First Lost Tooth! And the Winner Is...

Ashton! His bottom front left tooth has been loose for a few days, and I have had the wonderfully fun task of trying to figure out what kinds of soft foods he could eat, and teaching him to tear/break his food into little pieces so he could chew with his back teeth. As usual, I sent the boys upstairs to brush their teeth after dinner, then came story and songs before bedtime. I was having them read to me tonight, and I checked on his tooth while he was talking, and it was missing! He hadn't even noticed it had fallen out! So I ran to the bathroom figuring that's where it would be, and luckily I found it in the sink- no sad drain death for Ashton's first lost tooth! Silly kid. :) So we tucked it neatly under his pillow with strict instructions not to touch it, because if he moved it, then the Tooth-fairy wouldn't be able to find it. He was pretty excited to be getting some money by morning... Of course when morning came, it brought tears because he couldn't find his money (a whole paper dollar! Whoo-hoo!) and because he thought the toothfairy was going to wake him up and he didn't get to see her! How precious is that? What a sweetie. :)



We had a pretty lazy day today- we learned how to play their new Scooby Doo game (pretty fun actually, and something they learned well enough to play without me later on, which is nice), and then we put together a big 48-piece dinosaur puzzle in the kitchen.



After which, we feasted on an old-fashioned brandy apple pie! Ta-sty! I was excited to use my new apple peeler/corer/slicer that I received as a Christmas present (thank you Turi!), and Sean and Ashton thought it was the greatest thing on the planet, how it peeled the entire skin off the apples in one big long piece. "Do another one, Mama, do another one!" Good thing I had a deep-dish for the pie...



Now that I think back on it, this has been one eventful week. It started out with a pile of snow that was almost higher than the retaining wall in the backyard, my snow leopard tattoo, a super emotional week, and now a first lost tooth. And school starts for me again on Monday. Storytelling this semester- should be fun! Just a couple more fun snowy pictures to end this blog. First, the snow. I admit, there was a bit of a drift, and the snow all seemed to accumulate in the back corner, but there was a lot to start with!



Then Sean "sledding" down the hill in the backyard to the ramp we built...



...and Ashton "tunneling" like a little worm through the snow. (You might have to click on this picture to really see him going for it head first.)

Christmas Tree Cutting

After such a long, stressful and super busy semester (which officially ended yesterday, YEAH!), we were finally able to escape and cut our Christmas tree with Kevin's parents and sister. Of course I felt the need to document the entire morning on film and so now have many pictures to share with you! :) The nicest part is that we are lucky enough to live so close to Galena forest, and headed up Mt. Rose HWY for a few miles to Timberline Dr. where we off-roaded a bit (on balding tires- not good, but still managed not to get stuck, thanks to Kevin's truck driving skills). We found a good place to park, and hiked in to find our trees- here is a picture of the path we made through some very powdery snow.



It was so beautiful with the sun filtering through the trees, catching sparse patches of crystalline iridescence. Here's a close up of some dried grass poking through the snow flakes.



Here's Kevin shouting for the boys (and Pirate) to come check out the tree he found-



The trek back to the truck with the trees:



It was pretty cold- low 30s I'd guess, and proof that is how powdery the show was- it would barely stay together to make a snowball. I had Alice do a demonstration to show just how much snow can resemble dandelion fluff~





And The Boys with Papa, and the tree safely in the back of the truck:



Pirate wants in the picture too!



And here we have Sean eating snow: typical little 5-year-old!



And Ashton as well:



A fun day- just nice to be outside in the fresh air with family (and not working on the ever-ongoing stream of papers I seemed to have this semester)! I feel like I can finally start concentrating on Christmas instead of walking around preoccupied and trying to think of 8 things at the same time...