rachel's continued ramblings

sunday: dave made some chocolate chip cookies after the niners secured their spot in the super bowl. micah and layla enjoyed the benefits of that project with a beater each. monday: they have discovered the joy of perler (melty) beads! we went to ben franklin and bought a bucket and spent the rest of the day working on these. our creations. the animals were made by the kids, and I made the pacman and ghosts. micah is obsessed with pacman right now, so I thought he would think they were cool. he did! thursday: I was laying down, icing my back, and toby decides to come sit right on my neck. also thursday: “caution: WEIRD turns”. that’s not something you see every day… saturday: micah at a MOMS club friend’s birthday party. it was a princess/costume party. micah went in his pirate costume from halloween and had a blast. I asked him what his favorite part of the party was, and he said, “making a dragon!” that was one of the crafts. and some extra skinnies to stick in the center slot...

yesterday was MLK day. shane was off school, layla doesn’t go to school, and micah goes to school on tuesdays, wednesdays, and thursday. so, since shane didn’t have school, that means that layla was going to get in on that. so, after a lazy morning, I dropped shane off at susie’s house to help with some work, and I took the youngers to ben franklin to acquire some more ‘melty beads’ . layla had just discovered these, after getting a small ornament kit from my aunt marge for christmas. so we got ourselves a bucket of them with some ‘pet patterns’ and they set to work. they started on them around 12:30 and were still going when I had to make them clear the table off so we could eat dinner at 6:30. WOW. this is what they got made during the day. micah made the brown dog… the rest are layla’s. at some point, I got the idea to make a pacman and some ghosts. (micah is currently obsessed with pacman, so he got a big kick out of this.) after dinner, he got out his blocks and made this: my...

okay, so nobody except family will really appreciate this… somebody posted this picture (from the inauguration) on facebook and I immediately started laughing. why? because of this: still… can’t stop laughing.

sunday: layla’s dog, sporting the ‘florida retiree’ look. monday: on mornings when I have to take shane to school (non- jazz band mornings), my dad walks down the road to hang out at our house, so I don’t have to wake up layla and micah at the crack of dawn and throw them in the car, just to ride along to take shane to school. (this is TOTALLY awesome, btw.) when I got back, I found grandpa VERY popular! the only one missing is layla, because she was still asleep. wednesday: micah and a couple of preschool friends, playing in the leftover snow at recess. it was a week old at that point, and it’s STILL on the ground now! brrrr… thursday: this was taken at 8:35am. preschool starts at 9:00am… needless to say, we were a little bit late. friday: micah loves games. he just doesn’t ‘play’ them in the traditional way. here, he is using the bugs from his bug/jenga stacking game and turning them into ‘fish’ by stuffing them into his socks. once turned into ‘fish’, they jump into the ‘pond’ (...

sunday: absolute chaos! first day back after being gone for 10 days, putting away our christmas stuff, and 2 extra dogs! I love how dogs always have to make themselves a part of whatever it is you’re doing. monday: we were all curious to see what would happen if we threw a ball for all 3 dogs. it was honestly, quite hysterical. ginger, who is ball-crazy and totally single-minded about fetching, was totally baffled by roscoe and dakota’s behavior. they would run after the ball, so she would kind of hang back, trying to figure out what was going on. dakota would grab the ball and run off with it. roscoe would grab it, take a few steps and drop it. ginger just ran around, looking confused, trying to figure out who had the ball, where it was, and why they weren’t bringing it back! eventually, whoever had it would drop it, she’d grab it, and bring it back. we laughed a lot. tuesday: layla’s first ballet class! she’s the 5th from the left, looking down at her feet. I had SO much fun watchi...

the weather on wednesday, was weird all day. cold, rainy, freezing rain, hail. people were reporting all sorts of stuff. it had snowed off and on, too, but nothing that stuck. that evening, after the kids went to bed, the ground turned all white and we had BIG fat flakes falling!!! next morning, there wasn’t much on the roads, but the grass, trees, and roofs were all covered in about and inch of snow. our ‘local’ school district, had a 2 hour delay, which meant that micah’s preschool was closed. unfortunately, shane goes to school in our ‘old’ district, and they were on time. we kept him home from jazz band, but the roads weren’t much better an hour later when I left to take him to school. we just went very slowly, especially on all the hills, and got there just fine, but a little late (as was everyone else, including some buses). after layla and micah had had breakfast, we busted open the boxes of snow stuff that had been packed since we moved. we had to find gloves and boots and sn...

here we go! starting a new year! I’m so excited to get my 2012 book finished and move on to the new one for 2013!!! sunday: micah, playing at feickert park. I love that he’s posing next to some appropriate graffiti. monday: new year’s eve. laurie had a “party in a box” that had hats, leis, and horns for everyone. it was a noisy evening. micah stayed up all the way to… 5 minutes BEFORE midnight! LOL. and then we noticed that he had passed out. tuesday: dave’s birthday! micah snuck off while everyone was visiting and ‘sampled’ the frosting. he got in big trouble. wednesday: we took a trip out to the bay area to visit grandpa dick, and then over to nana’s. the kids had a blast with all of her very unique and awesome toys. thursday: micah’s turn at build-a-bear. every since layla built her dog, bella, micah has been wanting to go. so thanks to gramma, he now has his very own dog (identical to layla’s) named carper. friday: more dapelos came over for dinner, and we got to meet the 2 n...