Dr. Seuss, Snowman Quilt, and Spotlight

Impromptu Dr. Seuss character costumes in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday. Andrew is a magician from Bartholomew and the Oobleck and Jared is Thing 1 from The Cat in the Hat.

As promised here is a picture of my snowman quilt. This is the first quilt I have ever finished. Thanks to my mother-in-law for all her patience in helping me! Since there are still two and a half weeks left of winter I guess I can enjoy it for a little bit before putting it away!

Striders, a local running store, did a spotlight on Jason and me this month. Check it out on their website here.

Smile

I love this smile!

I always have.

Andrew has the cutest smile. I know I'm his mom and so my opinion probably doesn't count but I have gotten so many comments from other people about how precious his smile is. You have to admit that he is one good looking boy. Those dimples have always melted hearts when he flashes a smile.

That's why I was so sad when the accident happened. Boys will be boys. A year and a half ago on an extremely hot summer day the boys decided to make a water slide out of the metal slide in the back yard by putting a hose at the top. Everything was fantastic until Andrew decided to run up the wet slide, slipped and hit his front teeth on the slide.

It usually comes in handy to have a husband that is a doctor. When Andrew ran in the door with bloody, loose, chipped front teeth all I could think was "Bones grow back! Teeth don't!" Jason can fix broken bones and stitch up cuts but there's not much he can do for teeth. While we were driving to the dentist one of the teeth actually fell out. The only advise Jason had was to put it in spit and get to the dentist as fast as we could. We were grateful that the dentist was able to put the tooth back in and save it but little did we know that was only the beginning of Andrew's tooth problems.

The dentist filled in the chipped parts of his front teeth but said eventually when he was older they would have to do a crown. Over the last year and a half he has continued to slowly chip away more of that front tooth thanks to candy canes, football, soccer, hard to open water bottles... I was beginning to feel like a broken record telling him not to bite anything hard with his front teeth. In January he chipped off an even larger piece of tooth when his friend suggested opening a juice bottle with his teeth. Immediately dollar signs started flashing through my mind and I reacted in a not very nice way. (HOW MANY TIMES have I told you NOT to open things with your teeth?!!) So our trip to the dentist wasn't a fun one. The dentist said there was no choice but to put a crown on so while he did the prep work for the crown the receptionist showed me all the dollar signs even after the insurance paid their part. I felt like Andrew was sufficiently punished when they told him not to eat any candy or gum for two weeks until the permanent crown was put on. I had no idea then how long "two weeks" was really going to be.

We went to the dentist two weeks later to get the crown put on and were surprised when they told us the crown was the wrong color. I really didn't know it was that hard to match teeth. They sent it back to the lab and we returned a week later to find out again that it was the wrong color. This time the guy from the lab actually came over when we were there to make sure he matched Andrew's teeth. He took it back to the lab and a week later we returned to get the crown put on. Wrong color again! By then Andrew was really getting frustrated! We went to a Weber State basketball game one night and Jared brought a friend along. Jared's friend bought some candy and Andrew was literally in tears that he couldn't have any. AR fun day came and he was the only one in his class that couldn't chew gum (they can pay money to chew gum for the day to raise money for AR). Valentine's day came and went and his bag of candy is still untouched. I kept telling him, "just a few more days" but every time we went in to the dentist the color was still wrong. I have lost track of how many trips we have made to the dentist but I'm sure it's more than 10. We even went to the lab a couple times so the guy could work on the crown while Andrew was there. Still no luck. I think he has made at least a dozen crowns and keeps trying to stain and bleach them over and over to get the right color.

So this morning we were thrilled that the crown was the finally the right color and they were able to cement it on! The good news is that with enough money I can still see the smile I adore and hopefully Andrew has learned to be a little more careful with his teeth!

Rebecca's Visit

My sister, Rebecca, was here for the weekend to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award from USU Mechanical Engineering Department. My sister is one of the smartest and most talented people I have ever met so it really didn't come as a surprise to me that they were honoring her with the reward. She definitely deserves it.

