.::School Picts::.

Here's Max's school picture from this last fall.



Isn't it funny? Can you see the paper mache mushroom on the right hand side?
I like his hair in this one. It looks like him.


Here's his picture from a couple of weeks ago.



So funny! I don't like his hair so much in this picture, it looks like somebody tried to tame it, which is just a bad idea. The school pictures are so silly. I'm glad I have other better pictures of him, but I'm glad to have these too---they're just a crack up!

::Never Gets Old::

This morning I finally got done folding and putting away about 12 tons of laundry. I looked up and here's what I saw:

I suddenly had flashbacks.

2004:


early 2006:


later 2006:


Sitting in a laundry basket is the kind of coolness that seriously never gets old.
I just wish I had one my size. Sort of.

.::Visual Proof::.

I just think these are so cute that I can't resist posting them!

Here's the page where he wrote his name for the first time. You can see down at the bottom the one where I wrote the first line in black and he finished in blue. Above that is his second successful attempt. (yeah, I realize now it looks a little like he's writing MAT, but keep in mind his Xs are on a bit of an upwards curve....)

Here's another page we did right then. You can see all the different words we worked on. I had to remind him what a lot of the letters were shaped like, but I didn't help him any more than that. I especially love how the word fish looks, and the E with like 7 legs. My letters are at the top, all the rest are his.

And then here's a letter to Parker he wrote last week. I helped him spell and reminded him what letters looked like on a separate piece of paper. It's so cute!

Now that I have it scanned maybe I'll actually mail it one of these days. We'll see...
Here's a picture that went with the letter. This is the first thing I've ever seen him draw that wasn't just scribbles. I told him to draw a face and he just did. I couldn't believe it. There's a guy, a couple of hearts, a tree, grass and the sun in this picture.

I'm just thrilled to have a child that actually drew something!!! (as you can probably tell). Yay for Max!

::He can WRITE! Who knew??::

A little background here. Up until this point Max has hated to color, and didn't ever care to draw. I got all sorts of fun coloring books to try to tempt him and would always offer to draw with him, but no dice. He's been doing better with coloring at school lately (he was terrible when he first started), but it's still much more of a chore than a pleasure.
Alright, on to the news.
A couple of days ago Max decided he wanted to write his name on some paper. Which really meant he wanted ME to write his name. So I did. A couple of times. Then I asked him if he could do it. He said he couldn't, and that it was just too hard.
I made the first line for the M and then had to go and answer the phone or something. When I came back, he had written his whole name, starting off the line that I had made.
I was basically flabbergasted. He was so proud he looked like he could've floated away. Then he wrote his name again right away. Just as well. Then again.

He proceeded to write his name a zillion times, for about the next two hours. (and yes, his paper was upside down for this picture, because he was making Ws, otherwise known as upside-down Ms!)

I helped him write a few other words, you know, dad, mom, fish, mama, love. He did really well.
It was a little tough to get him to take a break for dinner.

I knew he could do it. Sometimes it's so funny that all it takes is finding out you can actually do something to do it! He's such a smart guy, he's reading a lot and has known his alphabet backwards and forwards for a couple of years. So I'm not surprised he can write like a champ--I'm just surprised at the suddenness of it. It's so funny.

He's very serious about it. Obviously. When I picked him up from school the next day his coloring page was covered with cute little MAXes. Oh yeah, and AXM and XAM. He's experimental.
We're proud of him and his adorable chubby little arms!

.::No more crowns & No bed either!::.

Kris finished his last crown on monday. He's done with ALL of his graduation requirements! It's amazing. Really amazing. All his hard work and stress has paid off, thank goodness. We thought there was a very strong chance that he'd have some sort of problem and that his finishing would be delayed, so we're SO relieved that he's finished. So yay for that.

We sold our bed. We weren't planning on selling it until much closer to our actual move date, but Kris and I got anxious and listed a whole bunch of stuff on Craig's list this weekend, thinking we were running out of time. We didn't think that anything would sell right away (I guess I don't know what we were thinking honestly). We had a ton of emails on the bed right away, and somebody came and picked it up the next afternoon. So now we're sleeping on the hide-a-bed in the couch. For three more weeks. Augh. We thought about stealing Max's bed back, but he got a little bothered when our bed left, and said that nobody was allowed to take his. We figure if he sleeps well everybody sleeps better, so whatever!
And to everybody that's stayed over and slept in that bed, sorry. It's not quite as comfy as I'd hoped. Better than a lot of things, but just not as comfy and I'd like right now.
But now we have some money saved up for our new bed that we're going to get from Ikea when we move and I'm excited.

More news coming tomorrow hopefully...in the meantime please enjoy:

::How cool is this?::

I didn't even know that these cool tag-along bike things existed until a couple of years ago. Isn't it fun?
Max was really scared to ride it at first, the bumps and turns and everything made him pretty nervous. But Kris offered him ice cream or something equally motivating, and all it took was one successful ride. Now he's an expert.

