Photo Booth Fun

We have done photo booth off and on over quite a while.  We recently rediscovered it I thought I would share some of the best ones over the years.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

I don't have too much to add on top of Susan's Posts.  I do have a few videos from this week.

The first three are from the museum we went to while Susan was having her root canal on Friday.  I find it interesting the way each child approached the same instrument.

The next one is a happy dance Robert did to try and impress/Keep Mathew happy.

General Women's Meeting

Tonight was the General Women's Meeting for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And since Alice just turned 8 years old, this was the first time she could attend with me.

She LOVED it.

And not just the ice cream social beforehand.

No, she literally loved the meeting itself. She said she felt full of the Spirit and the stories/experiences that were shared made her want to "happy cry" for the first time in her life. This girl blows me away.

Having her there with me changed how I thought about the messages. Instead of my usual, "Yeah, yeah, I know all that. Yeah, I'm still terrible at that. Okay, there's something I'm good at. Whew!", I was listening as if I were hearing it all for the first time. There were some very powerful truths taught tonight. Every once in a while, Alice would turn to me and say, "That's true" or "That's right" as the speakers shared their testimonies of the gospel and the importance of families in God's plan for us.

We were talking about this a little on the drive home and she said her favorite parts were the stories in the talks. There was one story about a teenage girl standing between a mob and the missionaries in her home. Alice was amazed with her courage and how that one girl's testimony could cause the mob to turn away. It was powerful, and dramatic, which are two words that should replace Alice's current middle name.

I was most moved by the opening hymn. It was simply "How Firm a Foundation", but that is the one song that came to mind my first night ever with Alice. My first night ever as a mom. She squeaked her little squeaky faucet cry and I sang this to her while pacing the hospital room floor:

In ev'ry condition--in sickness, in health,

In poverty's vale or abounding in wealth,

At home or abroad, on the land or the sea--

As thy days may demand, as thy days may demand,

As thy days may demand, so thy succor shall be.

 

Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,

For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.

I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,

Upheld by my righteous, upheld by my righteous,

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

 

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose

I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes;

That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I'll never, no never, I'll never, no never,

I'll never, no never, no never forsake!

 

I felt so much singing this again with her at this meeting. I am so, so happy to have her in my life.

Tooth Saved

The crack in my tooth did not, after all, extend into the bone area, so a root canal was all that I needed. Well, a root canal followed by a permanent filling and a crown. The whole experience from the crack to the root canal took less than a week and it was one tender mercy after another that got us through. It also helped that Bobby's work schedule was a little flexible and he could take 2 days off with almost no notice to care for the kids while I was running from one appointment to another.

The endodontist that performed the root canal looked freakishly young, but he's only 6 years younger than me. Maybe I looked this young 6 years ago...

 

He turned pale when I asked about the pain meds and breastfeeding. He hurriedly recommended I pump and dump for 24 hours after the procedure. Thank goodness for a Breastfeeding Clinic and experienced nurses to help me sort through the anesthetics list. All were approved for nursing moms. Bobby tried to bottle feed Matthew once while I was getting the root canal done and it did NOT go well. Breastfeeding can be sometimes be a very inconvenient convenience, but in some roundabout way, I took Matthew's refusal of the bottle as a big "thanks for what you do!" It made me feel good.  

The root canal made me excessively nervous. I asked Bobby for a priesthood blessing. My nerves got much better after that.

It turns out I have a unique tooth structure. The little extensions at the bottom of my molars don't go straight down into the bone. They curve and twist and bend back into each other. It's wacky. That's why my wisdom teeth had to come out in pieces years ago. I'd be interested to hear if any of my parents or siblings have similar experiences. The roots of this molar were funky, too. At one point, Dr. Foreman held up the little wire he was using and exclaimed, "You have to see this! Your root curves in all three dimensions! Just look at how this instrument is completely bent!"

Yeah. At any other moment in my life, I would have thought that was completely awesome.

So glad it's over...well, except for the permanent filling and the crown. Gotta go back to my regular dentist for that work soon.

Something's wrong...

I went to the dentist this morning to check out a possible cracked tooth. It's definitely cracked. During the evaluation, the dentist had to drill out an old filling. He numbed me once, no luck. Numbed me twice, still sensitive. Then he pulled out the big guns and nuked the whole tooth bed with the strongest stuff he had. That worked. Within seconds of him pulling out the needle, though, I started feeling like something was terribly wrong. It was a milder version of something I had felt during Matthew's birth. My heart rate was normal, but I was lightheaded and scared and on-edge. I had a hard time focusing. I mentioned these feelings to them and the assistant informed me that the third anesthetic contained epinephrine.

