME NOW!” text. it wasn’t really bleeding a ton, but it was obvious that this was not a band-aid situation. so I called my dad to come and stay with the boys while we took her in to the ER. it’s very nice to have an older kid, so we didn’t have to wait for him to get there before we could leave. but not knowing how long it...

rachel's continued ramblings

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