Last day of summer vacation

Today is the last day of summer vacation before the kiddos (and me) start back to school tomorrow. I wanted to do something fun and celebration-ish, but sadly that is not our life these days. I did let the kids watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix this morning as a fun start to the day. Eve decided a few weeks ago that she wanted to start watching them and we’ve been jamming through them ever since!

Yep, tv, laundry, and my laptop hard at work on the last day of vacation.

We had the woman who is *hopefully* buying our house over today for an inspection. She brought her son and parents to check out the place as well. All was good, I think. Waiting to hear back from them now.

Then I dragged the kids to school for just one hour, I promised them! ‘Cause there’s nothing a kid wants to do more on the last day of vacation then go to school! They were good helpers and we got out of there fast. I’m feeling totally stressed out about how much there is to do this year! I really just wanted to make sure the library was clean, organized, and presentable before the kiddos all come back tomorrow. I really wanted to do a lot more than that, but I keep reminding myself that I rearranged a good part of it and did a full inventory this summer — so it’s not like I’ve been slacking!

The fish had babies again. Lots of them!! Just in time for back to school. Good fishies. :)

Afterwards we went to the sports store and dropped a lot of cash on new cleats, shin guards, mouth guard (and case!), eye wear, and field hockey stick for Miss Eve to start field hockey again. She played two years ago and liked it, but took last year off. Back at it today!

Don’t mess with this chick!

All geared up and ready to go. I think she said, “No, don’t take a picture of me, ” but it’s hard to tell with the mouth guard in! LOL!

My Mondays and Wednesdays for the next ten weeks will be field hockey/karate taxi runs. Luckily they have nice staggered times and don’t start and end at the exact same times. When I picked Eve up she said, “I forgot how much I like field hockey!!” When I picked Lex up he said, “My gi is getting too small. We need to buy a new one.” Good thing I’m going back to work!

We got dinner at Panera. That’s a fun celebration, right?! I even got them a cookie (to share). Alan joined us and we had a nice time together. On the way home we stopped at the new house. They have a roof on the porch (oh, and a porch!), the doors are now locked with a key, and we saw they even put up the first two pieces of sheet rock!!

Our porch is tiny, but cute. I like the green wrapper around the post. :)

Drywall! Sheet rock? Is there a difference? Anyway, there’s the laundry chute. It will open on both sides so you can put clothes in from both bathrooms. Sa-weet!

Lex noticed that you can watch the neighbor’s TV from our kitchen window! LOL! They were both watching together (it was the news and they said they could see Trump’s head), but when I tried to take a picture, Lex ran away.

We also met a couple who has just put a down payment on Lot F (the lot next to the magazine home being built). That was cool. They have a daughter who was in Lex’s class at DBS and is now at the middle school, though he was quick to tell us that she’s not on his team. I know for a fact that she is a very sweet girl though. Hopefully that bodes well for the parents as well. :)

Let’s see… what else is going on… Eve lost another molar today. Her second in less than a week. I’m hoping one of them is the molar with the cavity the dentist wanted to fill! Arlo has a hurt paw. Not sure why. He’s been chewing on it for a few days. I have to get him to the vet, eventually, but I’ll say, as much as I love our vet, I feel like I’ve seen more than enough of her lately!! Between the cat with allergies and the dog with whatever he’s had going on… I’m ready to stop spending money on these pets!! I’ll be good though and take him in soon.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. I have nothing to wear and only asked this kids at bedtime if they have anything to wear. Lex found an outfit. Eve swears she’ll come up with something. They both have full dirty laundry baskets. I think my days of “let’s look perfect for the first day of school,” may be behind me. I even remembered this evening that I packed up their “first day of school” photos, the ones we use each year for them to hold for the new year’s photos. I dug them out real quick!! I’ll keep that tradition alive… for a little longer. I was hoping to have a new front door for the photo this year, but alas, one more year with the old front door. :) I considered driving over to the new house for photos, but I already know I won’t be that ambitious tomorrow morning!

First day of school photos — all packed up! Oops!

Now I’m off to do more prep work for tomorrow. I don’t even have lessons plans fleshed out for my classes tomorrow. Eeek!! I will though, I promise!! Lex and I had a long chat about having a positive attitude. We’re both going to keep that in mind as the new school year starts. :)

An evening update

With everything going on this morning I forgot to mention my sore throat and partially numb tongue. Haha. I’m falling apart!