Ah! That explains everything. Epinephrine is a potent hormone and vasoconstrictor. I was juiced up for action as if something were threatening my life. It wore off after five minutes, but I'm still reeling from the flashbacks to Matthew's labor. I wonder how/why I felt a flood of epinephrine at that point in Matthew's labor. They had been trying to balance my low blood pressure with the vasodilating effects of the epidural...maybe my body kicked back. Anyway, I'm glad there's a physical explanation for that feeling. Now I know what to call it.

As for my cracked tooth, I need to see an endodontist for further evaluation. It's not clear if the crack goes down into the root. Best outcome at this point: root canal. Worst outcome: lose the tooth entirely :(

Curse you, Fruit and Nut Trail Mix bars!!

Bobby's Sunday Summary

The weather has turned much more towards spring so we have had a few fun developments.  The first one is that everyone in our family really likes to swing.

Robert has also learned to rid a bike.  If you skip to the 0:40 mark you can see him ridding without any help.  He has since learned to start on his own.  Go really really fast and use the breaks to stop.



"A" also said I could post this video if I didn't user her real name.

Alice's Baptism

It happened only last week, but it feels like an eternity ago...

Alice chose to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The icing on the cake was that she got baptized on her birthday with some of her favorite people there to support her.

I honestly don't remember a lot of it because I was completely stressed out. Alice had asked me to give a talk on the Gift of the Holy Ghost. She had invited 20 families outside of our church to attend and many had accepted her invitation. And I'm terrifically uncomfortable playing hostess. I didn't even want to do it at my own wedding reception. 

In the end, it was a great spiritual experience for me. I appreciated the opportunity to examine the baptismal covenant more closely and test how strong my testimony was on that subject. Alice was engaged and attentive throughout the whole thing. She was clearly acting with the faith of an 8-year-old. The knowledge of an 8-year-old. The giddy excitement of an 8-year-old. And it's beautiful that that is enough to make your first covenant with God.

She will probably remember that the water was cold. She may even remember that the bathrooms were under renovation, so she had to run dripping to a classroom nearby to change. She may or may not remember the many friends and teachers who had come to support her. I wish we had taken pictures with more of them.

I hope she chooses to build on this first covenant. I hope she experiments with this new Gift and soon discovers how the Spirit can work in her life. She's already started to mature more quickly. I think she grew two inches taller that day. She certainly starts more sentences with, "Now that I'm eight..."

She's a lovely person to watch grow up.

"Butt Lock"

For weeks, James has periodically asked about something he called "butt lock." I could not, for the life of me, figure out what he was trying to say. I even asked follow-up questions like "What color is it?" "Did you see one today?" "Where is it?" "Is it big or little?" to no avail. I thought maybe it was a verb. James' answers were incomprehensible and I just couldn't understand before he got frustrated and stopped trying to explain. He gives up by saying "never mind" or "me no say it."

This morning, however, Robert finally showed me the way.

James was rolling his taxi car over the bedspread that Robert just laboriously spread out for me. Robert told James not to drive his car on it. James looked up at him and said, "Butt lock!"

"No, James, it's not a parking lot. It's a bed!"

Butt lock = parking lot

Huzzah!

Now I see why it was difficult to explain to me.

"Me uh Boy"

Me: "James, what are you eating?"

He sticks out his tongue with something orangeish-brown and gooey on it that he just picked up off the car floor.

Me: "Ugh, James. We don't eat stuff off the floor."

I swipe it out of his mouth and throw it outside. James makes a disappointed grunt and thinks a second before shouting back with vigor:

James: "Me uh boy!"

Me: "You're a boy?"

James: "Yah! Me eat duff offuh fyoor!"

Apparently, he feels my "we" does not apply to boys like him.

James' palate: the opposite of refined discernment.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Well Alice was Baptized, and it was a great experience.  We had lots of great family and friends join us for it.  I don't have the pictures with me, I'll post pictures when I get them.  But to appease those of you who want pictures here is a video I took recently.

Some pictures and videos

It's not Sunday so it is not a Sunday summary, but it has been a crazy couple of weeks and it is not over yet.

First I showed a few pictures of the big snow fall we had a few weeks ago.

Here are some more of the kids playing in it.











Next Came a fundraiser for the young women in your church.  There was a free dinner and a desert auction where buddy convinced Susan to spend $50 on a huge pan of cinnamon rolls. Well worth it I might add.  There was a dance at the end, that the kids got into.

then last week I spent in Phoenix at a conference.  It was 80 degrees outside. The rental car place gave me a mustang and I had some time to spend at pueblo grande Thursday afternoon.  The conference was also really productive.

And finally when I got home it was starting to be Alice's Birthday.  She got a special surprise the night before.  Expect more pictures of her birthday and baptism soon.