Rachel Visits!

I know!  I can hardly believe it happened either!!  We talked about it, dreamed about it, hoped maybe it would work out...... and it did!!  It really happened!!  June 3-7

Rachel, I think one of the reasons this post is soooo late in getting posted is because it makes me miss you too much to look at these photos.  These few days of your visit to Phoenix were so wonderful for me.  To show you our house and routines and even the gym -- just, our life!  Just to have you here - nearby - chatting, laughing... It was too good.  I loved it and I love you.  And I miss you.

*****

We did a lot of this during Rachel's few days here!  Nolan (as you know) does a lot of nudey swimming in our pool (I'm sorry -- it just eliminates one more wet thing to deal with), and Rachel was cracking me up because she was like, "I just don't know where to... hold him."  HA!!

Sweet loves

Nolan loves kissing Aunt Rachel -- even had to give her a kiss through the door

We beat the heat and showed Rachel the Phoenix Children's Museum.  She's such a good sport... You don't exactly dream of a "vacation" sans kids to go to a children's museum, but she knew we had to entertain the little guy and beat the heat.  

I think she actually enjoyed some of the museum herself, too.  

Case in point:

- "I invented the new giant robot // climb into squishy blossom".  She made that felt-word sentence herself.  

As many pics as I have of myself with Jonathan, these photos of Rachel and Nolan are priceless to me!

- I caught her feeling this velvet wall when she thought no one was looking.  She was trying to smooth the velvet in all one direction and therefore make it the same color.

- She raced cars with Nolan until I had to pry them both away.

- Where there are books, there is Aunt Rachel.

Nolan thanked her by picking (well, violently sniffing) this bouquet.

He also tried to win her the grand prize at this Plinko station.

Thank you, Rachel, for joining us for this!

*****

The rest of the days brought more swimming and sun...

We did make 2 huge trips to Costco in the 3 days she was here.  We found some great maxi skirts, but mine needed to be hemmed (shocking, I know).

I learned that Rachel is kind of a home-ec whiz and knows about all kinds of useful things, including sewing.  Now, I don't own a sewing machine.  And we weren't about to hand stitch a dang hemline.  So I went to the biggest JoAnn's fabric store you've ever seen and hunter all around for that iron-on sticky hem tape stuff.  A lady finally showed me where it was, (I was nowhere near finding it on my own), and we went home and got to work!

People.  We spent an entire nap time on this project.  Do you hear me?  We USED UP NAP TIME. Nap time is sacred ground - our only time until evening to chill and do nothing and watch TV - and my poor sister was kind enough to spend it doing this because I never took a home-ec class and I don't know the first thing about any of this "cut on the bias" business:

So, we measured and I tried on and she pinned and we evaluated and she repinned because the fabric was coming to a point which I learned means the hem isn't even and I walked and she moved the pins and then I remembered I had another skirt whose length I liked and I went and got it and then we just matched the new skirt to the length of the old skirt which worked much better and faster except by this time it wasn't fast because we had spent so much time doing the rest of it.  

And Rachel worked her fingers to the bone and took this job of hemming my $15 skirt very seriously because she is kind and thoughtful and all things good.  And we stuck the sticky tape stuff on there and I got my iron, AAAAAAAnnnnnddd????  

Nothing.

It didn't stick.

It just wouldn't work.

Plus, my iron leaked rusty crap liquid all over my skirt.

Apparently, I don't iron very often.

And then I washed the skirt (the rusty weird stuff came off). And I took it to dry cleaner who put ONE pin in it (I was like, 'Are you sure that's all you need to pin it?  I mean, it's CUT ON THE BIAS.') and he hemmed it in 24 hours for $20.  Which makes it a $35 skirt.  Plus the immeasurable price of that missed nap time.

And that is the story of the Costco skirt.

*****

I feel like I have so few pictures or things to show for Rachel's few days here...  but we just did life together, and that's what was so great!  We had slow mornings with coffee, grocery store trips, lunches at home, dinners on the grill...  I kept feeling like we should be doing "more", but honestly? I wouldn't have changed a thing.  Rachel is so easy.  She expects little and is up for anything --- not "company" at all!  And she knows and uses the magic combo of words that any young mother of a toddler longs to hear: "What can I do to help?"  Ahhhhhh, bliss.

Rachel, you are awesome.  I wish you would come back.  THANK YOU for coming, and a big, huge shout out to David and the kids for letting you!  This was a highlight of my year.  xoxoxo