Teeth

The teeth are flying out of mouths around here. I wonder if it is something in the water. Noah has several teeth that are on the verge of coming out and his dad pulled one of them out yesterday morning. We think the act of wiggling and whatnot in order to get the tooth out contributed to the breaking of the wire on that side of his mouth. Of course, he broke it at 4:30 on Friday when the orthodontist is closed. Hopefully he won't impale his gums on it before Monday morning when we can get it fixed.

And tonight, Tommy asked Sam to pull one of his loose teeth out. Now, if you will remember, "loose" to Tommy is very different than loose to mere mortals. Sam is convinced that Tommy has no pain sensors in his body. There was quite a bit of root still left on that "loose" tooth. But Tommy could have cared less! It is now safely tucked under his pillow. Unlike the one last week that somehow got lost on the way up the stairs. It might have been because he was shaking the baggie he had put it in, but I don't have any hard proof of that. If only we had those security cameras installed for video playback. As it was Tommy stood there truly confounded as to how the tooth fell out of the bag. We never did find it. Which is further evidence as to how hard the bag was being shaken.

All of these tooth stories remind of the story that my friend Traci told me about her daughter insisting that her loose tooth come out on Christmas Eve so that she could put it under her pillow. Apparently she really wanted the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus to meet.

Jr. High nailbiter

Emily's last game to cheer at was on Thursday and what a game it was. The team had completely dominated every team that they played throughout the season--they beat everyone by at least 20-25 points each game. No other team appeared to be a contender--but championship games bring out a different level of play apparently because the other team brought their A game that night. It was an unbelievably aggressive game with lots of free throws--and these are 14 year old girls!! It actually went into overtime! We pulled it out in the end (with the help of #23 from the other team who fouled our point guard THREE times in the exact same way during overtime allowing one of our best shooters to go to the line to make 4 out of 6 shots. #23 was sobbing by the end of the game. Hormones and competition aren't pretty together.) Noah summed up the stress we were under as we cheered our hearts out from the stands: "If Emily is a cheerleader in high school, remind me not to go to the championship game!"

Even though the team was being challenged on the court, the cheerleaders did their usual excellent job. The other team's cheerleaders--all four of them--were not what I would call, um, well, good. They were terrible. It was like someone went up to girls randomly and asked if they wanted to be a cheerleader. All that was required of them was to clap awkwardly and halfheartedly do a couple of cheers.

Our girls on the other hand even did a pretty difficult dance during half time. This is them at the end of it:

Emily is the second from the left.

And here she is the morning of her last game:

So there are no more practices and no more games for us to attend. What will we do with all of our extra time?

Happy Birthday Sammy!

Sam is 39 today. And why is it that grown-ups don't get the bells and whistles of a birthday celebration like kids do? Sam had to work today. Hard. He has about a billion things going on at work and a billion things don't take a vacation just because you are having a birthday. And he stayed home to work in his office here so I couldn't send in treats for all of his co-workers like I do with the kids. Poor guy got totally ripped off. Although he did get his free Joe's BBQ lunch. Hopefully that made up for it a little bit.

So, happy birthday Sammy! I am so very glad that you were born! My life would be incomplete without you here on this roller coaster ride with me. You are an amazing husband and a very fun dad and I am so thankful that you put up with my shenanigans. You must be an amazing man to be able to take full doses of me every day. Thank you for all you do for our family and for consistently pointing us to God through His Word. You rock!!!!

Pictures and more pictures

As promised, I am posting some of the pictures I've taken with my new camera (that I am still incredibly excited about by the way). (Tara, it's a Canon S3-I3)





It is hard to believe that face could ever be in trouble.



I have no idea what compelled me to take a picture of Noah's eye. Probably just the fact that I had just gotten my camera minutes before and his eye was there.


This is our apple tree in the backyard.


I have always wanted to be able to take close-up pictures like this.



We were at a friends that has chickens and Katya spent the entire evening with them. Literally. She was rocking them to sleep in their coop when it was time to go home.


