Next Phase

Elena noticed that a second tooth was loose, maybe a week after she found the first one was loose, and has been wiggling it for the last two months, waiting for it to fall out. Friday evening, she discovered that it goes back, too, and climbed out of bed to show me. Daddy was at work at the time, though. At her very next opportunity, she went show him her cool new trick but never got the chance because it popped right out. I still have no idea what the Tooth Fairy does with teeth, either, as she's lost both of them. The first went in a plastic bag because she wanted to show her cousins (all of them) personally, then disappeared in a pile of papers she's drawn on. The second slipped out of her hand while she was running around in excitement right after the big event. She says that if she finds the first she's trading it to the Tooth Fairy for a Wishing Ring. You can only do that with first teeth, though. The second one isn't quite as special, apparently.

In other news, the new ward has come, and we're not in it. About 60% of our ward leadership is, though. The next few weeks are going to be hectic as we scramble to fill callings.

My, How You Lose Track of Things...

James pushed a button on the keyboard, and now the computer refuses to acknowledge that Linux exists. Because of that, I didn't want to put my pictures on the computer. I hate Windows but put up with it because it lets Jonathan get paid (what idiot designs a website that only works with IE? Payroll, apparently...). And now I can't share all my pictures because, well, I don't have the camera, anymore. That one's a rather involved story that I will not get into, here. We'll just leave it at "we don't have the camera, anymore." Sooooo, here's what I've gleaned off my cell phone.

First off, we moved in March. It was kind of sudden and what was in our price range and fit our requirements landed us in the next ward over. It's an odd adjustment, after nearly 7 years, but we're coming around. Mind you, they're making a new ward in just 2 days, so we might be adjusting again, soon.
Moving meant driving the kids to school every day, too. Not fun, but at least they got to finish out the school year before they had to change that, too. Joseph's birthday was the first day of Summer Break, and it was a good one. We had chocolate cupcakes, presents, and lots of fun inventing a new game called "Warf!" I'm still not sure what the rules are, but they kids still ask for it.



Determined to make the summer both fun and something Jonathan can participate in, too, we have our Calendar O' Summer Fun! We've been to the library's special reading club activities, including meeting some police dogs. We've played at the park. We've even gotten to go on some trips. This is the wheel from the Mormon grist mill in the Marktplatz in Fredricksburg.


We also got to see the new Orion space capsule as it passed through on the way to New Mexico for testing. Joseph got to look at the model of the emergency launch abort system that the tests are for.



Much less fun was Joseph's MRI. Our pediatrician noticed that our boy's got a serious noggin on him--like, nearly adult-sized, and he's just barely 5--and wanted to see if there's anything odd going on in there. This was a real... adventure. It took a half-dozen tries and an extra three hours to get it done because the first two sedatives didn't take and he woke up part-way through the first scan. Why the sedatives? Have you ever tried to get a 5-year-old to lie perfectly still inside a buzzing metal tube for 30 minutes?

That's about it. Here's a bonus picture, to tide you over until the next post, of a roadside dive on the way to Fredricksburg. If I'd had a drink in my mouth, at the time, I'd have snorted it right out my nose.