I posted this on Instagram and Facebook, but I think it's entirely appropriate to post it here as well as my grandma turned 90 today!
Happy 90th birthday to my grandma! I grew up just a few blocks from her and my grandfather, so we were actually in walking distance. Each Sunday, my grandparents, Jon, and I would squish in the backseat of the car to go to church. When my grandfather passed away, she would still go out to eat with us on Friday nights. I feel I spent a lot of time with her but never got to know her much because of the language barrier. But then when I started getting sick in college and had to go for all those tests and then the surgeries, my grandma was always faithfully praying for me and reassured that she was. I remember one specific Christmas family gathering where my uncle was praying at the house, and my grandma kept interrupting and saying, "Rachel ... Rachel ..." because she wanted to make sure that they prayed for my upcoming surgery. Though we could never quite talk about it, she has been an example of a woman of faith especially over these last 10-15 years. Love you, Gma Law!
We continued on our tour of Kitchen Kettle Village with a stop at Yummie's Toy Box. I remembered this store from our family trips. I specifically remembered the moving or talking cow in the corner as well as the creepy doll on a shelf.
You'd think toy stores are the least threatening places, but for me, I say that some of them can be rather intimidating! I cautiously stepped through the door and carefully turned my head to the left to check for the cow, but it was no longer there. Phew! But when I looked to my right, there were a TON of dolls! Haha, that was rather scary. I did, however, share the love by taking this picture and posting it on Instagram/Facebook and tagging my cousin because we had initially joked about the original lone baby on the shelf.
Other than the dolls, there were definitely other cuter toys in the store. Of course, once we saw the horse and elephant, we all thought the same thing. My mom was a para for 3 years for a little boy who just adored horses, and his brother loved elephants! Once we all knew about the horse thing, we would always say, "D. would love this." Even my dad would say stuff like that too!
Being a girl, I drawn to these cupcakes. I didn't even know what they were when I first saw them, but they reminded me of the little cupcakes that you'd play with if you had a dessert food set or something.
Howard took a much better picture of it. The colors are so pretty! In reality, I'm not that big of a fan of cupcakes with colored frosting. I think that frosting should be brown. Just plain ol' chocolate will do!
These cupcakes had little necklaces in them. They were actually rather cute! I did very much like the case though, and both Howard and I immediately thought of Emma at A Pinch of Pixie Dust because almost every single cupcake item reminds us of her! It happened again a bit later while we were still at Kitchen Kettle. I think cute containers like this would be super cute for a proposal because it looks like they would just hold play jewelry only.
This was the kind of store that had a ton of personalized items. Even though I don't think I actually own anything that's personalized anymore, I still have a tendency to look for my name. My mom found this and pointed it out to me. Despite always searching for it, I usually don't like my name, haha. I used to say that it reminded me of a larger person the same way the name "Bertha" does. I know it seems silly, but I got so accustomed to growing up being called "Rae" and not "Rachel." There are a few people at work who call me "Rae" and "Rach," which I like. Of course, I love the name itself and what it means, which is little lamb! Plus, I really like the idea that in the Bible, she was so loved that Jacob was willing to work years and years for her.
Though this sign also says my name, it doesn't necessarily make me think of the Bible, haha. I used to have a sign on my door at home for "Rachel Rd." It was an odd feeling when I finally took it down when I moved from the smaller bedroom to the larger one after my older brother moved out.
Like most toy stores and shops, there were a good amount of plushies to purchase. Surprisingly, they weren't that expensive, and I did like the selection of animals that they had. I don't really want to ever buy plushies for our kids or for other people's kids unless the kid was with us at the moment and chose it. Despite the fact that I'm almost 30, I still enjoy the fact that I have stuffed penguin and a teddy bear from Howard, but I technically chose each one!
The store also had an assortment of those old-fashioned prank toys. Howard got a kick out of this one. It's so silly! Haha, I guess it's just a little hand that you put on your finger to make it seem as if your hand shrunk.
The final toy that caught my eye was this one! I just had to take a video of it in action. I imagine it'd be cool to have that because I'd be sending cars down those ramps one after another. Of course, as a mom, I'd probably be annoyed by the constant sound all day long, haha.
See what happens when you come into my classroom? You die. You and all your friends need to stay out of the building and out of my lights. If you really think it's necessary to be in the lights, you should stay there until you fry and die because I'm getting sick and tired of you guys pulling my students' attention away from my lesson and also forcing me to pretend that it's okay that you're hanging out by my windows.
Stop making me waste my time in calling the front desk or calling maintenance to tell them there's a wasp flying in the room but then disappearing when they arrive to deal with you. Stop making me spend time trying to get the kids to turn back towards me and then eventually having to relocate my class to the library or some other available classroom. I know you might think that my math lessons on prime factorization or my ELA lessons on the irony of Maupassant's story "The Necklace" are interesting, but trust me, it doesn't do you any good. Get it through your heads; you are not welcome in 311!
Sincerely,
A teacher who didn't want to get too close to the wasp in the picture for fear that it was just playing dead and would attack me if I lifted the blinds
This morning when I got in my car to drive to work, I saw something on the top that made me do a double take. I thought it was just a leaf since our building is surrounded by tons of trees. But on closer examination, I noticed it was actually a pretty large grasshopper! I don't know that I've ever seen a grasshopper that large in person other than the ones I've seen in tanks or something. It's probably not as interesting as the huge praying mantis that I saw in the parking spot next to ours that was devouring the fuzziest caterpillar ever, but this was just funny because he was just on the top of my car. I started thinking about Crickee in Mulan right away, haha, especially since we had Back to School Night for the parents tonight.
I only tried two times to get a clear picture, but then I had to actually get going because we have staff meetings on Thursday mornings. I didn't have a chance to check to see if he was there by the time I got to work. I wonder where he is now!
I stopped by Target after school today to pick up a fairly good deal on Lysol products with the buy 5 get $5 gift card back. Since I was in the area and wanted to wait a bit before driving home with the school traffic, I popped into Old Navy to check the clearance sections to see if there was anything worth getting.
I did find this shirt in the boys' clearance section, which I thought would've been something to get for my nephew except for the fact that Yoda isn't really the cutest and I'm also not really the kind of person who wants to give a shirt that says something like that, haha. I took a picture just because I thought Howard would appreciate it.
Every night there's always so much to do. I don't start working right away once I get home because I definitely need a break, but then I also fall asleep for a "nap" after I take a shower. My body still hasn't gotten used to being back at work. Tomorrow is going to be a bit tougher what with a meeting right after school and then Back to School Night as well! I won't get home until maybe 9:30pm. I'm going to be so exhausted by Friday morning! Oh well. At least the work is rewarding!
