Pictures for the Family

A couple of my family members (without internet) have been requesting recent photos of Rachel. I'm absolutely terrible when it comes to printing pictures. I have hundreds on my computer and I think the most recent printed photograph I have of her is from about a year ago. The requests have gotten a little louder, so I determined today would be a good day to print some pictures that we could send in the mail. Saturday I put the last diaper genie refill in Rachel's diaper genie so we needed to refresh our supply (because we DON'T want to run out of those EVER). I got online and while uploading pictures, noticed a picture collage option. PERFECT! Uploading and designing the photo collage with recent pictures took about 10 minutes. That's less time than I waited in line to pick them up at the Walmart photo center.... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
After an unsuccessful attempt to fold the laundry (Rachel was determined to unfold anything I had folded), we packed up the diaper bag and headed to Walmart. The timing was going to work out perfectly...we'd have plenty of time to peruse the store, have some lunch and be home in time for her nap. This morning I had asked God to bless me with patience for the day... little did I know how much patience would be required. First, we got stopped at the railroad tracks in Lamar. The train was moving very slowly, then it came to a complete stop. Next, it started to back up. Stop. Move forward. Stop. Back up. (Rachel singing in the back seat). I began wondering what the engineer had in his coffee cup this morning. After another round or two of the pull foward, backup routine, the train finally cleared the road so we could be on our merry way. About 8 miles down the road, I hear a ding and look down to see that a light had come on my dash with the message "low tire pressure". UGH. I pulled off in a vacant lot to take a look, praying that it wasn't actually a flat tire. All four tires appeared to be fine. (PHEW). To be on the safe side, I put a call in to our mechanic. He said that it likely meant a tire was low and it'd be fine to drive on it, but I should have it checked out. So...we turned around and headed back to Lamar. We just needed a little air in the rear driver side tire. With full tires, we were back on our way again. By this time, Rachel had fallen asleep, which was fine with me. We FINALLY arrived at Walmart about an hour after we left home. The line at the photo center was rather long because the photo center is also the layaway desk. I was pleased to see that they had set up two lines- and no one was in the photo center line. A cashier (who loves her job, you could just tell) came over to assist me and I told her my name and asked to pick up my pictures. She found them right away, but had some sort of problem printing out the label with her wireless thingamagig. It took what felt like an eternity to get my pictures- that cost less than 1 dollar. To give you an idea, the four people with full carts of toys in line for layaway were finished before I was. My patience was beginning to wear thin and I vowed that next time I would order online and have them sent to my HOUSE. We finished up our shopping- which included a few grocery staples. It wasn't until I was putting the milk and frozen pizza on the checkout counter that I remembered my plan for going to LUNCH afterwards. While their is a definite nip in the air, it's not cold enough to leave groceries in the car while we had a bit to eat... (Sigh). Plan B. I gave Rachel her snack cup to tide her over until we got home. The good news- even with all the waiting and sidetracking, we still were home in time for the afternoon nap. OH- and the picture collages will go into tomorrows mail... if only the recipients could know the fun we had picking them up!
As a side note: Nick is up to Purdue for a 3 day conference. I was dreading him leaving for that length of time for several reasons, but the main one is that Rachel is her Daddy's girl lately. Rachel heard the neighbor's combine in the field behind our house and immediately went to find her shoes and coat with a chorus of "Dada! Dada! Dada!".

Friday, please hurry!!!