A Return to Blog

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been over 2 months. I really don't need to hear it, because I've heard it plenty from the young women of my household.

So, I'm back. We'll call this 2 month break a necessary blog-cation. Too many personal musings and too much introspection that I didn't want bleeding into this documentary of our lives.

Now, it's on to the ever-riveting, always entertaining, Rich-filtered diary of the Smithereens.

The next few posts will cover events that are by now outdated. Even while I was resisting the siren's call of the blog, our life did go on (but not our heart, because then we'd have had that ridiculous Celine Dion song in our heads for days....like you will now if you clicked on that link. Heh, heh...)

Back in September there was a great convergence of activity: the grandparents came for a visit at the same time that Emily had oral surgery done. You'll remember that back in the spring, Emily and Jenna got braces. One aspect of Emily's smile that needs to be remedied is a tooth that has implanted itself way up in the roof of her mouth instead of dropping down into its rightful spot. You can see the space on the upper right side of her mouth in this pic.In order to bring the wayward tooth into place, the doctor had to cut her gums and attach a chain to the disobedient thing, so that eventually the orthodontist can pull the tooth down by hooking the chain to her mouth hardware.

Sounds lovely, doesn't it? I think they did something like this in dungeons during the Inquisition.

While she was having this surgery done, the dental team recommended that she go ahead and have her wisdom teeth removed. And we all know what a delight it is to get your wisdom teeth out.

So while the grandparents were here visiting, Emily looked like this.Wow, what a strong jaw she has. She considered auditioning for a live-action remake of the Flintstones. Give her a 5 0'clock shadow and she's the spittin' image of Fred.

She recovered, slowly, and still managed to join in a few family activities like card games on the deck.Although, she looked very pitiful doing so.
After a week or so, her face and jawline returned to normal.During the grandparents stay, Grandma was helpfully loading and running the dishwasher. She asked Karen which container under the sink was the dishwasher soap, and Karen replied the big white one.

Trouble is, both the dishwashing soap and the dishwasher soap are in big white jugs. And when you add the dishwashing soap to a dishwasher, you get a LOT of suds.This shot was after they saw soap emanating from every crevice of the dishwasher and had scooped out the foamy mess more than once.

On the plus side, the dishes were very clean. And we all got a good giggle out of it.

We had a splendid visit with our grandparents. Always LOVE having them here. Before they headed back up to Montana, they and Karen made a blackberry run at a patch down near Payson.Luscious berries and a beautiful spot to pick them.