Rachel the builder

This past weekend was a lot of fun -- on Saturday morning, Rachel wanted to play with a cool building set that a boy had gotten her for her birthday. It's a series of cardboard pieces that have military depictions on them, and you put them together to make planes, ships, airplanes, etc. So, Rachel decided that she and I needed to design our own ships, planes, trucks, and I promptly got down on her bedroom floor and started building things with her. At one point I worried that I wasn't being imaginative enough, and she said, "You don't need to look like mine, Mommy. All you need is your imagination."

"Rachel, I love you," I replied, touched. "You're very wise."
"I try," she replied. "I very much try."

We ended up gathering the pieces into a "display" for people to buy (I had visions of military contractors walking up and down the aisles of a gigantic airplane hanger looking at our creations and bidding ungodly sums of money on them) which Rachel called "Citytopia." She put all the planes/trucks/ships into her pink princess tent, and stationed some stuffed animals at the front of the tent as the welcoming committee for the display. I nearly died laughing.

Then I took her to her gymnastics class, where I got to watch her from a balcony above the gym, and I just couldn't take my eyes off of her -- she is so muscular and nimble! We headed to swim class, where I sat next to two women who were in the process of discovering that both of them had lived in Bethlehem (yes, THE Bethlehem) at different times. (This is what happens when you move to a cosmopolitan part of the country). We got home and in the afternoon she had a playdate with Ivy, who came over and they watched a movie while I made popcorn and hot chocolate. Drew came home after that, we had family movie night and watched some of the Olympics (Rachel and were mesmerized by the women's slopestyle snowboarding) and went to bed.

On Sunday I went to the library to research a book author I'm writing about, then treated myself to a manicure, pedicure and eyebrow wax (and, boy, I needed it). We ate dinner at The Silver Diner, a great inexpensive restaurant close to our house, then headed home to watch more Olympics. Then Rachel went to bed and I watched Downtown Abbey before hitting the sack.