week 27 in pictures

sunday: sightseeing in pasadena. rose bowl and city hall.

monday: fighting boredom by inventing ways to tow younger siblings with the lawnmower.

tuesday: layla set up a ‘store’, so I could come and shop. these were all her ‘wares’. I walked away with lunch and a pet dog, all for $4!

wednesday: happy 4th of july! our friends, kat and cole came up on tuesday night and stayed over. in the morning, the big boys all went for a lengthy bike ride. the printed labeling on the legs of dave’s cycle shorts was flaking off and it was bugging cole, so he decided to ‘wax’ them with packing tape. it was hysterical.

thursday: I downloaded the disney jr. ap for my phone, which the kids think is awesome, especially since we lost the channel when we moved. that night, dave took the kids upstairs to ‘snuggle’ and get settled for bed. what I found when I went up there, was him asleep in our bed and them (including shane) watching a riveting episode of doc mcstuffins on the phone, in the dark, phone propped up with a teddy bear on the headboard.

friday: I don’t have a picture for friday, but layla wanted to draw a picture of her and her friend, makenna, swimming in the lake (which is what they did that day), so I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have an actual picture!

saturday: our friends came over for dinner and chatting. the kids ran through the sprinklers and micah was ecstatic to have ella over to play!

and plenty of instagrams this week:

book shots:

Comments

first day of school

so, we started school today. this is a big deal because it is OUR first day of official homeschooling. you know, here. at home. most everyone reading this is already aware of the fact that shane has been homeschooled since first grade, but that he has spent the majority of that ‘school’ time, with my mother as his ‘teacher’. this was a fine arrangement, she was willing and more than qualified, and he was learning. but for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being my mother’s current cancer issues, it had become clear that it was time for me to take over. AND,with layla being 4 now, i really wanted to do a little bit more preschool stuff with her. being a little bit of a chicken flake, i (with much urging from my loving husband) decided the best route to go would be with a packaged curriculum. i figured it would be the most time-effective way to cover what we needed to cover, and be somewhat dummy-proof, but at the same time, having the option to supplement with as much

project life–week 18

the three amigos… this trio of the neighbors’ poultry is always in my parents’ yard. and spark way too many “why did the chicken cross the road” jokes. these are the two lilacs I gave my mom for mother’s day two years ago. last year, only one bloomed. looks like this year, both will have some nice flowers! when I get to the bottom of a bag of chips and they’re too small to effectively scoop up salsa, I just dump them in a bowl, pour salsa over them, and eat the whole delicious mess with a spoon. not ashamed. dave got himself a new set of bike tools. everyone had to check it out. first grade music concert. micah had a solo! saturday baseball fun. pitching, homerun derby, bouncy houses, dunk the coach… and of course, eating kettle corn and horsing around.

vomit phobia

most people who know me relatively well are aware of my ridiculous fear of vomit. so essentially, the last year or so has been the embodiment of my worst nightmare. we have now embarked on stomach flu episode 4 of the last 13 months. is that not ridiculous? is that not excessive? what's the deal? should i be concerned? or maybe i'm just paying my dues. shane never had the stomach flu until he was 6, but now we've got it all the time. since may last year, he's now had it 3 times. between january and november of last year, layla had it 3 times, and now we're just waiting to see when she's going to come down with this latest strain. WHAT THE HECK! i never had it this often as a kid. maybe i was just lucky. i don't know. is this normal? how many times can you get this stuff in a certain amount of time before you should think that something is wrong? and how can you prevent it, if at all? i don't really think we have weak immune systems. th

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

Micah’s Birthday

This kid had the audacity to turn 13 yesterday… As was expected, I was a bit of a hot mess about the whole affair. Here’s his “last day to be 12” photo. He ran out of fingers a couple years ago, so taking a page out of Shane’s book, he borrowed a couple of feet from the cat to make 12. But, not too old to choose Lucky Charms for his birthday breakfast. He got his happy birthday facetime call first thing and got to open his gift from Gramma and Skip while they watched… He’s had a boom box on his list this year. You might remember that 2 years ago, it was a Walkman. The obsession with 80s audio continues. Gramma found this one and it seems to fit the bill. Looks totally retro, plays and records tapes but also has radio AND a USB port so he could use some modern tech with it, as well. So, he spent the morning taking advantage of the birthday allowances of not having to do his weekend chores and lifted time limits on video games… all while listening to the radio or one

rachel's continued ramblings

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