the grindstone

My heart goes out to my brother and sister in law in Germany. All those picnics in the beautiful countryside, interesting historic sites to visit, green forests in your backyard to explore... the monotony must be rough- one day blending into the next.

Well, I thought I'd include a few pictures of my recent activities, in this case an occlusal composite on tooth #3. The decay didn't at first look very significant or very deep, but (and this is the exciting part) when I opened up the tooth I discovered burried carries much closer to the pulp than was anticipated! I carefully excavated the infected dentin, then double bonded the prep and restored with an a2 hybrid composite.... and saved the day. The world just got a little bit better.

On a different note, Ellie was asking Sarah about the urinary system yesterday. She found out what a 'bladder' was. She then whispered 'Mom, do boys have bladders?

Karri and Sean, we are anxious to hear about Japan and possibly to see some pictures. Hope things are going well.

We miss you all.

school again

We are just about as ready as we can be to get to the new school year. Non stop spongebob is not good for anyone. We all met Ellie's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Sharr, the other day and she seemed very nice. Ellie was impressed with the miniature kitchen they had in the room. We're thrilled that Jacob will have his same excellent teacher that he had last year as he starts third grade. We also were very fortunate to find a preschool teacher that was willing to take a chance on a certain stocky, non potty trained two year old twice a week. We'll see how that goes but he's excited about it.

We got some free tickets to the 'go diego go' show this weekend and the kids liked it although it was tailor made for Ellie. She was dancing in front of her seat and obediently pawing the air and/or yelling out answers as the performers prompted. Ben sat through the entire thing quietly with his mouth open probably fixated on the animal puppets. Jake had his jaw propped up by his hand most of the show, slightly bored (he's just a little too old for this stuff).

We'd had a scout outing planned for this past weekend and Jacob was allowed to go which is rare. He was so disappointed when it was cancelled because of rain that I told him we could do something else fun, just the two of us like a hike, etc. He thought about it for a while then said that he'd like most of all to go to the office and 'do some lab stuff'. So, that's what we did and he had a fun time playing with wax and pouring up an impression of his thumb.

Caleb.... a finger fracture? Alright, I guess that's pretty tough, but you've got to learn to handle your anesthesia without barfing. Very not tough.