Dentist

I went to the dentist today for the first time in *ahem* years. It was actually a great experience. I had a horrible time when I was a kid. See some of my adult teeth didn’t knock out my baby teeth. So the dentist I went to as a child, in all his wisdom, set about extracting each of these little teeth one at a time. So I repeatedly went to the dentist, each time to have yet another tooth pulled. Suffice to say, I never finished this ordeal and have run from dentist the rest of my happy little life.

Well, now I’m a big girl. I’ve given birth twice. Not to mention this lingering fear of what might be wrong with my teeth that I know nothing about as I bush and floss away. So I finally decided I better go get my mouth checked out. I got my x-rays done and I sat nervously wondering how many cavities there were and if any other teeth (besides those baby teeth) would need to be taken.

In walks the dentist. He looks at the films and then inspects each tooth. There are NO cavities. I was in shock. He agreed that those three baby teeth will need to come out. He also recommended orthodontics to line everything up, since they are all a mess crammed in there on the bottom. I asked about my one lonely wisdom tooth. I figured if we were talking braces, it would probably come up at some point. He said we should probably have them all taken out. I asked if it looked like they wouldn’t come in that we skip them and just do the one. He ordered an extra x-ray and after it came back he agreed the two that are below aren’t likely to come in and I don’t even have one on the top right. Odd, huh?

So I’ll have to see an oral surgeon, who will let me snooze my way through the operation. That sounds much better than the crying I remember doing when I was eight!

So then I went off to have my teeth cleaned. The gal was great. She said I take great care of my teeth and that she’d never even know that it had been long since I’d had them cleaned. She seemed concerned that I was uncomfortable, but it was a nice quiet time. No children asking questions, screaming for my attention, or knocking anything over. It was like I would imagine a trip to the spa.

I think I’ll have to do this more often.

A Child's Prayer

Kate says grace before dinner each night. We taught her a simple grace that she repeated for quite some time. Recently she's been using other prayers. I think she learned a different one at MOPS and now she's making her own prayers of thanksgiving. The other night, as she was saying her childish prayer, she prayed, "Dear God, all creation, butta butta boo. In your name, Amen."

"Thank you for saying grace Kate, but next time, can be sure to thank God for our food."

"Sometimes it gets a little lost in my head."

I think sometimes it gets a little lost in all of our heads.

Weathering Some Stormy Days

I haven’t posted in a few days because, well, sometimes when a bit of a tornado passes through you need some time to sort things out. Life has been a bit tumultuous here. We are trying to process quite a bit of financial information regarding Justin’s place of employment. It will affect a great number of people, reaching far beyond our little family. While this will cause some difficulties for us, we pray that the problems are no greater than ours for all the others around us. We’re praying that we will be able to keep this position, since there will be cuts made. We pray that those that lose this income will be granted all that they need to make it through the coming months and years ahead.

We’ve weathered some difficult times in the course of our near ten year marriage. Moves, the loss of friends and family members, planned children (that still somehow surprised us), lots of school(!), changes in careers, and many personal trials. Through this we have always known that God will provide. There were times that we’ve wondered why our plans weren’t what God chose, but things have always worked out, God’s way. We found out Gabby was on the way right after Justin was told he was going to be let go from his last position, but we were granted this job. I believe that if He chooses for this phase of our life to end, it’s only because He has another place that He’s working on. (Matt 6:25-34) Somewhere we might not have looked had we been comfortable here. If we’re to stay, we will be glad in His mercy to let us continue to build our relationships here and to be provided for financially through this position.

I’m considering outside employment too. That’s been something we’ve talked about off and on for awhile, wondering when in the lives of our children this transition would be best, but at current, it may be our only “choice.” Perhaps there are children in a classroom in need of me. If that be, then perhaps this series of events was the only way I could be motivated to return to work. Perhaps my children need some time apart from each other. I truly don’t know the whys, and I may never know. I do know I felt prompted to get my teaching license; perhaps it was “for such a time as this.” (Ester 4:14)

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" - Jeremiah 29:11-13

Praise be to the Father who sits upon His throne.

Telephone, Telegraph, Tell a Katie

Another round of what she heard s. what we actually said...

I am not diffused!