Here they are on the way to school one morning a little while ago.

I'm always a little nervous that he's going to just fall off, but he's a bigger boy than I think he is.
We haven't gotten to go on a ride all together yet, but hopefully sometime soon we will--now that the good weather is going to be more consistent (hopefully!)

We got this thing off Craig's list for a really good price. Isn't Craig's list great?

In other news, Max woke up two nights ago in the middle of the night yelling and screaming that a hot dog was eating him. How weird is that? I asked him about it the next day and he remembered the dream. He told me all about the hot dog eating him. I tried to explain that hot dogs don't eat people, people eat hot dogs. It didn't help.

Yesterday, unbeknownst to us he brought one of his quarters into the bathroom with him while he was using the facilities. He's been earning quarters by doing the chores. Really his only chore right now is feeding Sultan (much to Sultan's chagrin). It's been working out so far though. Anyway, Kris and I were in the living room and we suddenly heard this horrible screaming and crying. Max came running out of the bathroom with his pants down around his ankles screaming "MOMMY!! DADDDY!! OH NO!!" He scared me to death. I couldn't imagine what had happened. Guess what? He'd dropped his quarter into the toilet. "into the deep deep water!" Total tragedy. Good thing Mr. daddy dentist has a whole box full of rubber gloves just waiting for jobs like that. The quarter was recovered and all is now right with the world. Yuck.

In conclusion, last week Kris taught Max that there is such a thing as a knock knock joke. He didn't really get it at first, but after some coaching he's started to make up his own jokes. And wow they're ridiculous. I think I remember Murphy doing this same thing long long ago.
When I tell him a real knock knock joke (I think I know two. One is like Dwain the bathtub I'm dwowning!) he looks at me like I'm a weirdo. Here are some good examples of his specials from this afternoon.

knock knock, who's there, pineapple, pineapple who? Pineapples are yummy!
knock knock, who's there, parrot, parrot who? parrots fly in the air
knock knock, who's there, harrot, harrot who? Harrot heart! (????????)
knock knock, who's there, pirate, pirate who? Pirates swim in the BOAT!

I hope everybody had a good weekend. We're back to work and school tomorrow. Hopefully all will go well!

~ Spring Week ~

Right around easter Max's school had "spring week."
It was really fun because he came home with all these wonderful happy springy projects, right about when we really needed a little shot of spring.
Here's one of them:

Isn't this adorable? I think that the teachers prepared all the kids' paper--sponge painting it or something. The little shapes are foam stickers. So cute and cheery!
Here's another craft:

The egg opens and closes and the little chick comes out of a little pocket in the egg.

Can you see he's getting a little better at coloring--well at least a little more enthusiastic!
Here's an easter basket craft:

The eggs were colored separately and then glued on.
One day they decorated real eggs. He carried this egg around for an entire day--I finally told him that if he didn't let me put it in the fridge Sultan would eat it. He gave it to me. Later that night he woke up crying "oh no! Sultan ate my egg!"
Yikes--I wasn't trying to give him nightmares!

They finished out the week with a big easter party. The easter bunny came early that day and hid a basket for everybody. It was really exciting for the kids.
The basket had a few small treats and a cute fuzzy little bunny.
Max loved it.

They do such a great job at his school making things fun and exciting--and mixing up the fun with learning. We'll be so sad when we have to leave it behind!

Happy spring everyone!

.::DONE!!!(well, almost)::.

Kris had his big live patient board exam this weekend. It was really really stressful and intense. He wasn't sure if he was going to have the patients he needed until early last week. But finally he found some people and it was all confirmed, which was a relief.
Even with trustworthy patients coming it was still a scary event. Everyone at school was really worked up and stressed out--people couldn't sleep or eat, they were breaking out in cold sores...all sorts of horrible stuff. Kris kept it pretty cool, but he was still really busy trying to get everything ready. And a little stressed too.

(I have to apologize, some of the pictures in this post didn't turn out so good--mostly the ones in the school. I'm very opposed to using flash right now, and sometimes I end up paying the price.)

Scary looking tools huh?
I assisted Kris. Which I was a little nervous about becuase I've only had one assisting experience before. And a lot of people we talked to were like "on no, don't have your spouse assist you. They're just way too invested in your success and so get all upset and worked up." or something like that. We thought, who better to help than the person that cares more than anybody else?
Anyway, we had a patient come in for a deep cleaning friday morning. The procedure went really well and the patient was such a nice guy. He was on time, patient and super cooperative. It took a long time because he had to go in to the graders before the procedure to be approved, then had to go in at the end and get graded. He got to wait in line for quite a while each time. We told him we were going to send him some money or something as a thank you and he refused. It was nice to hear that he felt like the free treatment was enough of a benefit. He was great and Kris did really well, it all went so smooth!
On friday afternoon Kris had to do a couple of root canals on some extracted teeth (yuck!) and I didn't get to help him. He said it went pretty well though.
On saturday morning we got up nice and early and dropped Max off with our friends the Stocks (the same sweet people that watched him when we went on our RI trip).
Then we headed over to the school to meet Kris's patient for the cavity fillings section of the test.

