Yeti, Teeth, Forts, Fans and Futbol

It was Saturday morning and Alison was scurrying to get ready for the day when she was attacked by a band of yeti living in the forest behind our house. Oh wait. That didn't happen. She was, however, trying to get her shoes on, and as she was gritting her teeth trying to tie her shoes as tightly as she could she suddenly noticed that her front tooth was missing. She came running up the stairs in tears saying, "I'm bleeding" and "It feels really strange." After about 10 minutes she calmed down when she realized that her new incisorless mouth was about to result in an economic windfall. It turns out she was right. That very night the Tooth Fairy (or Tooth Elf--I'm not exactly sure since photographic proof of its existence is sketchy, just like the yeti) exchanged her tooth for a nice, new $1 bill. I think I'll try convincing her to invest it...

Since I know you're dying to see, here's our little toothless girl having lost her first tooth:


Kaitlyn responded to Ali's loss with a startling realization: "I'm definitely going to brush my teeth now. I don't want my teeth to fall out!"

Kaitlyn (and Alison) also had a great time this past week making a "fort" that took up our entire living room using our good church reference books as stakes to anchor down the comforters. They carefully arranged the Dora fold-out bed underneath as well as every other blanket, pillow or soft material they could find. This fort was all good unless you got stuck on one side of it and needed something on the other side. Probably. (Note the nice chair rail which we installed personally.)


As for Max, it looks like the Terrible Two's are starting early. He is into everything. The other afternoon, after it was apparent that Mr. Max had woken up from his nap, Megan kept hearing a clicking sound. When she went in to investigate she found that he had arranged the toy in his crib so that he could stand on it and was reaching the switch on the wall--turning the fan off and on. Apparently, he was quite entertained by his superior mastery of fan control.

One more Ali story and then a Nathan and Megan story.

In church on Sunday the children were learning a new Primary song. Ali's teacher (who happens to be Megan's mother) asked her to sing along. Alison responded, "I don't know the words to that song but I know all the songs from High School Musical 3!" I'm not sure they're going to do any songs from High School Musical in the Children's Sacrament Meeting Program this year--but I'll check, because if so, we're golden!

Lastly, you may recall that we visited Washington D.C. several months ago. As were at a stoplight the car next to us rolled down its window and the driver asked us for directions on how to get across the bridge. Since we had been lost multiple times going back and forth across the bridge, we tried, as best we could to give her directions. Unfortunately, the light turned green and the cars behind us started honking so we ended up just saying and pointing, "Go that way!" As soon as we had turned and rolled up our window I said, "Sucka!" We gave her right directions, but given the situation we may as well not have. Ever since then we have used "Sucka" in a variety of ways: to mean, "fooled you" or "I won" or "I got you to listen to me" or in about a baker's dozen other ways and times. Well, the children have started using it a little too frequently, and while cute and funny, we decided that it's probably not the best habit to be in, so we've had to outlaw the use of the word. Megan suggested that we could say, "Soccer!" and that would be funny. I concurred, but thought it was probably too close to the original, and wouldn't discourage the kids from saying it. The word for "Soccer" in Spanish is "Futbol." Now we just say "Futbol" to mean "Sucka." Try it out. I think you'll like it.

Dad's In Charge

Yesterday Megan drove down to Kentucky with her mom for a Stampin' Up party hosted by one of Megan's customers. Since Megan's Stampin' Up business is privately held it's tough to get an accurate estimate of the financials, but, I'm guessing it's pretty lucrative. I'm glad I'm married to the best demonstrator in the world.

Megan's day-trip south, left me in charge of all 4 of us children--er, the 3 kids and me. So, I did my best to equal Megan's exceptional parenting ability. Let me start off by saying that last weekend Megan had a bout with strep throat--which left me in charge again. Somehow, we all survived that little episode, so Megan was somehow confident enough to try leaving me in charge a second time.

Let's see how I did:

We started off the afternoon with a bike ride down to the neighborhood park/playground. Ali is really a whiz on two wheels now, and Kaitlyn is as confident as anyone on her bike with training wheels. Max is a very supportive stroller passenger. After about 15-20 minutes at the park, the kids were hungry so we returned home.

When we got home, the kids insisted on eating Extreme Moose Tracks ice cream. Hey, I'm not a bad dad; they were still hungry, so I gave them a second bowl full.

Since I put Max down for his afternoon nap, and Ali and Kaitlyn were all sugared up from lunch, I had to find a way to put their energy to good use. We decided to play a game of Jenga. Since, we don't own Jenga, we had to settle for its cheap and generic equivalent, which we do own: Rainbow Tumbling Tower. We played several rounds before discovering that it was actually more fun to knock the pieces down than to set them up. So, we decided to use the pieces as dominoes. Ali got all of the yellow and blue pieces; Kaitlyn got all of the red pieces. Dad's job was to make sure that no one knocked each other's pieces down before they were ready to be knocked down. However, we soon tired of constantly cleaning up the pieces.

Max woke up and we moved on to the game of Twister. The first matchup was Dad vs. Alison. Kaitlyn controlled the spinner and shouted out the commands: "Blue!" When we asked her what was supposed to go on blue, she responded with a puzzled look on her face. We played a free form version of Twister. Ali won by pushing me over. That left Ali and Kaitlyn in the championship battle. I'm not sure who officially won, but from the photo below, I would probably guess that Kaitlyn lost.

Max looked on with the fat lip he got on Friday. (That will teach him to take on a sidewalk twice his size!)

After Twister, we went for another bike ride which led to playing with friends in the cul-de-sac for 90 minutes. When I was lambasted for recommending we let our friends go eat dinner (and go eat dinner ourselves), I was shunned. I suggested that they could say "Dad, thanks for letting us play" and refer to me as "Best Dad Ever", but they seemed unenthused by my ideas.

Dinner went extremely well: I didn't burn the Bagel Bites so badly that they were inconsumable.

After dinner, I loaded the kids up in the car and hauled them off to Home Depot so I could purchase some new blinds for our bathroom (What? Butcher paper taped over the windows isn't fashionable?) as well as some other home improvement essentials.

After reading scriptures together, I put the kids to bed only 30 minutes late and began work on my house projects and general house cleaning, vacuuming, wiping and straightening so that Megan would be pleasantly surprised when she got home. Unfortunately, Megan made it home just before I finished doing the dishes (although she was genuinely surprised by the blinds and other projects I was able to complete).

In summary, Megan is amazing, and I'm grateful for everything she does for our family. Please don't let her go out of town again.