Teeth

The New Kid in Town

This is our new brother Ben.  He was born on March 3 and he's about two weeks old in this picture.  Mom had to be induced a couple weeks early because of some crazy itching she was having.  

Dad was trying to explain to us that we were about to have a new baby in the house.  He wanted to prepare us, so he said, "Today is Friday and on Tuesday Mommy's going into the hospital to have the baby."  Andy was so happy.  I was too.  

I said, "Dad, are you kidding me?  Today is really Friday?  Do you know what this means?"  

"Yes, I do," he said with a big smile on his face.  "Only a few more days."  

"No," I yelled with glee, "Star Wars is on TV tonight!"       

The Prayer of a Righteous Kid Availeth Much

A few days ago we came home and the electricity was out.  We couldn't open the electric gate to drive the car in.  Mom and Dad didn't have a key to the other door either.  We were stuck in the street and couldn't get into our house.  We have an electric fence around the top of our wall to keep out robbers and Dad says it's very dangerous.  But since the electricity was off, he said he could climb over the wall and try to pry open the electric gate from the inside.  He backed the car up to the wall and climbed on top.  We were very worried that we were never going to see our toys again but Mom said we should pray that God would turn on the electricity.  We both talked to God and said, "Please turn on the electricity so we can open the gate.  Please let us into our house.  Amen."  Just when we said "Amen" Dad came crashing down onto the car with a yell.  God did turn it back on and Dad got shocked real bad.  His hand was even bleeding.  He asked us to please tell him before the next time we were going to pray for something that might kill him.  We thought it was pretty cool that God answered our prayers and that Dad was OK.   

Doughy Play

While Mom and Jonah have homeschooling lessons, she tries to keep me occupied with something fun and quiet.  She's reminds me over and over to put the lid back on the Play Doh, but sometimes I forget.  We don't have to worry about it drying out, though.  Instead, it gets wetter and wetter until we get this doughy mess. 

The Fall of Fort Paper Mache

We gathered together about 100 milk boxes ('cause that what milk comes in here) to make a paper mache fort.  We mixed some flour and water and the ever-important salt to keep it from growing mildew.  We covered the first wall with saturated newspaper strips then waited for it to dry.  Then we waited some more... and some more... and some more... and... 

a week later it still wasn't dry.  Our art project turned into a science project.  Mom said that was OK because we learned something very valuable.  We learned that salt absorbs water and, since there's lots of water in the air around here, traditional flour-water-salt paper mache never dries.  If anyone has a suggestion for a non-mildew making, non-water absorbing paper mache recipe, we would like to try again.

Our Dog, Peanut

We adopted this puppy from a cave.  He lived in a great big hole his mommy had dug into the side of a hill by our house.  You may remember the puppies that were born in the bat house. Well, they moved into a sandy cavern and, when they got big enough to wander out on their own, we brought this one home.

  All the others moved away but Peanut's mom still comes to visit him.

Teddy Pain

This is our new pet.  It's a tarantula.  We found it in the basement, but please don't tell Grandma or she may not come back to Brazil to live with us.  Her room is down there.

Andy wanted to name him Teddy and I wanted to name him Pain so we settled on Teddy Pain.  Mom says he's a small tarantula and that if we feed him we could watch him grow.  He loves to eat and it's fun to watch him attack.  We found a bee that mom says is the biggest one she's ever seen.  We threw him in there and watched the two do battle for two days straight.  In the end, Teddy Pain won.

You gotta love that spider!