I was going to start this post with a picture of my braces, truly I was. But as it turns out it's much more difficult to take a picture of teeth wearing clear braces than I imagined. I took a dozen bad ones by myself, and then enlisted the help of Russ, who took 4 more that were both bad *and* unflattering. So I give up, and if you'd like I will show you my teeth next time I see you.
I had a scary day at the ortho. I was in for a repo evaluation. No, don't worry. My teeth were not the latest victims of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. They were evaluating to reposition, not repossess.
So I'm laying there in the chair with my mouth open as far as humanly possible, and then some. They have these cool plier things that they use in some mysterious way to scrape the bracket off your teeth. Apparently the cement is strong in only one direction, though it quickly became more apparent that this principle is more true with metal braces than with clear braces. Because the technician popped the metal bracket right off, but pushed and pulled and tugged and then pushed some more on the clear bracket. I was more than a little concerned about the possibility that she was going to wrench my tooth right out of my mouth. Then something popped and she said "oh darn, I've fractured it." Now if that doesn't inspire confidence in the heart (and teeth) of the orthodontic patient I just don't know what will. All I could think was--she FRACTURED my tooth? This cannot be good!!
I had a moment of relief as she explained that she had broken two of the brackets and not my tooth. (hooray!) But it was a short moment, because then the orthodontist came over and explained that he would now have to grind the broken brackets off of my teeth. "Don't worry," he said, "I'll be able to see when I've ground all of the bracket off and have reached the glue layer." That was comforting--to know that he at least had a landmark to keep him from griding off the front surfaces of my front teeth! He also explained that he was going to have to have water spraying on my teeth as he ground. Who knows why that was. It's possible that I'm better off not knowing...
The last part of my eventful appointment was having the new brackets cemented in place. This was proceeded by the technician inserting a piece of plastic in my mouth around my teeth that made me look, I am sure, very much like a wide mouth bass. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) my mouth is too small for the wide mouth bass look, and so it had to come out. The actual cementing of the new brackets was almost anti-climatic by the time it happened.
Here's hoping that next time I can go back to the quick, uneventful orthodontic adjustment, in which I have no need to worry that any of my teeth have been broken. Or that I look like a wide mouth bass...
Ok. . .this is only to explain the 200 pound kid that I have. . . im a little grossed out. But it was really funny, he came home from school barfing yesterday really sick. he was in bed all afternoon feeling realy aweful, and then about 9 oclock as the rest of the family was really getting into fhe he came down in his UNDIES and said he felt great, and that he now knew the truth, his clothes were what was making him feel sick. IT WAS HILAROUS!!!! He is back in bed miserable today!!!! 
Levi and I ran the race on the mighty Canandaigua river this year. The day was great - 75-80 until it started to rain. Water was warm. I loved it. We traded in our canoe for a submarine about 1/2 way through as we took on more and more water. I installed a wave splash guard on our canoe like some of the guys we talked to last year told us to. It was supposed to keep water out of the canoe. You can tell, it didn't seem to help. Once we were under water, it seemed to pull the bow up a bit though :) . We took a great line all the way through and never capsized in any rapid, but his 200 pounds and my 260 pounds i think just make our boat ride low. We just kept taking on more water until we were full, that happened about 100 yards infront of the main rapids that killed us last year. We took a far right line and went over the falls well (if you consider sideways, then backwards good) but we didn't capsize, That only happened because with all the water in our canoe, we couldn't manuever, then we just turned around so I was in bow and levi in stern, but with the submerged state of our fine craft, and rather than finish the race backwards, we jumped out and dumped water and kept going. While we were submarining, Levi was paddling up to his shoulders in the water, and his head was going under every wave. I don't know how he liked it but he seemed to be happy when he came up for air. We still finished with a good time and I have no idea if we matched last years results. Having run it last year really helped us take a better line this year. As you can see from the picture, we made an attempt at floatation devices, we need to learn to attach them better and probably either lose weight or get more of them. We had a great time. We are trying to find out how we did. I got third last year with Brother clemmer, a with a partner who cant even measure up to my partner this year. We can't find results anywhere.
Congratulations to Amber for being invited and inducted into Phi Kappa Phi. For those who don't know, the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi is the nation's oldest, largest, and most selective all-discipline honor society. She earned the honor by keeping a 3.95 GPA while attending UVSC, soon to be UVU. I just wanted you all to know how proud I am of her and all her hard work.
Levi had a VERY shy friend sleeping over. To torture him, Brook and her friend Michelle put his clothes on (over their own!) and took pictures of the adventures his clothes had while he was sleeping in. His mom said she would love for him to see them, since he has kind of no self esteem. Even though he is older than Levi and really cute, he thinks he can't ask any girls out because they would say no.
Showing their desire to do good works, and strictly as a compassionate service, both girls enthusiasticly assured me that they would go out with him in less than a heartbeat. But won't at the present time because one has 499, and the other has 312 days till they are sixteen at the time of the picture taking. They spouted these numbers off the top of their heads. How did they do that???? ps. the boy turned bright red!!!! But seemed to like the pics. And he didn't even get mad that they were sitting on his truck!!!!
For those of you who may not have known, this past semester I was Editor-in-Chief of UVSC's literary journal, Touchstones. As of tomorrow, the journal will launch and my duties as Chief Watson will end. I've been working two years to get to this point, and I just thought this issue looked so cool I would share. (Of course, I'm not very objective...)
This picture has on of my favorite things on it. The utility sink on the right of the picture has a small drinking fountain faucet attached so the kids can get their own drinks. The cabinet guy is in the process of making a pull out stool that will fit just inside the cabinet so the kids will stop upending my garbage can to reach it!
The mud room half could still use (a) hooks which we have purchased but have not had time to install as the for sale house is still not all the way finished and needs to be worked on first and (b) a coat of brown paint on the bench part to hide all the dirt and mud that comes in with these kids!
Here you can see that it is a half mudroom and half laundry room.
And lastly, the only person who loved the laundry sorter from Wal mart was Evan! I though it was possibly the silliest contraption ever! Built to hold about 1 person's clothes! Maybe I should put it together one more time and fill it with clothes and see how much it really holds before I return it.