Eve stayed home today with Alan and ended up throwing up 12 times! She is in bed now, complaining that her stomach hurts, so I suspect we are not done. She is VERY sad that she has to miss her class holiday party tomorrow. Poor girl.

Lex, on the other hand, surprised the heck out of me this morning with his bravery! He did not want to go to the dentist, but he went on his own accord, every step of the way, with no tears and no arguing or fussing. He made it all the way there and into the chair with a positive attitude and sense of humor. The dentist decided to try just using nitrous oxide and novocain, not the sedation we had planned. I agreed, with the sedation as a backup plan. I LOVE our new dentist! He bought the practice we’ve been going to all along and he is making great changes. I love how he handles Lex in such a calm, patient, understanding way. After the meds took affect he started, smartly!, with a sealant instead of going right for the pulling. Lex needed four sealants, three teeth pulled, and one preventative filling. The dentist started with the sealant, which is the least painful, but immediately ran into Lex’s gag reflex and strong sense of taste. Lex could not handle it. The dentist stopped quickly, yay!, and we decided to go with the sedation. It was excellent! :) He started with the lowest dose possible, which was perfect. Lex was calm, but could still communicate. The dentist talked to him the whole way through, checked for pain at each step, and managed to do two sealants, three extractions, and the filling. Definitely more than we were expecting to get done!! Afterwards the sedation wore off quickly, Lex was feeling good, and we headed home.

I dropped Lex off with Alan, gave him the speediest possible “after care” update, and headed off to school. I only had one class and recess duty today, so when I was done I checked in with Alan, checked in with my boss, then headed home again where I snuggled up with Miss Eve and we both took a nap.

Oh, I forgot the best part of the dentist visit. He has a new therapy dog!! It is the sweetest, softest dog ever!! He is a seven month old Goldendoodle and he feels and looks like a teddy bear. Lex spent some time with him in the waiting room, then the dentist brought him back to visit while the sedation medicine was taking effect. Lex LOVED it!

Tomorrow is our last day before Christmas vacation, or, as Lex puts it, the last day we have to go to school in 2016! Lex has a party at the ice skating rink with treats and a Yankee Swap. I have a “Ugly Sweater” day with treats and a Secret Elf thing. Eve has to be home in bed, hopefully not vomiting. Alan has to be home with her, but Alan gets to go to work on Friday. :)

Tooth

I was clearing off the table yesterday, trying to make room for us to eat, and I saw this on the table.

image

Probably could have cropped this picture a bit. :)

“Did someone lose a tooth?” I asked. “Oh, yeah, I did,” said Lex. I had to laugh. Losing teeth is such a non-issue these days. He lost it at lunch and went to the nurse, as is the protocol when you lose a tooth in school. He showed me the space where it was, and the space was filled with a tooth half way grown in already! Bottom, right… first molar maybe? I forgot already.

Pumpkin picking

It was a beautiful day today so we decided to get carve pumpkins. I had planned to take the kids to the local farm stand and pick out a few, but Eve wanted to pick her own right from the pumpkin patch, so we turned it into a lovely fall outing. Things got a little dicey on the drive down when the skies opened up and everything got soaked, but by the time we got to the pumpkin patch it was blue skies again. Thankfully!!

When we arrived Eve saw a horse drawn wagon ride and decided we should do that first. The wagon brings people up into the apple orchard, but we weren’t much in the mood for picking apples so we just road the in the wagon for the full round trip.

image

Grandpa Tom and Eve, enjoying a lovely day at the apple orchard.

Seeing dad and Eve in the wagon together reminded me of a picture from when she was a baby (I just spent ten minutes reading baby Eve posts, cracking myself up, but can’t find the picture. I think I have a hard copy I’ll try to add here later). I tried to recreate the picture, but Eve would have no part of it!

image

I mostly just got a lot of this. She’s not very cooperative with the camera these days.

image

I had to settle for this. Not quite the same, but the memory is there anyway. :)

image

These two were happy to cooperate with the camera! :)

After our wagon ride we took a run through the corn maze. I was surprised that Eve so eagerly agreed to go, after she was so grumpy about the last corn maze we did! Fortunately this one is much smaller and only took us half an hour.

