Letter to the "Toth Feree"

Dallin lost another tooth today! I had him write his own letter to the tooth fairy, and here's what he wrote: (I'm writing the corrected spelling so I don't have to "translate" it.) :)

Dear Tooth Fairy:

I lost my tooth and it hurted a lot. Can you bring three dollars please. Or, if you don't want to bring me 3 dollars, that is OK. Or, if you want to bring me 2 dollars, that is OK.

Love, Dallin


What a good bargainer, huh? :)

Today I got over one of my fears. I actually let Dallin ride the bus home from school. OK, I'll admit that I did drive up to the school, walked Dallin to the bus, talked to his bus driver, talked to our neighbor boy to ask him to watch out for him, and then drove behind the bus to the bus stop by our house. BUT he really did ride the bus! For me, it's all about the baby steps. I went over to the bus to get home, and he was all disappointed when he saw me. He was like, "Aw mom, I wanted to walk home with my friends!" Oh, the exasperation! I let him run with the neighborhood boys over to our house, and he was quite thrilled with the whole experience. I was just glad he didn't get molested at the back of the bus.


On a separate note, I decided that I deserve the Worst-Mom-of-the-Year award. Ya, remember how I was complaining about Dallin being a punk during our photo session last Saturday? Well, on Monday, after we went to the zoo, McDonald's (and played in their play area), and then over to a friend's house for a playdate, I found out Dallin had strep throat that turned into Scarlet Fever. I didn't even know he was sick! Apparently, he had strep throat since at least Friday. We went to church on Sunday, and then all those places on Monday. I felt SO bad for Dallin, and then all the other people we could have infected! Geesh. What kind of horrible mom lets their kid have strep throat for an entire weekend and complains about them being crabby?!

Practically a miracle...

Last Saturday we had family pictures taken. My kids were beyond terrible (mostly Dallin, surprisingly), so I was really not expecting to get anything back except frowns and crying kids. Why is it a universal problem that kids can never cooperate for family pictures?? It's probably bad karma for being terrible for my mom's pictures when I was a kid.... Anyway, the photographer (my friend, Ashlie), was awesome and managed to get some great shots between the madness. You can check out a few that she posted on her photo blog. I'm so happy with them! :) I would definitely recommend her to anyone living close to Tucson!

Boys

Today Kevin was the spotlight child in Primary. I'm the Primary Pianist now, so I got to hear them do it. It was funny cause after they said the child's favorite color I was thinking, "What a weird child...." and it ended up being my own. :) At dinner, I was telling Devin that Kevin got the spotlight today, and I asked Kevin to tell Daddy what he wanted to be when he grew up. Kevin said, "I want to be the Nightmare Man that goes around and gives everyone nightmares." Devin looked at me with wide eyes, hoping that they didn't announce that in Primary. It was funny. Anyway, here's a copy of the "interview" they did with him at a Primary activity, which they used for the spotlight:

1. Tell us something interesting about yourself:
I liked living in Germany

2. What's your favorite Primary Song?
The Hello Song

3. Favorite Food?
Spaetzle (They had a hard time with this one, they didn't even announce it, they just wrote "Spetchula" on his page.) :)

4. Favorite Treat?
Cookies

5. Favorite Scripture?
Noah's ark

6. What is your favorite color?
White

7. Favorite school subject?
Drawing

8. What do you want to be as an adult?
A Pirate



Hummm, well, it looks like Kevin might be relocating to Somolia when he grows up. I hear there are good job opportunities there for pirates.


I also wanted to share my photo-of-the-day today of Dallin in the bath. He's a cutie, but he's got some crazy teeth right now, which are encouraging me to save my pennies for the inevitable orthodontics bill. :)

Project 365

I think I've decided on my layout for my "Project 365" book. I think I'm going to do it by weeks, so it would be Thursday-Wednesday (Jan 1 was a Thursday) so I'll have 52 weeks in my book, and I'm going to do each week with a 2-page spread, so the photos are bigger, and there's more room for journaling. So, c'mon Jueneta, let's see some 7-photo 2-pagers. :)

Anyway, I'm sure no one cared about my format, so I'll just share my photo-of-the-day for today. We just bought Ethan a toddler bed yesterday, so I wanted to get a pic of him sleeping in his bed. When I went in there to capture it, I saw the bunch of trains keeping him company in bed, and just had to include that in my shot. I just love toddlers! :) Devin & I also realized since we took down the crib yesterday, it's the first time since 2002 that we don't have a crib up in our house. *sniff* I'm not sure who gave permission to my babies to grow up!

Tucson Friends

OK, so I promise I'll post a real post soon, but I need to get a recommendation for a good hairdresser in Tucson. We're getting family pictures taken this Saturday, and I want to get a cut before then (sorry, mom...). Any recommendations???

Surprise! We ARE still alive!

Please accept our apologies if you were rather certain that we've been dead the past month. If you tried to call us between December 3-17, our phones weren't working and it took that long for us to convince Cox that we really aren't retarded and we really didn't have a dial tone. If you called between December 19-January 3, we were in California. If you tried to mail us a letter between December 19-January 3, it's possible that it was sent back to you because of a small problem at the post office. So, for those of you who were trying to get a hold of us in vain, we really are alive and things really are OK now, so you should be able to reach us. :)

I can't believe it's been a month since we've been home! It's been a bit of a whirlwind. As soon as we got sort of unpacked, we just packed up again to go to CA. It was SO nice to see our families, though! I'll post lots of pictures of our trip later. Things are starting to get more normal and settled for us. I might even dare say ordinary, which I can't tell you how happy I am about that. :) I'm so happy to be getting into a system, and the kids seem really happy. Dallin is really enjoying school, and Kevin is excited to start Joy school tomorrow.

At the start of this year, I decided to do a new little project called "Project 365." A lot of people in the scrapping community (yes, there is such a thing) are doing it, and I though it sounded like a great idea! My goal is to take a picture-a-day for the whole year and then each week make a simple scrap page for the week. SSD has a free template I'm using, so I'm trying to make this as easy and simple as I can, so I can actually accomplish it. :) I hope to share my weekly layout here and then make a 2009 book with my weekly layouts at the end of the year. I finished a page for the first "week" of 2009, but I'm still thinking of how I should format it, whether I should do "weeks" by Sunday-Saturday (so there would be 53 pages in my book since the first week of the year was from Thursday-Saturday), or 7-day weeks, so my weeks would be Thursday-Wednesday since January 1 was on Thursday. Confusing enough? Good. Now tell me in the comment section which I should do. :) Here's my page so far for Jan 1-3. It's not to late to join in the project! :)


I'm hoping to update the blog soon with the last week in Germany. We had some special times with friends right before we left that I don't want to forget. Hopefully I"ll get to that tomorrow!