rachel's continued ramblings

sunday: on the boat to come home after our amazing weekend in victoria. monday: layla, playing her recorder for gramma laurie. also monday: amy and her boys came for a visit. while she was here, I had her give layla a trim. wednesday: finally getting our van fixed. it was expensive. ugh. thursday: shane and I had mid-winter break this week, but layla and micah did not. shane was busy doing something or other that was not school all day, and I therefore, was unable to leave micah with him while layla went to gymnastics. was that ever a bad deal!! micah wanted so badly to be able to participate as well, and spent a lot of his time pouting about it. (have I mentioned that he does not handle disappointment well?) will have to sign him up for a trial class one of these days. he desperately wanted to jump into the foam pit. friday: I’m official!! my origami owl business cards arrived! saturday: it seems the best way to play a recorder is actually while sitting upside down… who knew? e...

after leisurely sleeping in on sunday morning, we ordered room service, I took a luxurious bubble bath, dave watched sports or something, and we eventually got ready to check out and leave for another day of sightseeing. we wandered into a mall and found the unfortunately placement of this sign hilarious…   we walked through chinatown, poked around in souvenir shops, book stores, starbucks, and all sorts of other shops. oh look, more crocuses! eventually, we got hungry for a late lunch and wound up at a sports bar/pub kind of place, where a bunch of men were sitting around the bar and cheering intermittently for a cricket game (match?) that was on tv. yup, canada. we had some drinks and a HUGE basket of nachos. and then it was time to get back on the clipper to head home. it was a really fun trip. totally beautiful and romantic for valentine’s day. thanks babe! I love you… just give me more warning next time!

for valentine’s day, dave surprised me BIG TIME. he had planned a weekend away in victoria, BC, and even flew his mom up here to stay with the kids over the weekend. all, unbeknownst to me. first of all, for the last couple of years, dave has been giving me little valentine treats every day of february, leading up to valentine’s day. not big, elaborate stuff, but chocolate, coffee, soaps, stuff like that. on thursday, the 12th, he forgot. I didn’t really even notice. but he had also told me that he would be late getting home on friday, because he had to “pick up part of my valentine’s day present”. somewhat unrelated, but relevant to the story are the following bits of information: friday was the day my origami owl designer kit arrived and I was crazy excited to open it up and go through it. I had posted a bunch of pictures of the stuff on facebook and people were oohing and ahhing over it all. I made a comment, “can’t I just keep it all?” (to which the answer is “yes” since I own i...