rachel's continued ramblings

week 14 in pictures

sunday: it was easter! but we didn’t make it back until late morning, since we’d spent the night at kat and cole’s again. when we got home, we had to jump into action to get dinner prepared, the house picked up, and a run to the grocery store. the kids really wanted to dye eggs, so dave was a hero and took on that job (I HATE dyeing eggs. HATE IT.) but layla and micah we thrilled.

tuesday: MOMS Club trip to the zoo! this is layla and micah with friends by the bronze monkey sculpture. they had fun being monkeys. layla and micah were off this week for spring break, but shane still had school.

also tuesday: we are enforcing the 5 bite rule for micah if he wants to earn ANY screen time at all the next day. if he doesn’t take 5 bites of his dinner, he cannot watch tv, play wii or xbox, use anyone’s phones, play on his leapster, or the computer. nothing. sometimes it’s motivating, sometimes not. apparently pizza is not the most offensive of dinner options, since he did take his bites, but you can see he doesn’t love it. at least there was no gagging…

wednesday: micah made a ‘toolbox’ and some ‘tools’ out of duplos. in addition to the ‘hammer’ in his hand, there is a ‘wrench’ and a ‘screwdriver’ in his ‘toolbelt’. LOL.

thursday: we had some time to kill around lunch time, so I took layla and micah to red robin. I had an iced tea and micah wanted one of my lemons. layla decided to try one too…

friday: morning commute from hell. I was taking shane to school (normally, about a 10 mile/20 minute drive), and the main road we take to get over to the area where his school is was closed because (I later found out) a tree had fallen across the road. but we didn’t know this until we got halfway down the road. so we had to turn around and go back and reroute to go a different road, that is further out of the way. on that road, we get stuck behind a school bus that is stopping ever 10 feet to pick up kids the for about a mile. then, we get onto the main road that takes us up by his school, and there is road construction. they’ve got one lane of the the 2 lane road closed, so they have flaggers and all that. awesome. he finally gets to school about 15 minutes late. we’ve now been on the road an hour. at this point, I’m weighing my options about how I’m going to get back… I know there’s terrible traffic the way I just came. maybe whatever was the reason behind the road being closed is gone now, and I can get through. so I try it. nope. I get halfway in the other direction, and the road is still closed. so I have to reroute and brave the traffic. but I’m coming to the awareness that the 2 large cups of coffee I’ve had that morning are really ‘pressing’ me. but I’m wearing my jammies (of course), and I’m about to sit in more traffic for who knows how long. so as I’m sitting there in traffic, doing the potty dance, I wonder to myself if my friend summer is home still… so I resorted to texting her to ask if I could make a potty stop at her house. yup. it was awesome. but thank goodness she was home because it took me another half hour to get through that traffic and back home again. there’s no way I would have made it! thank you, summer!

saturday: dave walked around the corner and found micah like this. he asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I won the race!” um… congratulations, dude. nice trophy.

and some skinnies: 1) after the easter egg hunt. 2) toby decided to squeeze into the tv cabinet for some reason. 3) micah was impressed with the ‘fork shadow’ on his menu at red robin.

and I have some bigger collages of pics I took at the zoo.

book shots:

week 13 in pictures

sunday: micah had a birthday party to go to for one of his preschool friends. before we left, he went and changed his clothes. when I asked him why, he said, “these are my party clothes” and posed. alrighty, then.

monday: it was neon day at aerobics! totally fun.

tuesday: I couldn’t find micah anywhere… finally layla found him buried in the dress up bins in the playroom.

wednesday: I discovered that my pantry is protected by power rangers. awesome.

thursday: MOMS Club easter egg hunt/playgroup. we had lots of fun, as usual.

saturday: friday night, we drove down to kat and cole’s. saturday, the kids played all day before church in the evening. layla and noah had fun drawing together – both art lovers.

and then that night, they had a sit-up contest. layla did 120 sit-ups! (I did, too.)

and some skinnies for the center slots: 1- I bought that gallon of milk less than 24 hours ago. 2 of the 5 of us don’t drink milk… 2 – noah, luka, layla, and micah were having fun climbing the tree outside the church, and then it turned into a game of ‘have shane rescue the monkey out of the tree’ and they threw the monkey over and over again because shane was the only one tall enough to get it for them.

book shots:

crappy day

this is a rant. sort of. more like a whine. it’s totally self-indulgent and unnecessary, but oh well. my blog.

this morning just kind of totally really sucked. nothing major happened. no one died (well, not anyone I know. but it’s a big world.) everything was fine until I took shane to school. well, that part was fine, too. except that I noticed that I needed gas. kind of badly.

but I was wearing my pajamas.

(yes, I do this. I’m THAT mom. I drive my kid to junior high wearing pj pants, a hoodie, and my slippers. I never have to go outside, nobody has to see me… I’m safely concealed inside my minivan.)

so I really didn’t want to have to stop on the way home to get gas.

I went back and forth about it. this is the ONLY situation in which I wish I lived in oregon, where you are not allowed to pump your own gas. ultimately, I decided against it.

I estimated that I had enough gas to get home, plus the few miles back to the gas station, which is right near where I have to drop both micah and layla off at their respective schools.

so that was my plan.

go home, get ready (shower, put on real clothes), eat breakfast, take layla to school, get gas, take micah to school, go to workout, go from there to buy new running shoes, go to costco, pick up micah, head home.

