Our Week with Two Trips to the Dentist

I meant to get this up on Friday, but I broke a tooth and had a root canal on Friday, and a bad reaction to Vicodin on Saturday, so I laid around, waiting for it to get out of my system.  Took about 24 hours to feel human again.

There's nothing like younger kids in the house to generate fresh interest in "old" toys.  I pulled out the pattern blocks for our little visitors, and Hannah, Katie, and Jack have all made creations with them since then.

At bath time, I always ask Katie, "Bubbles or color?"  It was fun to surprise our little guests with pink princess bath.

Katie discovered that she likes the show Dora, which I put on to be able to comb through after bath tangles.  It didn't surprise me when the older kids came in to watch it with us.  Everything tends to turn into a group activity around here.  Katie has since watched a few more episodes on her own.

We had a visit to Shriners.  Both girls are at the end of adjustment range for their current legs.  They go in again in September, to see their actual doctor (we usually just see the prosthetists) who will write orders for new legs for both of them.

We picked up the stuff we painted from Color Me Mine.  This was the plate that I made.

Brianna's tea set turned out even more adorable in vibrant color.

A little bit of work in the sewing room.  I am making rice bags for BloodSource.

Brianna went to Great America with friends, and came home with a turtle!

We went bowling again this week.

I picked up some cheap bowling shoes on Amazon so we wouldn't have to pay shoe rental every time.

Josiah and Brianna's friend A went with us.

Jack is surprisingly not sucky at bowling.

That's his ball, about to knock pins over.

I did get a strike this time, but I also had about a dozen gutter balls in 2.5 games.

That innocent little face...

...seems to have been playing with my phone, since that's me.

Our little visitors have gone back to their mama.  Just a short visit this time.

Brianna and Eli went to the dentist on Wednesday.  It's nice to be able to get some of this stuff out of the way while school is out.  I should think about scheduling Eli for a sports physical.  He wants to do wrestling this year.  I should also think about getting Hannah in to the eye doctor.  She broke the nose piece on her glasses, so she's in her second pair.  Fortunately, we ordered 2 last time her prescription changed.

I'm so grateful to be able to chat with Sam.  It's only been 7 years since Zach was newly in the Air Force, but technology has exploded since then.  It's nice to get to keep in touch more frequently and easier.  Does my mama heart good to be able to see my boy.

Speaking of family, we get to have Brayden over tomorrow.  Can't believe there's only a month until school starts!  We'll have to enjoy every last bit of summer.


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Our Week with Little Visitors

Our Little Friends from last year and the year before are staying with us again.

Last week the hair was green...  now it's purple!

It's actually really pretty; variegated with bits of different colors to it.

Brianna talked me into buying a piece of army fleece last time we were at JoAnn's.  I finally cut the selvages off so she could use it as a blanket.

Hannah brought home a Nevada library book from our trip.  I had to explain why that was a bad idea.  Will be mailing that back.

Lots of playing in the playroom this week.  It's always fun to have new kids in the house and see all the "forgotten" toys regain popularity.

I'm so grateful Grammy brings us boxes of toothbrushes.  It leaves us prepared for the unexpected.  Like when Brayden stayed over last week, or with our special guests.  I never have to run out and pick up a spare toothbrush at bedtime.

I took Brianna, Eli, and a friend of Eli's to Color Me Mine this week.  E and friend made mugs.

I made a plate.

Brianna made an adorable tea set with trees from the movie The Lorax.

We went to the park to burn off some energy.  Sorry, no picture of Hannah.  There were little blondies in all the shots I took of her, and I'm too lazy to edit in my very limited computer time.

We need to come back when the library is open.  They have weird hours.  No books this week.

Hannah and Katie mostly watched Kai Lan and Barbie in Mandarin when they were first home, so it's been many years since I've watched Dora.  Jack liked it when he was a wee tyke.  Well, Dora makes good after bath watching for the littles so I can comb out their wet hair.

Katie and the small fries in a rousing game of ring around the rosies.

We're off to Shriners this coming week, plus a couple of dentist appointments for Brianna and Eli, plus picking up our finished ceramics from Color Me Mine.  Hopefully we'll manage a trip to the library and maybe even the pool, as well.


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CaNeUt Day 7 - 4th of July

Hey, it's July 19, and I'm finally writing about July 4.  I'm a little earlier than last year, but not much.

After breakfast, I coerced, cajoled, and threatened everyone into their flag shirts for the annual torture: family pictures.

We started in 1999, and we've hit almost every year since.  (We missed 2 years, not in a row.)

 After pictures, all the teens changed into different shirts, and we set off to watch the parade.

 Hannah and Katie didn't know what to make of people throwing beads and candy at them.  I had to encourage them to get out there and pick some loot up.

My camera died during the parade, so the rest of the pictures were taken on my phone, which I kept expecting to tell me it was full.

 After the parade, the park opened for the town celebration.  There was food and games and gold panning.

I mostly hung out in the shade at our "base camp," the park blanket and circle of chairs we set up upon arrival.

Brianna took Hannah around to the games, and Hannah won this husky stuffed animal.  Bri kinda wanted it, until Hannah got a nosebleed on the way home from the park and got blood all over it.  The air is really dry there.

Yes, my pint size first grader is guzzling her own 12 ounce soda.  :sigh:  I'm pretty sure my first few kids didn't get their own whole soda until they were double digits old.

 And my delicate little lotus blossom is chowing Cheetos like that's a feed bag.

I like to think I've "mellowed out," but maybe I've just gotten old and lazy.  The jury is still out.

Buddy took Katie around to the bouncy houses and such.  Katie had a marvelous time.

The mine usually brings one of the big, big dump trucks for people to ogle, but this year, they brought this 390F CAT excavator instead.

And there's Paul, ogling it.

Miss Hannah takes a moment to snuggle her new husky puppy.

All the miles caught up to me, and I got super tired, so we didn't end up staying as long as we usually do.  Paul and I took Jack and the little girls back to the house to watch movies and play quietly while I caught a nap.

On our way, we noticed another wild fire in the distance, so Paul kept an eye out online for information about that, since, depending on where it was, it had the potential to impact our travel plans for the next day.  However, it ended up not being an issue for us.

After a nap and some more food, we headed back out to watch the fireworks.

Here in California, I'm pretty sure fireworks are governed by county ordinance.  Meaning, at home, we have rules about what we're allowed to purchase, and what we're allowed to set off, based on where we live.

In middle o'nowhere, Nevada, however, you can pretty much set off anything you can get your hands on, so Paul was "safely disposing of" a bucket of contraband fireworks that was unearthed in cleaning out one of the fire stations for demolition.  It's obviously hard to get pictures in the dark, but let's just say a good time was had by all, except maybe the part where Joel got grazed by a flying something or other.

This brings us to the very end of our vacation photos.  The next day's drive home was fairly uneventful, aside from the wildfire we drove past.  Upon arriving home, I immediately set to work on the laundry.  The girls still had plenty of clean clothes in their closet, but pretty much everybody would soon run out of clean underwear without urgent action.

A friend says, "East or West, home is best!" and there's a grain of truth to that.  Coming home, getting everything put away, paying the cat sitter, and going back to ordinary life feels good.  But I still love to see new things, too.  And I know that there are so many more things out there that I have yet to see.  I think if we had limitless resources I would travel more.


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