::before & after::

Here is Max's cute little face and smile before he went to the daddy dentist.

Mr daddy dentist wasn't pleased with the situation going on with Max's maxillary teeth. He had two loose teeth on top--his remaining front baby tooth, and one of the ones on the side.
Dad doesn't want grown-up teeth coming in crooked because they have to get around loose baby teeth that boys are just too lazy to pull out by themselves.
So he gave Max some time to pull them out himself, and when he didn't, into the office we took him.

He was excited to get "sleepy teeth"--that is, until the needles came out. There was a good amount of screaming from the operatory. The front desk ladies that love Max were cringing and hoping he was ok. When I went in there every dental assistant in the place was patting some part of Max and telling him he was ok. He also already had about three of our reward toys. Is this boy spoiled or what?

He survived the tooth pulling, though he didn't think he would.
And here's the result.

He looks like a ridiculous halloween pumpkin, especially with that great big monster front tooth in there all by itself (he gets those huge serrated front teeth from me for sure.)
He likes having lots of windows for his tongue to peek out of.
I hope his teeth come soon.
He just looks like such a goof. A cute goof, but a goof. But then again, when you're a goof how can you help looking like one?

::nephew::

This is one of my lovely nephews--Christopher. My brother's little guy. But if you call him Christopher, he won't answer or even turn around. He goes by Scooter. He loves things that spin around, he speaks complete sentences in his soft squeaky little voice, he loves his Pup and his Dog, he loves cell phones and he coveted Max's toy microwave insanely. He's not afraid of me which makes me SO happy.
He also doesn't eat.
Or so I hear. His parents say they battle with him to even get him to eat stuff like chicken nuggets & mac and cheese. He only likes juice, cheese sticks and some other stuff I can't remember.
Goofball, right?
I made him a sandwich one day when they were visiting and he actually started eating it. It took like 45 minutes, but long after I had left the table I came by and saw him chomping down the sandwich. It had to be documented.


Dismemberment of the sandwich is not important. It's just the eating that is.
He got a call at some point, but he didn't let it distract him.


Isn't he cute? I'm so glad he got to come visit with his family and we got some fun one on one time. Even if it's taken me almost a month to post some pictures of the visit. Oh well.

::oktoberfest::

This last weekend there was a big Oktoberfest celebration up in Red River. Red River is on of the ski areas up around Taos. Kris has been up there, but Max and I haven't yet. Kris really wanted to head up there and eat sausages and have some fun, but after our crazy quick Utah trip last week I was really looking forward to a quiet weekend (as quiet as they get with Max around anyway) and I didn't think my poor body would be up for another four hours in the car right now.

So, like the awesome understanding husband that he is, Kris thought that we could have an Oktoberfest celebration at home.
So we bought bunches of yummy food and invited some friends over.
Best part? I didn't have to cook anything!

We were missing something important though. We haven't had a BBQ grill since we left Missouri--we left the one we found on the side of the road and fixed up with Kelly & Lechelle. We've missed having one ever since. So finally we just broke down in honor of the Oktoberfest celebration and got ourselves one! Kris was--and still is--very happy about the grill. We've eaten something cooked on it every day since we got it.

So we got the grill and we went to World Market and got ourselves as much German style stuff as we could. The main element of our meal was bratwurst from Whole Foods. Mmmmmm Mmmmmm.

Here are Kris's awesome little appetizers--meats cheeses, pate and nutella on teensy little breads. You can see the saurkraut cooking there too.

Some desert (along with a delicious Sam's cheesecake, of course). These aren't our favorite german candies, but we've got to take what we can get here in the good old US.

Sultan looked on very hopefully, and the lucky dog, at the end of the day he got a bunch of left over wurst. I think he's still thinking about that evening happily.

And here's the master of the feast (with a nice new haircut), toasting you all with his non-alcoholic maltz bier. He was a happy camper.

Happy Oktoberfest everybody!

::amazing::

We went to Max's back to school night a couple of weeks ago, and there we were shown this gem of a chart. Check it out:

Cool, right? But here's the amazing part. At the time of this chart there were only 19 or 20 kids in his class.
It hardly seems possible that they could own 42 dogs between them, that's insane! Especially considering that one of them (poor deprived kid) has no pet at all, and then there are a bunch of cats and "others" in the mix there.
I think it's hilarious.

::a gift::

We left UT early in the morning, heading back home. As we went down I-15 there was this lovely sunrise. I really appreciated it.


It was so lovely it was almost like a Santa Fe sunrise. Almost.....

We had a good drive home. Kris is so sweet, he knows driving isn't my favorite thing, so he drove the whole time. He also set it up so I could sit in the middle bench and put my feet up on the console for some of the time. That helped my feet not to swell up too much.
We made it home by dinner time. It was a whirlwind trip but we're so glad we got to make it.