Apparently it feels kind of funny when a rooster is pecking food in your hand. I personally had no interest in finding out for myself. The rooster's name is CRIC (Crazy Rooster In Charge).

So there are the first shots taken with my camera. But don't worry, I have so many more that I haven't downloaded it would make your head spin. (Well, not literally, unless of course you are that chick from The Exorcist. Which I don't think any of you are.)

I was at Emily's game today and I was like the team photographer. I was snapping pictures like a crazy woman (it has a "sports" mode :-) ) . I am having a fantastic time with it. I took some from across the gym that were so clear it almost made me cry. Well, not really. I didn't even tear up, but I was just trying to emphasize my point. I think you get the idea.

I have had a few missteps with it though. I took the camera to "Academic Night" (when they recognize the kids in school that have had high grades for the year--and have 6th graders give valedictory type speeches on the pillars of character. That part is kind of weird for me. Very weird actually. For those of you who are Grease aficionados one of the girls reminded me of Patty Simcox. Very perky and a little scary.) Anyhoo, I took my fabulous camera anticipating getting some shots of Emily going across stage. I got some fantastic practice shots so I could work out the details of how to get the shot, but for some reason when I took the one of Emily--the only one I wanted--it was blurry. Grrr. Thinking this couldn't possibly happen again, a few nights later I did the exact same thing with Noah. But I got a great shot of one of his classmates as a lovely parting gift. No idea what I did wrong. Oh well. Hopefully I'll get the kinks out before anyone graduates. Which, of course, no one is in this family is doing any time soon. Not unless you count four years from now as soon. Which in a very real way I do at this point since I am starting to hyperventilate frequently about my eldest child going to high school. Hold on, I can't type and hold the paper bag at the same time...

Ok, I'm fine. But I need to go to bed. I am a fifth grade teacher tomorrow and I can't stay up all night talking with you guys. Fifth grade teachers need to be somewhat on top of their game. But not perky. I'll leave that to Patty Simcox in the 6th grade.

4th grade and pink eye

I subbed today in the most perfect fourth grade class on the planet. Seriously. After my nightmare 2nd grade class with Bob the psycho 8 year old this was a very nice surprise. The fourth graders had to read for an hour after lunch today and guess what they did? They read. Quietly. After that they had to work on the state reports that they are writing. Guess what they did? Worked on the reports--quietly. It was awesome. I get to be in there tomorrow too. I'm going to bring something to read!

There is a serious pink eye epidemic happening at our school. Ten kids went home with it today alone. One of the boys in my class being one of them. He came up and said he thought he had pink eye--I took one look at his right eye and took a giant step back as I told him to head to the nurse. And take your stuff with you dude cause you're going home. Of course almost instantly my eyes felt incredibly itchy. I was washing my hands repeatedly after that. Even if I didn't touch anything. I'm bringing some Clorox wipes with me to school tomorrow to detox everything he touched. Or even thought about touching. Or just looked at. Who knows, maybe this is a visually transmitted mutation of pink eye. You can never be too careful.

Camera happy

I got a new camera today. I was practically giddy with excitement. I actually giggled. Yikes.

You see, I have been saving my money for quite some time now in anticipation of being able to buy a new camera. This is quite a feat for me. I had birthday money and Christmas money sitting at my desk waiting to be spent and I didn't once dip into it for something else! I was motivated! It helped that every time I tried to use the camera that I had I would end up frustrated because it couldn't do what I needed it to do. The pictures would end up dark or fuzzy and I would end up grinding my teeth.

So, with several substitute teaching jobs under my belt Sam gave the go ahead for the purchase. I actually did some online research in an attempt to find the right camera and I am very pleased so far. Of course I've only had it a few hours, but right out of the box it is taking some amazing pictures. I've taken pictures of just about everything. Children, flowers, footballs and boxes in my pantry (I was checking the zoom capabilities from the kitchen table--and I could read the boxes!!). There were several neighbor kids here this afternoon--I have proof since I took quite a few pictures of all of them.

You can be sure I will be snapping pictures of lots of things for the next few days. I can't wait for Emily's next game because I know I'll be able to get some good pictures!! I'll be sure to post some soon.