week 40 in pictures

so, this was kind of a weird week, picture-wise. I apparently took NO pictures after sunday, until friday. which is okay because I took about a thousand on saturday.

sunday: shane, helping with some digging and tree planting/landscaping at the farm down the road. they recently had to put down one of their horses, so this was like a little memorial for him.

friday: laurie, sewing. she was finishing up some pillow shams, valances, and a bed skirt she was making for shane’s bedroom. we screwed everything that she did at christmas up by moving to a house that did not have the exact same size and number of windows/bedrooms as our old house!

layla, opening a late birthday present. when gramma and papa were out at christmas, layla had picked out some fabric that she wanted gramma to make her a dress out of. the dress was her birthday present, along with this awesome personalized mug (try finding stuff with “layla” on it. just try!)

the rest of the pictures are of the kids riding at the farm. shane has been ‘working’ for some lessons. layla begged and pleaded (in the form of an illustrated note with flip-up post-it note messages included) to get to ride, too. the horses at the farm are all too big for her to actually learn to ride, but she can go for a ride if someone else is actually ‘in charge’ of the horse (ie, on a guide rope). lynn, the owner, even invited micah to take a ride, as well!

and some smaller ones I’ll stick in center slots.

and the instagrams…

book shots:

not bothering to link up, since this is back-posted late.

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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

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

what to eat?

warning: this may turn into a rant. I’m confused. I don’t know what to eat! I know, that sounds really stupid. but honestly, I’m so confused right now about the whole what to eat thing. I’m not an idiot, and I’m certainly not ignorant as to nutrition concepts and the science of how the body uses food. and yet, I am so confused. there is so much conflicting information out there as to what is actually good for you . some say no carbs, some say no sugar, some say no red meat, some say no dairy, some say no eggs, some say no grains, some say no alcohol, some say no caffeine, etc. etc. etc. so obviously, you can’t ascribe to all of that or you would eat NOTHING. I also know that cutting out carbs is the most idiotic thing you can do. your body needs carbs to function. wonder bread, however, is not a good source of the carbs your body would prefer. as far as red meat goes. hello, protein and iron! but hard to digest. a lot of red meat puts a lot of wear and tear on your digestive sy

holiday?

so i’ve had a skeleton of this post bouncing around in my head for a couple of weeks now. i’m not even really sure what the point of it is, or what my opinion on the matter really is, except that it’s something that’s kind of irritating me. have you noticed that christmas has been, more or less, completely deleted? listen to your radio. watch the commercials on tv. read the ads in the paper. nothing. it’s like ‘christmas’ has become a dirty word. now before anyone gets their dander all up, this is not a particularly religiously-inspired post, not that i disagree with the idea that ‘Christ’ should remain the center of ‘Christ’mas. but that’s not what this is about. i’m a ‘word person’. i love language. i love the idiosyncrasies that that come with spoken and written language. i love that humans have the ability to string letters and words and sentences together to create something beautiful, or funny, or clever, or ANYTHING! it’s just a wonderful thing. i love that we can trace sayings

rachel's continued ramblings

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