I only had about 35 minutes in which to get myself and the kids ready. fortunately, I’d made their lunches ahead of time. this shouldn’t be an issue.

so, it’s getting down to crunch time. we’ve got to head out now or layla is going to be late. layla being late means that my whole schedule got messed up. if she’s late (or even JUST on time, for that matter), then I won’t have time to get gas before dropping micah off and then I’ll have to do it after, which will make ME late.

well, that’s just what happened. as soon as I send micah to get his shoes off of the back porch, the cat escapes. ugh. so then I have to spend several minutes I DON’T have to spare coaxing the cat out from under the porch.

I realize that I haven’t had time to eat. so I grab a trio bar and dump the remains of a smoothie I made yesterday into a cup and call it good.

then, in the process of getting from the garage door to the car, layla manages to misplace the locket her grandparents gave her that she was wanting me to help her put on. spend several more minutes I DON’T have searching for that. don’t worry, we found it.

so we finally leave, layla’s in tears, I realize that micah doesn’t have anything for show & tell, but oh well. no time for that now.

miraculously, we didn’t run out of gas on the way to school. layla jumped out and ran off to class just as the bell was ringing, which meant that I had to head straight to the preschool or micah would be late.

which meant that I had to get gas AFTER dropping him off.

so I got gas, and then I had to high-tail it across the road I got a ticket on a year ago, so of course, I had to watch my speed, and pulled into the parking lot of the church where my aerobics class is held RIGHT at 9:15 (which is when it starts). that would be okay except for 2 things. 1) I had to pee. 2) ever since cheryl put an article in the paper about the class, it is totally slammed! like seriously busting at the seams. not that that’s a bad thing. it’s a great class, so people should know about it, it’s just busy. which is why I like to get there a little early and get a good spot.

that was not going to happen today.

we were packed in like sardines and I had to get a spot on the OTHER side of the room. I know that sounds stupid, but my perspective on it is always from the left side of the room. I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at or adjust my brain to make my body do what I was seeing from the RIGHT side of the room! aggghhh!

add to that that the right side of the room is right next to the kitchen, where they were cooking something for the seder meal they’re having tomorrow night, and it SMELLED really strong which was highly distracting and made me feel a little queasy.

all of that led to a sub-par workout, which messed with my head even more because I had my first crappy run experience yesterday.

blah blah blah…

whine whine whine.

at any rate, after class I did manage to go out and get my new running shoes, which I love, so hopefully that makes up for it, I can get a GOOD run in, and make up for all of this other stupid stuff.

**EDITED TO ADD**

I am happy to report that my day picked up in the afternoon. trying my new shoes out on the treadmill and adjusting my hyper-competitive attitude a bit led to a really good run that felt awesome and restored my confidence in my ability to actually progress to running longer than a couple minutes at a time without feeling like I wanted to die.

**EDITED AGAIN TO ADD**

and then, just as I was about to throw dinner into the oven, my day got even crappier. literally. darn dog had a random bout of doggy diarrhea ALL OVER my dining room floor. it was a mess of gargantuan proportions. the kind of mess you look at and can’t even force your brain to think clearly about how to begin cleaning it up. (I eventually managed with a roll of paper towels, a plastic bag, and a mop. there’s still a rug outside on the porch that I’m not ready to deal with, and one of micah’s shoes that I’m considering just throwing away, since they’re old and on the too-small side.)

ugh.

at least there haven’t been any repeat performances…

week 12 in pictures

sunday: just a sampling of things the kids did that day: make shift xylophone playing; cat snuggling; brady bunch watching.

monday: ginger. always ready with the ball. hoping someone will play with her.

tuesday: she has to be on the bus in 40 minutes.

wednesday: super messy playroom. he was supposed to be cleaning it up.

thursday: jazz band concert at the high school. the teachers got to play. it was awesome.

friday: woke up to a ton of snow and it just kept dumping. shane did not have a delay, but layla did. the road was nasty. I kept shane home, and we walked down to the bottom of the hill where the bus picks up on snow routes. 2 hour delay + early dismissal for conferences = a very short day for layla.

saturday: even though we were buried in snow the day before, saturday was SO gorgeous. layla was off at camp lutherwood and shane was helping grandpa with yard work, so dave, micah and I went for a walk down on the waterfront. that’s seattle across the lake.

a couple of skinnies I’m sticking in center slots… 1 - me trying to stretch = the dog totally getting in my face. she thinks I do it so I can pet her or love on her. 2 – dave and I at the movie theatre on an impromptu date night. we had a nourishing and romantic dinner of taco bell in the car before dashing into the theater to see ‘silver linings playbook’. it was a great movie, and we figured out that it was the first time since before micah was born that he and I went to a movie alone!

and I have some big collages that I will use as inserts of the extra snow pictures and the pictures from our walk on the waterfront.

book shots:

week 11 in pictures

monday: made a dinner that made a huge mess and lots of dishes. it was yummy, but not good enough to be worth the mess.

tuesday: my tuesday/thursday/saturday destination: barre3. love it…

also tuesday: day 1 of my “couch to 5k” running program. I didn’t die, nothing hurt, and I went 2.02 miles in 30 minutes. I guess I have to do it again.

wednesday: micah, pouting in his closet about his shorts. he was very sad when I put his shorts away last october, and has been begging to have them back, counting down until april, when I said he could have them back. when I sent him to get dressed for preschool, he just cried in the closet because he wanted to wear shorts, not pants.

thursday: layla’s mountain of dogs.

friday: micah, hanging out at a MOMS club playgroup.

saturday: noticed this, walking through the room. apparently micah felt he needed some hand weights, too.

and a couple I’ll use as skinnies to stick in center slots. mom and layla selfie, early in the morning. a terrible, unflattering gem that I discovered micah took during my aerobics class on friday morning. yes, we wear belly dancing skirts. they jingle. it makes it super fun to shake your hips!