::proximity::

This weekend we took a quick last minuteish trip to UT to see Kris's dad. He's been really sick and had to be in the hospital for an operation.
It was great that we could be there. We had some really good family time (minus Kelly & Lechelle whom we definitely missed.)
The fact that we were able to just go when we felt like we should was so nice for us.
We took our sweet van. Sultan got the whole back all to himself, the luggage went on top, and I alternated between front seat and middle seat next to Max so that I could put my feet up.


We were only out there for about a day and a half, but we got to spend at least a sliver of time with everybody which was nice.
Max had enough time to step in dog poop with his shoes, then take his shoes off and step in dog poop with his bare feet. Here's my mom lysoling his feet. Lucky guy, right?

Grandpa Ken was in good spirits and we got to spend a lot of time visiting with him at the hospital, which was nice.

Max and his cousins made some fun art for the hospital room wall which I think Grandpa really appreciated.

And Ken also didn't let the hospital get him down.

I hope you appreciate my censoring there.

Max had such a blast, we had a super tough time getting him in the car to go home. He loves it out there and who could blame him.
It's so nice to be so close. We love you all, family.

::baby::

Meet my new 3 month old niece Ann.


I'm so glad I got to meet her before she got any bigger. She's adorable, isn't she?

::more visits::

My brother Cammon is visiting us this weekend with his wife Lorri and cute little 2 yr old boy and 3 month old girl. We're having lots of fun mostly just hanging out. Kris did a quick dental exam on the little guy yesterday when we gave them a tour of the office. He did awesome--Max got to do the exam first and was a good example thank goodness.
They've been playing together really well, Max and Scooter. Lots of sharing and messing around. And lots of piano playing.
We're lucky to be so close to family finally. How nice that family can come see us, we love it!!

(yes they're wearing matching shirts--thanks Gram)

::phoenix::

Just a quick rundown of Phoenix activities.
Kris did lots of learning all day and Max and I got to play.
We swam and swam. In fact I was too busy swimming to get any good swimming pictures. When it's 110 outside, you've got to stay cool somehow, and swimming worked out well for us. In fact Max made huge strides in his swimming while we were there. The pool didn't have much shallow end, so I was keeping a tight eye on him. He was following Kris around the pool on a floaty. Then Kris took off fast across the deep end and Max, wearing his mask and snorkel, took off after him. He was completely without any flotation! I was stressed out but he swam perfectly and made it to the edge without even realizing he was really swimming on his own. After that it was like something clicked and he was all over the pool. By the time we were done he was swimming so confidently. It was amazing.
So that was the swimming.

In the afternoon Max and I went to a huge outlet mall in Tempe. Phoenix basically has anyplace you could ever dream of shopping--that's a chain.
Of course Max had to ride the carousel immediately.

He got the weird cool mer-horse. He's also wearing the sunglasses they gave out at the hotel pool. He wore them everywhere that day and felt very awesome.
We went to the Disney Store for some PJs and a cool shirt or two. (We don't have a Disney Store in Santa Fe!)

We went to the Carters Outlet and Max very cutely helped me pick out a bunch of baby clothes. We tried to go neutral, but I have to say we did pick out a couple of things that weren't neutral at all. We'll have to just see what needs to be taken back! (We don't have any Carters in NM at all. Boo Hoo.)
We went to Gap and got Kris work shirts.
Then we were tired tired. Max spied the Rainforest Cafe, and since I knew he would love it we stopped in for some (yucky tasting)ice water and to share a dessert. Who knew that the dessert would be bigger than Max. We barely made it halfway through.

It didn't really matter about the food though, because we were enjoying the animatronics and the fake thunder storms too much.

We had In-N-Out Burger for lunch both days, mmmmmmm.
We had a big Rainforest Cafe dinner on saturday night, to please the Max. Max and I went to a movie.
We went to sacrament meeting in Gilbert in our friends' humongous ward. We had dinner with the same friends that night. So fun!

I'm going to leave out the part about how I scratched somebody's car in the parking lot. I'm also not going to post pictures of my feet swollen up to the size of Montana. I'm not posting about the air conditioner in the hotel that barely worked, even though I had the thermostat put down to 50 degrees.
But really those were the only bummers.
We had lots of fun otherwise, besides the CRAZY HEAT!
At least we got to get away from the responsibilities and just hang out.
There you go, there's the report. Good thing I had my phone along to take photos since I didn't break out the big camera once!

(oh, and these are our new monkeys for the office. They scream when you squeeze their bellies. Yes they're very cute, and yes the kids love them. Including Max!)