Princess No Teeth....

I'm not sure what kind of introduction deserves to be here. If you don't pee in your pants when you watch this...I'm not sure you are human.

Madison has had her two front teeth loose for a couple of weeks, and two days ago she insisted on having them out. Brian tried just pulling, but they really weren't loose enough. Madison kept playing with one in particular, and by the time Dad decided to get out the string it was pretty loose. They tried a couple of string methods, but it kept slipping off. Then Brian came up with the brilliant idea that you see above. Enjoy!

And here are the pictures post tooth removal. The other front tooth was pulled last night (by me! I know...eeeeewww!!) We've decided that she's just in time for looking like a Halloween Jack-o-lantern. Cute, huh?

Boys

Lately Ben has been totally fascinated with putting things up his nose. Fingers, food...and pencils. I was doing the dishes and Ben came in saying, "Hi, Momma!" I laughed so hard I almost didn't get the picture. I also got about six of him running away from me while I tried to get the picture. He is also really into dressing himself. As you can see, he is sporting the one-shoe-no-pants ensemble here. Boys!

I'm Married to a Professional!

Sooo...Brian is officially a professional artist. He just got done painting this logo and sign on the side of a building next to Wal-mart. Hooray! Doesn't it look good?! The guy who had him do it was so impressed that he called around and got him another job immediately! I'd say he's doing pretty well for himself, wouldn't you? Oh...and the homeless guy next to the sign? He and his friend sat and watched Brian paint for two days, and in one of the pictures you can kind of see him waving at us while we take the picture...friendly, eh?

September Canning Adventures

Pears
Lovely Assistants
Soup....urgh!
Gorgeous Syrup
As usual, I spent the first part of September canning. This year I got three boxes of pears from my parent's house, a bag of peaches and a giant box of tomatoes from the farmer's market. I ended up canning a million jars of quartered pears. In my attempt to make tomato sauce from my tomatoes, I ended up making and canning tomato soup...don't ask...it was traumatic. I also made peach-raspberry syrup this year...it is DIVINE, and the most beautiful color you've ever seen! I think that I'll make syrup out of my fruit next year, it is pretty easy and waaaay more satisfying than sauce turned soup.

I put up a couple of pictures of the finished product...and a couple of pictures of my assistants...trust me, the one of Ben sleeping is the best way for him to help with canning! And yes, he fell asleep with crackers in his hands. I was trying to bribe him with cartoons and snacks, and he ended up konking out after about fifteen minutes, yay!

August

August was pretty low-key at our house. The kids and I spent a little bit of time shopping at the local farmer's markets. We got ready for school...just generally hung out. I thought I'd give you a couple of pictures of Ben chillin' on the porch. He stole a peach from the box I'd left on the porch while I was watering the grass, and this is how I found him. Pretty funny...huh? He was also humming to himself. Cute.

July

Brian and I spent a week at BYU for a ballroom dance camp in July. One week...two old, out of shape people; no children; 8 hours of dance each day...all the BYU brownies you can eat......the best and worst of the world. It was actually really great. Since we've been teaching here in Ontario we really wanted to go take some classes to sort of dust off the rust from our dancing. Plus, we got to leave our kids with relatives for an entire week. I'm pretty sure we haven't been away from our kids and together in a VEEEERRRRYYY long time. Too bad we were beyond exhaustion every night to go out and enjoy our freedom!