~ 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.

::Just one more thing::

I just had such a great time while my dad was here that I can't really stop talking about it (obviously) but this'll be my last "dad" post, at least for now.
Dad helped Kris replace the brakes on my car. Well, I guess it was the rotors? It was a hard job and it was nice for Kris to have some help. Except that my dad is not a good influence as far as NOT buying tools. Oh well, at least he could tell Kris the right tools to buy--which is sometimes a problem.
Here they are:

The brakes felt wonderful for my drive to Minnesota. I feel lucky to have such a handy husband, and a handy dad.

And last but not least, my dad makes such yummy sandwiches. I had good lunches the whole week he was here. It was too nice.

Yum. Love you dad!

.::The Things Grandpas do for their Boys Pt 2::.

Wonderful Grandpas that love their little ones might play cars for hours. Whether they feel like it or not. They might also put up with being constantly bossed, and told that "cars don't talk". Funny since a few months ago they seemed to talk a lot.

Patience is important.

Max loved it.

A Grandpa also might lie down on the floor and let heavy heavy four year olds jump on them (it's called Hop on Pop. We used to get to do it when we were little. It was the best)
Then he might pretend to be a horse.


Or maybe more of a bucking bronco.


This one good way to get a workout. I don't think I'm going to try it anytime soon.

Does it looks like Max is having fun? I think SO!
Then that same Grandpa, since he is already on the floor, might just let his very heavy four year old grand boy fly like an airplane (this is also something we used to get to do when we were little. It was so fun.)

That one took a little while to figure out though.

I think the front flip exit was a little intimidating. That was all of the floor activities for the day.
Keep in mind, these Grandpa activities were besides making breakfast every morning, teaching Max (and his mom) how to make bread, helping clean up night time pukes, doing laundry, reading bed-time stories, baby sitting, going to the park for hours... I could go on and on. Max is lucky to have such a fabulous grandpa! Grandpa Guy, you can come back and visit anytime.

::KC's Fame::

(Warning--I don't know how to spell barbeque. So I've spelled it several differnet ways in this post. I think one of them has got to be right. Just keep in mind, I'm not a dummy...right?)
While my dad was here we thought we'd better let him in on one of the things that makes Kansas City famous. The Barbeque!
He's certainly had barbeque before, and of course he's cooked stuff ON the barbeque a billion times, but he hadn't ever had Arthur Bryant's--those of you from out here know that if you haven't eaten at Arthur Bryant's (or Oklahoma Joe's of course) you haven't really had true barbeque.
So we took him.
And I think he liked it.

He's eating ribs here. We had a platter with ribs, sausage and burnt ends. Mmmm burnt ends. Max likes it too.

I actually don't like going to this place that much, although the food is tasty. It's just really greasy in there, the people you have to order from always look at you like you're the dumbest idiot in the world, and somebody always tells me I can't sit where I want to. Oh, and at lunch the line goes out the door. That tells you something though, right? It sure tastes good.
I found out that people don't like to get interrupted while they're concentrating on ribs.



Which may be why I wasn't able to get a picture of Kris where he wasn't making some sort of ridiculous face.

No matter how hard I tried.

I guess he was trying to concentrate.

This is a decent picture though.

He's cute, even though he needs a haircut really bad.
Basically how this place works is that they give you a big plate full of meat--assorted or all the same, whatever you want. And then you have 3 or 4 squeeze bottles at each table that are filled with different kinds of bbq sauce--Arthur Bryant's signature sauces of course. So you can add whichever flavor sauce you want to your meat. The fries taste great when they're dipped in the bbq sauce too. They also give you as many slices of wonderbread as you want. Sound healthy? Oh yeah....
So we ate and ate--

and ate and ate

and showed Max how not to eat bones

and then when we were all ready to explode, we left.

It was good.
If you want to visit this place with us you'd better hurry up and get out here. Only a month left....