rachel's continued ramblings

here are the layouts – actual pictures of the book in action – for march. march started on a thursday, but my pictures weren’t exactly sunday – saturday this week. I had no pic for wednesday, and no pic for friday. but 2 for both thursday and saturday. it worked… so we have the second half of this layout for the week 9: week 10 has one 8x10 collage of extras, plus a math homework worksheet of shane’s on the backside. it has a smiley face on it! :) week 11 has one 8x10 collage of extras and micah’s handprint “thing 1 and thing 2” that he made in preschool. week 12 includes our church retreat to camp lutherwood. I didn’t need an 8x10 of extras this week, but I needed two to cover all the stuff we did at camp. week 13 is possibly the most exciting week that will be in 2012. hard to say. but this week we bought a house! layla also bookended the week with birthday parties. I have one 8x10 of extras and a drawing layla made of a submarine. that’s march! it was very nice of march to end...

sunday: another shot of micah and his future wife… this time they are “in bed”. LOL! monday: no picture. will have to have someone draw something for me. tuesday: micah was inspired by something we were watching on tv. they were playing laser tag out in the woods, so he went and got his hat and mittens on, made himself a rifle out of legos, and proceeded to crawl army-style across the livingroom, shooting lasers at everyone. wednesday: spring is officially springing everywhere! these are a few pretties I found in our yard. this one I will use little in one of the small vertical slots in the book.                 thursday: physical therapy for layla. this time they played some floor hockey. friday: super sunny day! the start of a beautiful weekend. micah was outside climbing… ginger was too! she asked to be let out. walked straight off the deck, found a spot in the sun and laid down.             ...

fact: I LOVE chips and salsa. it’s one of my most favorite foods in the world. weird, probably. but really good, fresh salsa with lots of cilantro and not too much chili powder is like a magical concoction. confession: when I get to the bottom of a bag of tortilla chips, and the chips are all broken and too small to effectively dip into the salsa anymore… I dump them into my bowl of salsa, stir them around, and eat it with a spoon. true story. and I’m not ashamed to admit it!

sunday: micah and his bff (future wife) ella, building a kitty house together in the church nursery. monday: at the band concert last week, I mentioned to mr. kelly that shane was thinking of switching to french horn next year. on monday, he came home with one! apparently the school has a few that aren’t being used and since so few kids want to play french horn, he was more than willing to get shane started right away! what a freakin’ cool instrument!! I actually had to MAKE shane stop practicing. tuesday: layla and micah playing barbies together. yes, micah’s wearing his swim suit. I have no idea why, but he does this ALL. THE. TIME… wednesday: in the book, these two pics will be collaged together. shane took ginger out in the yard to throw the ball. this dog NEVER tires of chasing a ball. NEVER. thursday: science fair at the school. layla did her project on labrador retrievers. shane did his on how the storage temperature of popcorn affects how it pops.  these two pics will a...

so, this is our third day with ginger in our family, and things are going great! everyone is quite in love with her. she has not tried to run away at all, and really just seems to want to stay close to us. I was a little bit worried, that if she got out the front door, she would try to make a break for it and head back over to george’s, but she keeps her eyes on me. even if she goes sniffing around in the yard or to go potty, she always comes right back to me. at home, she follows me around. it’s pretty cute. she slept next to our bed last night. one major difference between her and sophie is that she is light in color, and doesn’t blend into the dark carpet – making her much less likely to get stepped on in the dark! she and toby seem to have some sort of established understanding… she doesn’t chase him, he doesn’t run away from her, they just seem to keep their distance. I can tell that toby is a little miffed at her presence, and is probably just hoping she’ll go away soon, but the...

this morning, I was on my way to the school to drop off shane’s science fair poster. he didn’t want to take it with him on the bus this morning (to and from band), so I agreed to drop it off in the office for him. it was probably a very good idea, since it’s been DUMPING rain all morning, and we’re kind of in the middle of a somewhat significant wind storm. at any rate, as I’m driving down the road – a somewhat major road with a lot of traffic– there’s a stoplight ahead, but it’s green, and I can’t figure out why everyone is moving so slowly. and then I see, standing in the middle of the intersection, a beautiful husky dog. just standing there, looking confused. people are being very careful and driving by slowly, but I just kept thinking, “oh! somebody rescue it!” then I see a woman in a van roll down her window and call to the dog. it wagged it’s tail and came up to her car. she kept calling it as she turned the corner onto the cross street. the dog followed her off the main road. a...

sunday: my parents were over for dinner, and my dad was demonstrating the advantages of being 6’9” and almost as tall as the pull-up bar. monday: micah made a playdough ladybug. cute, huh? tuesday: layla got her stitches out after school. her lip is healing nicely, and it didn’t even hurt. wednesday: shane had his second band concert of the year. I couldn’t take a picture of him actually playing because there were people blocking our view. I didn’t want to be rude and stand up in the middle of it. so I snapped this across the gym while the jr. high band was setting up. he’s over there on the bleachers in the black shirt. thursday: PT appt for layla. the aquarium by the check in desk has this HUGE hermit crab. I had no idea they could be this big. it’s really pretty… in a creepy sort of way. friday: date night! dave had to go over to the plateau to pick up some shirts from his friend, nick. I ditched the kids and met him over there. we had dinner at the pine lake ale house. YUM! this wa...

as of around noon today, we have a new family member! meet ginger! ginger is an approximately 10 year old yellow lab who came into our lives quite suddenly. she is a beautiful girl. very energetic and agile for her age. she is super well-behaved, friendly, loves everyone, and would chase a tennis ball all day long if you kept throwing it. yesterday, ginger lost her person. our sweet, elderly, bachelor neighbor, george, passed away yesterday morning. ginger had been with george for about the last two years, after he lost his dog, babe. before coming to live with george, she had a family and a lake and space to run. but they had to move into the city. and that is how she came to live here, and be neighbors with us. so now ginger found herself without a person. george’s closest neighbors were wondering what to do about her. he has no close family, and they both have dogs of their own already. and well, as we have been very much without a dog since we lost sophie last june, it just see...

so, now that we’re done with the casting part of this whole saga, I thought I should write up a thorough update about how the whole thing went. we’re nowhere near done with this whole journey, but at least the casting portion is done, so I can speak to that. if you need some background information, or need to refresh your memory, I have several posts full of the information which led up to this point, and how I wound up yanking my 6 year old out of school early 2 days a week so she could walk around with both feet in casts. you can read those here , here , here , here , or here . so basically, on february 2, layla got her first set of casts. at this point, her heel cords were very tight, especially the right, and even with her feet casted into a flexed position, she had to have a little ‘lift’ under her heels in her cast shoes, because they were not flat. they stretched her feet some, but not too much, because they didn’t want to make her too uncomfortable the first time around while...