The Loss of a Tooth

Michelle lost her second front tooth tonight.

When she came home from school she kept playing with her tooth but I can't stand the feel of pulling a tooth out. And since I have an expert tooth-puller for a husband, I told her to wait until her dad came home. Unfortunately, she had track practice followed by a birthday party so it wouldn't be until bedtime that she'd see her dad. But loose teeth aren't that patient.

The birthday party was for Michelle's neighbor friend. When my neighbor brought Michelle home she was carrying a small packet of paper towel so I knew there was a story coming. It turns out that like me, my neighbor can't stand pulling teeth on her own children, let alone someone else's. But what could she do? The tooth was dangling after Michelle took a bite of pizza. My neighbor begged her husband to pull the tooth but he didn't want Michelle to get upset with him. So much to her chagrin, my neighbor pulled the tooth, with absolutely no crying or fanfare from Michelle (shock of all shocks!).

Thanks Maggie! Good to know we now have 3 dentists in the cul-de-sac.

Happy Birthday, Trevor!

Trevor's birthday started out with a breakfast made by Caleb. He knows all his Dad's favorite breakfast foods: cold cereal, milk, and real orange juice. Trevor spent half the morning volunteering at the school for Caleb's class Greek Olympics. Caleb won the gold medal in shot put.

Trevor was patient enough to wait until after the kids got home from school (fortunately they get out at noon on Fridays) to open his presents. He also didn't mind that I used old shoeboxes as wrapping paper (so, no, he didn't get that many pairs of new shoes).

Trevor couldn't figure out why he kept having to re-light the candles. Soon we saw why. When Trevor had his back turned to put the match in the sink, Gabriella would blow out the candles.

Camping Trip

I can't believe I let Caleb and Megan hike up to the top of "Turtle Rock". This photo doesn't show you how high up they really were.

This is a cave just 10 feet from our tent. The kids hiked and played in the dirt non-stop, which lead them to fall asleep as soon as their heads hit their pillows.

Just minutes before we left the kids were finally able to catch the evasive lizard.

On the way home the kids and their dads swam in a hot springs pool that's literally in the middle of nowhere. Their are shallow parts and deep parts and some parts that are so deep that scuba divers have yet to find the bottom.

For Spring Break we took the kids camping. We went with Trevor's parents and his sister and her family. This was a good test for us because we quickly figured out what supplies we lacked, but since we went with other families that are camping regulars they helped us out with the essentials that we'd forgotten like matches, pans, and spatulas.

We camped in the Red Cliffs Recreation Area which is about 20 miles north of St George. We were fortunate to get camping spots close to the water spigot and the "vault toilets". Most people wouldn't want to be so close to the glorified port-a-potties but since we have little kids who wanted us to accompany them to "the hole" we saved a lot of walking because we were so close.

The weather was a bigger issue then the forecast had predicted. On the drive down on Wednesday night we encountered 5 snow storms, 3 of which were whiteouts and forced us to drive by braille (using the rumble strip to keep us on the road) since even the painted road lines were invisible. By the time we made it to Utah's Dixie the snow turned to rain, which we had at some point each day exept the day we left, of course.

All in all the kids had a great time and that's all the matters. Since my nieces and nephews entertained my kids, it gave me a chance to enjoy myself too.

But the best part of camping is coming home and enjoying a nice long hot shower and crawling into a soft bed.

Spring Photos

Mom this is for you. Love you!

This is Michelle with her new jumprope. She really is happy - in fact that's a huge chocolate malt ball in her mouth, which accounts for the straight face and huge cheek.

Caleb with his new lacrosse stick - very determined to learn the new sport.

Our tulips finally bloomed and right on Easter morning too.

The cherry trees lining the walkway south of the capitol building.

Saturday Egg Hunt

Wet weather forced us to have the egg hunt inside Grandma and Grandpa Smith's garage.

Afterwards, we were treated to huge ice cream cones at our local grocery store.

Good New Bad News

The good news is that after 2 days of hard work I'm nearly caught up with my bookkeeping. The bad news is I'm completely out of any creativity so this post is basically just a reminder that if you want any news about our family go to my photo blog.

But at least I changed this blog's "look" and with only 2 days before Easter!

Ancestors

A day or two after my last post I got a 14 day trial subscription to ancestry.com which proved to be a very good thing as well as a very bad thing.

The bad part is that I ignored all housework and office work (yes, now the tax deadline is only 9 days away and our accountant is expecting several reports from me still). But.....

In my 9 day family history binge I got to know several of my ancestors on my Grandma Rains' side. Both sets of her grandparents emigrated from England.

Her paternal grandfather sailed from England in May of 1866, landed in New York, took a train to the edges of the US, and joined a wagon train (the wagons were for supplies - all the people WALKED) from Nebraska to Utah. I was ecstatic to learn that I actually had a real pioneer ancestor.

I say "real" because several other ancestors on many different family lines were pioneers in their own time (my mom and her parents came over from Holland in the '40s). The one story that made the world seem really small was that my Grandma Rains' maternal grandfather and his family came to Utah in 1908 (fortunately for them the trains brought them the whole way from their port in Maine). Their ship's logs mention that he had lost his left leg and wore an artificial limb. When they got to Utah they settled in Provo.

Within 2 years of arriving in a new country he owned his own home (upstairs) and grocery store (downstairs). That home still stands and the owners following him also ran the store, however they built a separate building next to their home to use as the store. This store is one block away from Trevor's grandpa's old home so Trevor shopped in this store when he was a young kid. Small world, huh?!

There are many more stories (like the ancestor who was a "nitroglycerin exploder") but time is short (remember my tax deadline).

For events that happened over the past few weeks, I'll refer you to my other post which I'll update shortly. I did take a photo a day but I haven't posted them in almost 2 weeks. I'll try and remedy that now.