She was a teenage girl from our old ward. I guess the cavities she had were absolutely perfect for the test, "textbook" as they say. Once we got her in and all approved the procedures went nice and smooth. It was lucky that she had both kinds of cavities that Kris needed--a lot of people had to use two different patients which took twice as long. She was really patient too and sweet.

(kris getting an injection or something ready)
It made things a lot easier. Also her cavities were just like Kris expected them to be after he started working on them. A lot of people got in there and started working on their patients and then found out that the cavity was way bigger than expected, or there was something else wrong with the tooth or something unexpected that made things really complicated. We were lucky.
We were also lucky because of the following: 1.our cleaning patient didn't fall asleep in the middle of the procedure and jerk awake, spiking themselves with a sharp instrument and slicing a huge chunk our of her gums (not an allowable result)
2. none of our patients got arrested the night before the test, and so we didn't have to go and bail them out at midnight.
3. we didn't have to pay our patients
4. and more
obviously I heard some horror stories while I was waiting for patients to come out of grading. Yikes.
Kris got done with the cavities in the early afternoon and then we got to leave! All the rest of the poor people that had to use two different patients were still sweating it out. It was nice to be done early. We took our patient over to the crown center and got her some ice cream.
Here she is with Kris.

and here's the ice cream. An excellent reward I'd say.

(this is one of Max's favorite treats, "dirt and worms")
We went back to Stocks to pick up Max and this is what we found:

and this:

super, aren't they?

Notice how the superman shirt rides up so high on Max's little stomach. He's just shaped so much differently than their kids, it's really funny. They're all so slight and athletic. Not so much us in our family. The little boy on the left is six. He's only got like an inch on Max!
Anyway, he had a good time.
So we were done! And we feel good about it! And the assisting all went well for me (at least I think it did, I should probably check with Kris). I had no doubt in my mind that Kris was just going to pull it off and do a great job and that's what he did.
And I'm glad all those people telling us I shouldn't assist were wrong. It was great to be there helping him at such an important time.
And we're so glad it's over! The results don't come out for about four weeks. Now Kris just has a few requirements left to finish up. They're important, but he's pretty far along with them so hopefully he can get them done without too much trouble and stress. We'll keep you posted!

::Patches::

Kris is a collector. Many of you may not know this.
Kris collects patches.

Patches like the kind you might put on a scout shirt, or a backpack or something. You know what I'm talking about?

He has quite a few. Several years ago I sewed some of them onto some our camping backpacks, and I put a few on some of Kris's coats. Sewing those on was hard work. Tough on the fingers. Any of you moms that had little scouts back in the day when patches had to be sewn on know what I'm talking about.
Some of those patches I had sewed on were starting to come off I guess, so on sunday Kris broke out the collection to get some replacements and shake things up a bit.
Max thought it was pretty cool.
Kris offered to sew a cool patch on Max's denim jacket. Of course the only patch Max wanted was a "dog patch"--no dog patch to be found in the collection.

But that's ok. It took some time for them to talk the options over, but they finally decided on something.


Kris spent a lot of time sewing patches on that afternoon. He was like "this is HARD!"

And he hurt his fingers. And he stabbed himself pretty deep in one of his fingers. Poor thing!

This is a good example of a Kris concentration face. He worked hard.
He got Max's Buick patch sewed on to the jacket. Such a nice daddy, don't you think?
Max was thrilled.

So thrilled that you can't even see the patch in this picture because he's hugging it so hard.
Here's a shot of him the next day, being ultra cool eating a cookie. You can sort of see the patch there on his right shoulder.

He wouldn't take the jacket off for like three days. Then it got really dirty and I had to put it in the laundry. Hopefully the sewing job survives the wash.... we'll see!

.::Project-pillows::.

I'm very proud of myself because I made all these pillows!

And for those of you that know me well, you know that sewing anything is a huge feat, and sewing something that actually turns out well (with out being helped every step of the way) is next to impossible for me.
So I'm very proud!
I got the fabric at Ikea, it was so cheap--like 2 or 3 bucks a yard for the blue, and about 5 bucks a yard for the patterned stuff. So great. And most of the pillow innards came from Ikea too.
Carie showed me how to make the first one (thanks Carie!!), and after about a week of trying and a lot of help for my mom I actually remembered how to thread my sewing machine. After that I went crazy and if I hadn't run out of fabric I probably would've ended up with like 15 pillows.
I'm excited to bring them to our new house, hopefully they'll look good on our nicer couch that someone else is borrowing from us right now. I'm looking forward to relaxing on that couch once again--with the new pillows of course!
I love the fabric, it's so cute. The colors are so cheery. And they make Max sing the Katamari song. "na, na na na na na na na na na na na na na" I can explain that later for those who are confused and care to learn more about weird japanese video games.