rachel's continued ramblings

sunday: pinewood derby day! Dave and his committee pulled off a great event. micah’s car turned out not to be very fast, but he did win the “best hot rod” award that the scouts vote on. that was the one he was going for, so he was happy with that. layla and dave both made cars for the charity race. layla’s was meant to be a bobsled. at the community center, a gal from interstate batteries had one of their race cars there for the boys to have their picture take in. and then there was the after party. we didn’t mean to have a party. it just sort of happened. the weather was super nice, and it all started with eric and martin showing up to help dave unload stuff, which he was already done unloading. except they brought beer. and then andrea came, and martin called his wife, so they came, and then layla went and got her friend and her friend’s brothers and parents from down the street (also scouts), we had a few more including my dad show up and it was a party! it was definitely not warm...

there are a lot of pictures this week, and i’m still figuring out how all of these are going to go in the book. i’m thinking there will definitely be an insert. sunday: another meet. monday: i made micah super happy when i brought home a poster of all of the presidents of the usa for him to hang in his bedroom. he’s busy memorizing names, dates, etc. also monday: pinewood derby weigh-in in our garage, plus trophy assembly station. this is what it’s like to be married to the race commissioner. tuesday: you can’t really see her, but layla is somewhere in this crowd of 6th grade musicians. we had a crazy evening of gymnastics, followed by band concert, while micah was at batting practice. people were going everywhere and nobody ate until 8pm. but the exciting part of all of this is that, now that layla got her kip, she was allowed to get bar grips. so, still attired in concert clothes, she’s trying them out.             wedn...

sunday: another meet. no brynley, so layla is the next shortest and got to carry the team sign for march in. monday: our inflexible gymnast is working on her splits. getting closer on her good leg. not so much on the bad leg. tuesday: spring is so late this year, this is my first crocus sighting! friday: can’t tell from this pic, but layla got her kip tonight! saturday: date night! dave and i had a delicious dinner at purple. also saturday: apparently this is what “go get ready for bed” means to micah.

sunday: more snow to start the week! also sunday: after church, it was straight to snowman building. apparently we now put the face on the head before assembling the actual snowman. i found this a little disturbing. ah, yes. the snowman is actually assembled. he’s so cute. love the pose. monday: the start of my commute. i was happy to discover that our new van handles decently in the snow and i didn’t go careening down the hill into the fence at the bottom. also monday: after school antics. apparently it’s all fair game to push people off of giant snowballs. rules are different in the snow. wednesday: after seeing a dental specialist for layla’s jaw pain, she’s been put on a restricted diet… nothing chewy, sticky, or crunchy. found these decent looking (not fake) instant mashed potatoes at costco, and i’m hoping she likes them. thursday: my march calendar is starting to scare me with all the baseball practices put in now. i’m sure it’ll get worse. friday: layla has been using h...

so, about 2 weeks ago, the time came that we needed to say good bye to old blue… she was coming down with something, and i’m pretty sure it was terminal. basically, she was old. she was dented. she smelled funny. and she was starting to demand a lot of money in order to keep running. with a quickly approaching 1600 mile road trip, we decided it was time to pull the plug. old blue served us well. she was our main squeeze for almost 11 years. she was 3 years old when we bought her, with roughly 40k miles or so. her odometer read 217k when we said goodbye. that’s a lot of miles. countless trips to california, 2 and a half weeks through the midwest a couple summers ago, school drop offs, carpools, soccer practices, baseball practices, ballet, gymnastics, track meets, playgroups, scout meetings, work, church, doctors appointments, urgent care, ER, date nights, weddings, funerals, drive-thrus, and all those things that have made up our lives for the last 11 years. she brought a newborn mic...

***edited*** happy, happy news! my genius IT hero husband sorted it all out for me, found a new venue from which to write my posts that interfaces properly with blogger after some tweaking. I am back in business!!! ***end edit*** i'm going to attempt to get back to doing weekly posts, like I always used to. i'm still trying to find a good posting option, though. windows live writer, which I always used to use for all my posts (and loved), apparently no longer exists. posting directly within blogger is fine, so long as you have no pictures. add a picture and you will be hating life with the fire of many suns. this is my situation right now. and until someone gets off their butt and makes an update for the app, it is useless to me, as it just crashes every time you use it. SO, I will attempt to post, but no promises, since I nearly threw my computer out the window attempting to create the post I just published from last week.