Still here...slightly alive!

Inigo Montoya: He's dead. He can't talk.

Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

Yes, we are still here and alive. I haven't blogged for a LONG time and I dearly miss it, so I am using a week I have at home recovering from a doctor's appt. to catch up.

There are two reasons I haven't been on here for a while. One, I got a new calling that is busier than Nursery Leader. I am the Relief Society President in our ward. It is hard for me to give myself permission to blog when my RS stuff is in a big pile that needs organized :)

The second reason is because once I fall behind, I fell like I need to catch up on EVERYTHING I have missed before I start blogging about what is going on today. Forget that! I will never catch up. I hope the kids forgive me for missing a bunch of their birthdays.

So, for the next while, I will post about stuff from the past nine months or so, or maybe I won't, we'll see...

Anyway, today, I have a treat for you, and it is dedicated to Summer, who when I told her I was going to try to blog today, said, "Oh, good, I love it when you blog, as long as I am not home for you to blog about me."

My kid is turning into a shark.

See, he has two rows of teeth!

Kids at the Park

We went to the park for FHE this week. I played tennis with Rachel for a while. I was kind of nervous about it because I haven't played tennis since I broke my back. I was afraid that one of my favorite sports (not that I am any good, but I like to try) would make me hurt, but I was fine. Hooray!

We all ate a picnic dinner and then Summer and Rachel disappeared to sit in the car for the last 15 minutes of the trip while the younger kids played on the playground. Of course, I didn't start taking pictures until then, so I apologize for the lack of teenagers.

I don't know what Michael was looking at, but it must have been interesting...

This was a good climbing tree.

Earlier that day, while she was at school, Gwen cracked her tooth in half. I was prepared to make the two hour round trip to their dentist to have it checked out, but Stan was more pragmatic. He looked at it, said, "That tooth just needs to come out," and promised Gwen $5 if she pulled it out before the end of the evening. That is ten times what the tooth fairy usually brings to our house, so she went right to work and it was out before bedtime.

Finally Heather, in another tree, up near the top!

Rachel lost a tooth this week.

It got pretty loose before it fell out. It was hanging by one tough thread for a couple days and she wouldn't let the resident tooth fairy get near her to facilitate the process. This is understandable for two reasons -

One - the tooth fairy around here has been known to go to great lengths to remove teeth from mouths. Lengths that can make a sensitive girl squeamish.

Two - Once the tooth fairy helps get the tooth out, she sort of slacks off. Teeth have a tendency to sit under pillows for nights, if not weeks with no action.

It was not as if Rachel could count on getting some moolah in the near future if her tooth came out, so it was easy to procrastinate. The tooth fairy bothered her enough with promises of, "Just ONE try," that she finally gave in and let me...I mean the tooth fairy...at her.

As anyone in this family who has lost a tooth would have predicted, there was no money in the morning AND we swept together and picked up Rachel's room the next day AND the tooth went missing into a trash bag full of soggy ice cream napkins and dirty diapers. Needless to say, no one wanted to go after it, so all pretense flew out the window just like a gallionic tooth fairy and I gave her the money in the light of day. It was the least I could do...

P.S. Naomi says, "Hi!"

Naomi's First Tooth

Naomi's first tooth just came in.

Have I ever...

...told you...

...how difficult it is...

...to get a good picture...

...of a busy baby's mouth?!?

She survived the process and came through smiling, or maybe Smoochable was just glad to have my fingers out of her mouth. :)