I have to admit that it was a little hard growing up in my sister's shadow. She is only 16 months older than me. We have always had different interests. In high school she was involved in academics and music and I was into athletics and hanging out with my friends. I found myself trying not to let my teachers find out I was her sister for fear they would expect the same from me. She was the 4.0 student, sterling scholar, valedictorian... The list goes on and on. She graduated with her PhD. from MIT and is now a tenured professor at Ohio State. She really is impressive just looking at her academic accomplishments. That's before you consider that she is an amazing mother and has made it look easy to take care of a five-year-old, two-year-old and triplet baby girls! (I know she doesn't feel like it is easy but I know there's no way I could handle everything she is doing!) It would probably be easy to be jealous of a sister that has accomplished so much but I have always been proud of her and admired her for everything she has done. Congratulations, Rebecca, on another outstanding award!

Rebecca was our closest relative when we live in Iowa and North Carolina and I have missed being able to hop in the car occasionally to visit her. I was excited she had an excuse to come visit us. She decided to give downhill skiing a try for the first time while she was here and she picked the perfect day with 15 inches of fresh powder. We had a lot of fun skiing with her and she caught on fast. It was a great weekend and I was sad that it went by so quickly!

Winter is Back

Tuesday it was so warm and the snow had melted and we did our first workout outside on the track for the season. Today winter is back! Jason was supposed to work at Snowbasin today but couldn't even get up there so we shoveled out instead. Thanks to all our wonderful neighbors with their snow blowers that are willing to help!

Article

I am married to such an amazing person. On top of everything he does to be a great husband and father he is really good at his profession. When I stop to think about it I am in awe of what he has done to get himself to the point he is at today. Very few people understand the hours and effort he has put in for so many years to learn everything he knows. He's a great doctor as well as a wonderful writer and presenter. He has won several awards for presentations he has done and continues to work hard to publish in journals and text books and present at conferences even though he is no longer in academic medicine. Every once in a while I am lucky enough to get a chance to read an article that is written for an audience like me instead of in a medical journal. He has recently started working with some local runners who started utahrunning.com. Click here to view Jason's recent article in their free online magazine, Run Utah.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's started out not so great (that story will come later!) but it turned out to be a fun day. The kids had lots of fun at their class parties and I got to help out in Jared's class. I made cookie dough so the kids could roll out and decorate cookies after school. Kaitlyn ended up being the only one willing to help out. It reminded me of the Little Red Hen but I did share the cookies with everyone. After all it was Valentine's Day. It was also 60 degrees and I couldn't blame the kids for wanting to get outside. How often does that happen in the middle of February? I even took a break to push Kaitlyn in the swing for a few minutes!

Jason came through with flowers again this year. I don't think he's missed a year in 14 years. Last time he bought me flowers Kaitlyn was sad that he didn't bring her any so this year he bought one for her too. She was so excited! I guess the girls at the flower shop thought it was a little strange for him to order just one rose until he explained it was for his four year old daughter!

Gift Ideas?

Do you have someone in your life who you never know what to buy for? Jason's step-dad is one of those people. Every time I need to buy him a gift I am asking my mother-in-law for ideas. I usually resort to buying gift cards but I prefer to give real gifts. This year when I was at a loss for what to get him for his birthday again Jason suggested we take him skiing for a day. We had a great time taking him to Snowbasin Saturday and the kids loved skiing with Grandpa! It was a beautiful sunny spring like day and we were roasting in our coats. The only thing that could have made it better was a few inches of new snow. I hope Darrell had as much fun as we did!

Another highlight of the day was Kaitlyn taking her first trip to the top of the mountain. She also seemed to lose her sense of caution and was going down the mountain as fast as she could! Jason took her on some pretty hard stuff and I was amazed at how well she did. When it got too steep and she fell she would jump up and try again without any crying or complaining! Here she is at the top of the Needles Gondola before her first run down.

We had to fight the crowds there this weekend with all the people coming to watch the Dew Tour finals. It was pretty fun to watch the professionals doing tricks on this huge half pipe. It's much more impressive in person than watching on TV!