cali trip: day 7

off to yosemite!

we hit the road in the morning in a borrowed truck pulling a borrowed tent trailer. the truck was huge and the situation had been described as “a gnat on the back of a whale”. pretty funny.

nolan came with us, and he was the only who had ever been to yosemite before.

the views in the valley did not disappoint. so gorgeous.

so we stopped and took a ton of pictures and planned what we wanted to do the next day.

the grass in this field was so tall the kids were playing hide and seek in it. when they sat down, you couldn’t see them.

on the way to find our camp ground, we saw several of these signs. I thought they were awesome. (and no, we didn’t see any actual bears.)

after we got there and got the tent trailer set up, shane and I unloaded some stuff and put layla and micah in charge of gathering sticks for kindling. we hadn’t brought any wood, and the campsite was out, so dave and nolan took the hatchet and went in search of downed branches in the woods. there were plenty, and they got a good haul of firewood.

dinner prep.

the view from our campsite.

after dinner, we played some cards while we waited for it to get dark. then it was time to make s’mores. (micah was VERY excited about this part. it got him over his disappointment that we couldn’t go back to gramma and papa’s and swim.)

I love camping. my favorite part is just sitting around, chatting, and staring at the fire.

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for my not-so-american friends

i didn't have an actual roll w/ the green plaid on it, but i found a refill and an empty roll in my junk drawer (yeah, i know, that should tell me something). but even the empty one says 'scotch' on it. there you go! SCOTCH TAPE!

a blue period...

i'm feeling really lazy lately. well, some might think i'm lazy all the time, but it's worse right now. i always get really down on myself when i'm having trouble keeping things organized, when my house is a mess, when we eat mac and cheese for dinner, etc. usually that's appropriate motivation to get me off my butt and make me keep things in some sort of relative order. but night now it's really bad. i don't feel like doing anything. there are toys all over, and i purposely make myself not see them because i just don't want to pick them up. same with the dirt behind the door in the bathroom. the pile of clothes that need to be ironed, the mess in my bedroom, the crap falling out of the drawers in my bathroom, the garage. i don't want to go grocery shopping. i don't want to cook. the floor needs to be swept and mopped in the kitchen and dining room and the sink is dirty. the backyard is a total disaster and i just don't feel like ...

how to clean your room

i was discussing this sort of thing w/ my MIL recently and she said there were some books she had when the boys were young that explained things to kids that adults often tell them to do w/out giving them explicit instructions. so i thought about it and decided to write my own. i mean, really, if i expect shane to clean his room, i ought to tell him HOW i want him to clean it, so he knows what i expect. so i wrote them out. keep in mind, these are 9 year old instructions. they would have to be adjusted accordingly. i actually don’t expect him to do much less than i would expect of myself. (bummer for him!) How to clean your room: strip your bed. put all dirty clothes in the laundry basket put all clean clothes in the closet or dresser put all shoes in the rack on the door. pick up everything off the floor and put it on your bed to sort. start by throwing away anything that’s trash. return anything that doesn’t belong in your r...

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 say...

finally!

here are layla’s curtains! actually up on the window! i have to say i’m quite pleased with myself for actually getting this done. but i have to give credit where credit is due… so thanks to my MIL for going to the fabric store w/ me and helping me with measurements and all that. AND, thanks to debbie for letting me use her sewing machine and for ironing all the hems for me! YAY!!!!

rachel's continued ramblings

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