week 49 in pictures

sunday: bird layla drew on the magnadoodle at my parents’ house.

tuesday: layla decided that it was picnic weather (cold, rainy, windy) and prepared a picnic for micah and herself.

wednesday: opening up the book for the day. (last year, before I packed away the christmas books, I wrapped them and put a number on each one, to be opened like an advent calendar – one each day.) the kids take turns opening them.

thursday: I spent my evening painting underwear on barbie dolls. 5 of layla’s barbies are now sporting shiny, nail polish undies.

also thursday: christmas baking has begun! layla and micah helped me mix up butter ball and cut-out dough. the next night, micah and I mixed up gingersnap and peppermint shortbread dough!

friday: this is what the top of the fridge looks like. the only way to keep ginger from wanting to play CONSTANTLY is to hide the tennis balls.

dave, trying out lesson one of our new saxon math curriculum.

also saturday: we took a trip downtown to see the trains at the center house, ride the westlake carousel, and do other such christmassy stuff. it was super fun. we started by parking at lake union, walked over to the seattle center, and looked at the trains.

then we went out and walked around the space needle a bit…

then we rode the monorail over to westlake center.

we saw the macy’s star.

rode the carousel.

then we went into the mall and grabbed a snack (while I did some secret santa shopping), and then headed to starbucks for some hot beverages. this is shane, enjoying his FIRST latte! I’m so proud.

then we headed over to check out the window display on the other side of macy’s where the trains are, and then headed to the street car to get back to our car.

those pictures will go into a design G insert.

and then there are some skinnies for center slots. 1) putting lights on our mini REAL tree for the family room. 2) layla as mater. “I’m mater. like ta-mater, but without the ta.” 3)I walked into the bathroom and found this. 4) when we got home on saturday, we discovered that ginger had eaten, yet another, loaf of bread.

{book shots will be added later}

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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

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.

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

my vacuum cleaner sucks!

no pun intended… i’ve had this vacuum cleaner for almost 6 years. i’ve been ready to be done with it for about 5. i have the dirt devil ‘jaguar’ bagless vacuum. we only paid about $75 for it at target, which, in vacuumcleanerland, is not very much. still, it’s $75. i tried to find a picture of it on the dirt devil website, but apparently, they no longer sell it, which is probably a good thing. so i had to take my own picture, which is probably better anyway. if you think it looks a bit ‘off’, that’s not just the perspective of the picture. it is a bit off. about a year after getting this vacuum, the latch that keeps it standing upright broke. so, any time you want to NOT be holding onto it (as in, any time it’s not in use) it has to lean against something or it will fall over. ANNOYING! but livable. and then, more recently, THIS happened: that’s a picture of the bottom of it,from the back. note the missing wheel. yup. a wheel broke off. so now, when using the vacuum, if you wan

rachel's continued ramblings

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