When I said, “Please don’t confuse her,” to Justin.

Is this oppressive?

After I told her one of her gymnastic feats was impressive.

Notes from Crazyville

So, it’s crazy cold. We're all going stir crazy. We’ve all been cooped up quite a bit, so here’s what’s going on in La La Land.

Last night at dinner we had soft tacos. After eating all the filling out of her shell, yes she is my child and sometimes eats things in pieces. Moving right along… She picked up the shell and bit holes in it. She lifted it up and called it her mask. We were laughing so hard that we couldn’t tell her it was rude to play with her food. I even went and got my camera. Bad parenting I know, we’re working on it.


Then today Justin decides to grill hamburgers. It’s literally freezing, in the teens, and he thought it would be better to have them grilled because it tastes better. I have photographic evidence of his crazy grilling. Note, if you ever attempt this—it takes longer than usual to get the burgers done because, well it’s FREEZING!


That brings us to the baby. I know she’s one, but she’ll be the baby until—I don’t know until when. Anyhow. She’s been on a kick where she doesn’t want to take a nap. The second we go to run errands though, she’s out. I wind up dragging her sleeping out of her car seat. Often she doesn’t even wake up. I’ve gotten pictures on two separate occasions, though it happens with more regular frequency, of her asleep in the chair at home after I brought her in and couldn’t get her awake right away.


Oh me? How nice of you to ask. I’m freezing. I grew up in a warm house, here it’s stinkin’ cold. 67 degrees. Brrr. I wear socks and shoes. In the house. [side note--I hate shoes and socks.] I tell you it’s getting out of hand!

Non-resolutions list...

Here’s the first update. I’ve received all the paperwork back from the registrar’s office with my official, sealed, transcript, my sealed documentation that I got a real degree from a school that says they taught me basic stuff (like I took English), and my sealed proof that I actually taught in Kentucky. Actually I guess I don’t know what I got, since they’re all in sealed envelopes, but they look like they came from the right places at least.

Today I took my girls to the police station to have myself fingerprinted. I’ve done this before for teaching positions, no big deal—roll my fingers in some ink. Nope. They’ve digitized it. I’m sure this makes crime fighting faster and easier, but it took so long. The computer didn’t like my right ring finger at all. It was 12 tries. No joke. With my three year old and one year old sitting there. Thankfully they were as good as gold, and the officer was quite nice.

Now my packet is off to the state department of education, so hopefully the nice lady that I talked to was right and they will give me a certificate with my valid, but out of date license from Kentucky. She said that it wouldn’t be a problem.


My first year teaching...I shared that messy desk with two instructional assistants and our sign language interpreter (two of them pictured to my left).



As for the rest of the list…Kate now knows “k” and “t”. I’ve slacked this week—yesterday was grocery day and today was MOPS and errands. We worked on scissor skills today though, so that should be worth about three letters right there. Right? No? Okay, we’ll get back to work tomorrow. Justin and I have had one game night and one movie night.

Couch time

Our first attempt at couch time was Sunday evening. The first ten minutes went off without a hitch. We did have to tell Kate we were busy talking several times, but that’s pretty normal. We really do that pretty often, so it seemed that we really are doing this already. Then Kate went to the bathroom. Gabby, now without her playmate, was climbing up my leg. Then as I pried her off of me yet again, we here a plea from the bathroom, Kate needed help. These are things that regardless of how intentional we were had to be addressed, so we did. We got the girls settled back in to playing and finished our time.

Okay, so the first one was typical life with kids. We thought we had it pretty well down though. Right? Wrong.

So on Tuesday we sit down to have a little chat. Kate is mad at the world because she refused her nap. We spent most of our time “talking” straining to hear over the screaming. Not a little wailing now and then a full out scream. It was lovely. It lasted thirteen of the fifteen minutes. The baby was whining, after all her playmate wasn’t playing. I’m not even sure what we talked about.

The rest of the week was much less eventful, pleasant for us, but not much in the way of blog fodder. One time Kate played in her room the whole time, not something she does often, after all the only person she gets to talk to there is herself and she is quite the people person.

Note: not our couch--we don't even own a couch...it died when we moved. The poor thing got crushed. We do couch time in chairs. Sad?