Then we passed through the pumpkin patch and Eve decided she’d rather get one from the pre-picked pile. Crazy girl! I thought it would be lovely to take a picture of them in the pumpkin patch, but we are nearing the end of the season and the pumpkin patch isn’t really very lovely anymore. Oh well. We moved on to the pumpkin pile and made our selections. The usual rule is to pick a pumpkin you can carry, but Eve chose a HUGE one and Grandpa Tom happily carried it for her. She’s a lucky girl. :)

image

Weighing our pumpkins. We had 63lbs of pumpkin! I love this scale.

We also picked up some apple cider and dried corn to decorate the house.

Back at home Lex decided he was too tired to carve pumpkins right away, but Eve was raring to go. She also was eager to do it herself! She quickly decided some help with the scooping out the guts part would be ok, but she did most of the carving all on her own. I sat by, watching and hoping we would not see any blood! (Speaking of blood, while this was going on Lex was at the table and suddenly said, “Hey, I lost a tooth!” They are so much less eventful these days!)

image

Ready to go!

image

Scooping out the guts is hard work!

image

She drew a bunch of sample faces on the white board (I should have taken a picture of that!) and eventually decided on a basic pumpkin face. There may have been a bit of persuasion in there as we all told her how tricky it is to carve curves and details. She learned pretty quickly herself once she set to work carving the face!

It is a very chilly night, but we slipped out quickly to light the candle and put Jack on display for all to see. Hopefully he’ll have a friend join him soon when Lex gets inspired to carve his pumpkin.

image

Two little pumpkins sitting on a porch. She is also making a scary Halloween face, or so she told me.

Lost tooth

Trying to get the kids in bed tonight. Thunder and lightening. Driving wind and rains. Everyone is unsettled. Finally the storm died down and I got them both in bed. Awhile later I hear Lex at the top of the stair, “Mom, I lost a tooth.” This is the second time he has lost a tooth that I didn’t even know was loose. I remember when a loose tooth was a big deal, but I guess no more. Tonight was the bottom, right canine. That boy is growing up fast.

Lex lost a tooth, in one day!

Lex came downstairs this morning and told me he had a loose tooth. He was pretty concerned about it because he thought he was done losing teeth. I reassured him that it was all fine and normal and he relaxed.

Eve and I went out for grocery shopping and errands this afternoon and I when I got home Lex told me his tooth fell out. All calm and laid back. I said, “WHAT?! Already?!” He swears he just noticed it being loose this morning, and when I felt it it was definitely loose, but not “hanging by a thread” loose. Then he showed me his mouth.

image

Alan told me this is too gross to post, but I’m gonna be a rebel and to do it anyway. It’s my blog and I can post what I want to! :)

 

Look at that other tooth in the hole? Usually you have a bit of time between falling out and growing in, but that tooth in there was halfway in before it knocked out the baby tooth. Craziness! :) For some reason Lex is a little unsettled by the whole thing. He’s not sure what to do with the tooth (no tooth fairy for him) and just seems a little “meh.” I’m not sure he believes me that it’s normal to still be losing teeth. It has been awhile since the last one and he really thought he was done.

There goes another tooth!

Eve lost another tooth today.  The top, right canine.  These days it is so much more mundane than it was in the early days.  I knew she had a few loose ones in there, but she told me last night that her tooth was about to fall out. I felt it and boy was she right!  She wanted a treasure box from school though, so she didn’t wiggle too much.  Today she said a friend taught her out to get them out (“Just twist and pull. Easy!”) and she got her treasure box.  :-)

image

The tooth fairy usually brings her gold dollars coins, which she never spends, but she said tonight that she was hoping for a dollar bill so she could add it to her doll savings.  I told her she can add the gold coins too, but she said they are way too pretty to spend.  :-)  The tooth fairy left a crisp dollar bill with a red heart stamped on it.  I hope that’s not too pretty to spend!

Notice anything missing?

imageEve lost her first tooth today!  Top, front, left.  She had four pulled, of course, but this is the first one that fell out on it’s own.  It has been wiggly for a long time and she recently started working it hard to get it out.  Today it came out in her bagel and cream cheese.  She licked it clean with her tongue.  She’s so weird.  She’s also SUPER excited for the tooth fairy.  And she’s excited because the one next to it is is also wiggly, so she has already started on her next project. :)