Saturday, October 3, 2015

Fall Break: Day 1

Our school district is on a modified year-round schedule.  We start school in mid-July, which makes summer vacation a bit shorter than other districts, but then we get longer vacations through the year.  Fall break is actually the longest break, clocking in at two weeks and two days.  My fall break doesn't overlap with the kids' at all, but it's not that big of a deal since I just work two days a week.  We have plenty of time to do fun activities.

I went to bad after midnight last Sunday night so this counts as the first day of break, because technically it was Monday the 28th, which is the day this post will discuss.

Michael had been in bed for a few hours when I found this guy in the hallway.  Please ignore how gross the baseboards look.
I seriously considered waking Michael up to deal with this, but after like 5 minutes of fretting about it I decided to just man up and trap it in some tupperware.  Don't worry, after I trapped him I put him outside.  And then, like 15 minutes later, I looked out there and he was having a grand old time crawling all over the sandbox.
First thing Monday morning we drove to Mesa (you know, after I vowed the week before to never, ever, ever return to the city with a million traffic jams) to see the orthodontist.  This was visit number one of Spencer getting his rapid palate expander.  I'm not happy about it.  He handled it well.

The waiting room has a whole line of massage chairs, mostly for parents as they wait.


Elliott didn't like the big chairs, but he was quite thrilled with this baby sized massage chair.

We were there for close to an hour so I did my best to keep him occupied.
When I had all my orthodontics (as a kid and as an adult) step one was always to take an impression by shoving a tray full of putty into your mouth which caused gagging and retching and general unpleasantness. Spencer had an impression when he was five for his first palate expander.  Now they have this very high tech scanner that actually scans each tooth and builds a digital 3-D model of his mouth.  It was very cool.

We could watch as each tooth was scanned and added to the model.





Look at this!  That is totally Spencer's mouth. 

You could even turn it and flip it and rotate it.  Look at the ridges on his palate!




We go back next week for spacers and then a week after that for the actual expander.  I'll have to be tranquilized when they do that.

After the orthodontist we went to Bass Pro Shop.  I changed them into bathing suits in the bathroom and put sunscreen on.  We walked around for a few minutes so as to pretend that we had not just used the bathroom as a dressing room, and then we went to a new to us splash pad.

The kids had a great time.  I nearly died in the heat.





The park had some great playground equipment so after it cools down we're going to go back to check it out.

Once my core body temperature got to a dangerous level we decided to go home.  We ate lunch and then Elliott took a nap while I worked out and Spencer played video games.

When Elliott got up they shared some brotherly love.  It lasted about as long as it took to take this picture.
In the afternoon, after Michael got home from work, we made cinnamon play dough.  It smelled like a fall dream.



And Ginger, worn out by her day at home doing absolutely nothing, napped.

2 comments:

Jeannette said...

14 months living in Michigan and I already had to remind myself that it's not weird for the splash pad to be open in October (they turn them off right after Labor Day here). That 3D scanner is CRAY-ZEEEE! Finally, I need to know what Michael said that garnered those reactions from the boys for the cinnamon dough pic.

Sherry said...

I love that your splash pads are still open in October. I think ours could stay open a bit longer around here and not close at the beginning of September. Sigh. Looks like a great start to Fall break...minus the orthodontist visit that is.