Lost Tooth

Tonight Lincoln lost his very first tooth. We were all very excited. He mentioned last night that it was loose, and I thought we had a good week or more before it came out. But today after church it was a lot more loose than it had been. I asked Linc if he wanted me to tie some dental floss around it so he could pull it out and he said yes. He tugged on it the first time, and decided it hurt a lot to do that. The he and Aaron went into the bathroom so Lincoln could watch his tooth wiggle back and forth in the mirror. A little while later, I went in to see how it was coming, and just then Linc gave it another yank, and the tooth popped right out! We almost lost it down the drain. He ran in the kitchen to tell Ivan and Adelia that his tooth came out, and Ivan said, “Cool Linc! Can I have it?” Which made us all laugh pretty hard. We convinced Lincoln that he should put it under his pillow, and that in the morning he might find a quarter there instead. To which Linc responded, “What? Are you and Dad going to come switch it out in the middle of the night?” Well…yes. Yes, we are. Haha! Sometimes that kid is too smart for his own good.

What else has been going on around here? Sometimes, I feel like I don’t document the day to day things often enough. We had a good weekend. We spent all of Saturday cleaning and organizing our house. And boy, did it ever need it. We started in the school room, we got all the toys put away, reorganized and consolidated some of the drawers, and most importantly went through all the papers and projects lying around and decided what to keep and what to chuck, and got it all filed away in its proper place. What a relief! I took Ivan grocery shopping with me, we went to Ream’s and Costco and we stayed under budget! Hooray for us! (Aaron and I have been trying really hard, as always, with the budget.) When we got home, Aaron was in the process of re-organizing the pantry. It looks so nice now. And then we started on the garage. We still had some cardboard boxes from Christmas, so Aaron built a fire in the fire pit and the kids had a hay-day helping him burn the boxes. Once that was done we started organizing our shelves, the majority of which hold our food storage. It’s not a fun process, but it is SO NICE to have it done. And it makes me happy to see the space being used efficiently. That a talent that Aaron has and one that I struggle with, envisioning how to efficiently use space.

Aaron and I watched The Great Gatsby. We’ve been reading the book together (slowly) for the last several months. The movie is exactly like the book. I think they took all the lines verbatim right off the pages. Some parts were well done, and some parts not so much. I didn’t like either the book or the movie as much as I thought I would. I see why it’s a classic, and I get the message it’s trying to put out there. But, I just didn’t feel like it did anything for me personally. It didn’t stir anything up inside of me, it didn’t make me stop to think, or question any of my ideals, or any of that sort of thing, like all my favorite books do. I don’t know. It was just a middle of the road experience for me.

I’ve made a goal to read 50 books this year. That’s kind of a lot. I’ll have to push myself to accomplish it, I think. But it’s worth a try. And I plan on counting the books I read aloud to the kids as part of that 50.  But last year my goal was to read 8 and I read about 30, so I figured I needed to up my expectations a little bit.

Aaron and I are also having a competition to see who can read the Book of Mormon the fastest this year. We are both a bit competitive, and the idea is to use that competitive nature as a motivation to read from the scriptures more often. Neither of us has the time to sit down and read large chunks all at once, neither of us will win by going that route, so it doesn’t matter who is the faster reader. No, this competition will be won by the person who takes the time to read in the small moments of the day, here a little and there a little. Five minutes while I’m waiting for Lincoln to come out of piano here, and two minutes waiting for Aaron to wash up and come to bed at night there. And it will accomplish exactly what it’s designed to do, it will help us read from the scriptures more often throughout the day. (Because we both want to win, dang it!) And hopefully reading from the scriptures more often will be an invitation for the Spirit to be in our home and in our minds more strongly and more often.

And, like so many people, I am ready for winter to be over. Is there anyone out there who really loves January? Not me. In my opinion it is entirely too long. I’m ready for some warmer weather and pronto. I don’t even need it to be hot, I’d take high 40s, low 50s. Just warm enough that it’s bearable to be outside in a coat, and the snow is gone. But I can’t complain too much. This year is so much better than last…we have a trampoline on the patio that the kids can play on and I’m not pregnant. :) So life is still good.