Mary Lost Her First Tooth and Maybe Gained a Dry Socket

Mary has been determined to lose a tooth. Everyone she knows has lost teeth, except for her (or so she reports). So, she's been desperately picking at the gums around this poor little tooth for weeks. On Friday she came running in the house, shouting "I HAVE A WOBBLY TOOTH!!!" and I looked in her mouth and it was hanging forward, hooked on just at the front. I know it was probably a little loose that morning, but I've never seen a tooth go from a little loose to that. She put her school stuff down, went upstairs and came back down about ten minutes later with a gaping hole and a tiny little tooth in her hand. She pulled her own tooth out. I was so excited and so trying not to barf at the same time.

Snowman

It's pretty good, right? This is all with NO help from any adults.

London!! Paris!!! Milan!! ( Just kidding, I hate Italy)

My dearest friend in the whole world Laura came to visit over the first of the year. I went down to London to meet her for New Years Eve. We had booked a boat cruise on the Thames that promised fireworks and lots and lots of fun, but it was well....meh. I was so happy to see her that even though we almost frozeslashwereboredtodeath it was a good, good night. The next day we went on the London Eye and ate a yummy dinner (no small feat in England) and forgot all about the Jack the Ripper walk we were going to go on. Ooooops.

Here's the boat cruise. Don't these people bore you just by looking at their pictures. They do? I know!!!

Here's Laura in front of Big Ben. See her? No? I can because Mary and I have been reading the Where's Waldo books. Good luck.

Then....and this is the best part, we went to Paris. Our favorite place in the entire world (we're very unique like that). Mostly I just like to eat my way through Paris. Eat and eat...which explains why there are no pictures of me in this post.

Jay and our Ben at A la Choche d'Or. Jay and I went there on our first trip to Paris in 2001 and we were so happy to eat there again. So, so, sooooooo good.

So, the restaurant is right by the Moulin Rouge which we did not go to but merely passed by because it's full of nudie women who look much better than me.

Laura and I at the Au Lapin Agile.

Ben and Daddy in front of the Notre Dame. Ben looking at the pigeons. What do you think Ben wants to do to those pigeons. Hmmm...me too.

This place had the best hot chocolate. They brought out a cup of steaming milk and a little cup of dark melted chocolate and Ben and Mary mixed it up. So yummy. Except Mary put two sugar cubes in hers. Gross.
Ben with his chocolate mustache.

I put this in just because it is so very cute.

Mary at dinner our last night in Paris letting fries hang out of her mouth. She and Ben both ate steak tartare (a kid's version) for dinner, making their Granddad very proud.

Ho Ho Ho

We had such a nice Christmas. Ben was so lovely. He was exactly like what you always imagine children to be on Christmas, all excited and full of wonder. That's how I like my children...to meet with my expectations exactly.

Setting out cookies and milk for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer. This turned into a debacle. First, because, of course, Ben is afraid of Santa and we had to spend days reassuring him that Daddy was meeting Santa outside and that Santa's bowl full of jelly would not darken our doorstep. Luckily, we'd been through this before with Mary as she also is still totally was afraid of Santa, so we had our plan in place. But, here's where we went wrong. We put the cookies on the table in the house. Idiots. So we then had to go through it allllllll again. Ben's not one to let things go easily. Secondly, we made the foolish mistake of only putting ONE carrot out for the reindeer when everyone knows there are....um, a lot of reindeer. This solidified how dumb our daughter truly believes we are. A simple, traditional activity turned into a 40 minute discussion. Next year, Santa's getting a Martini 'cause he's gonna need it.

OMG...Santa LOVED these little finger drums. I know because I heard him playing them forever while he was supposed to be filling stockings and wrapping presents.

Mary's DS from her Minnie and Grandad. Or as she calls it DSS. Spoiled!!!

P.S. I actually thought it was called a DSS until Jay corrected me. But, I think it's cute, so it's now a DSS. Spread the word.

P.P.S. Mary wants to grow out her bangs and this is why she looks like the kids in my high school who used to wear parachute pants, listen to Metallica and hang out behind the gym smoking cigarettes that smelled funny.

This camera is what Ben was sure Santa was bringing him. Luckily, Santa came through. However, Santa did not count on Ben taking 400 pictures and wearing out the batteries in one day.

This is our view of Ben on Christmas day.

Darla loves wrapping paper. Darla especially loves the ribbon. Or more specifically, eating the ribbon and then puking it up on our most expensive rugs. Merry Christmas to us from Darla.


Santa left his magic dust around his footprints in the snow. Mama is now really, really angry with Santa for this because cleaning glitter up from slush is impossible and Mama wants Santa to come back and make these disappear.

Look What I Found

We were looking through the pictures on the Yahoo group for the people who've adopted children from the orphanage Ben was in (whew...that's a mouthful) and saw this picture. I knew immediately who it was (thank you to whoever posted this). When we first met Ben, beside telling us over and over how "active" he was, his nannies laughingly told us how he would use his little toes to climb up and crawl around the top of his and the other children's cribs. We never doubted it, as he still does it to this day to climb on to the kitchen counters, but here is the evidence.

How amazing and how spirited is our little boy? Look how tiny he is. He's not even two years old yet in this photo.

Ice Skating

We took the kids ice skating in York. And by "we" I mean Jay. I'm lucky to be able to walk upright at the best of times so I sat this one out. I thought that Ben would be so outta there once he got on the ice, he's not usually all that great about new experiences; but he stuck it out for 45 minutes and did really well. So cute.

Mary skated on her own pretty much once they got out there. She absolutely loved it. It's only open for another week, so I don't think we'll get a chance to go again. We'll have to look for another rink nearby.

The Williamson's Visit

Our friends from Cornwall came last weekend to pick up their son Tom, who is going to the university near us. It was a short visit, but we had lots o' fun as always. We went out for Chinese food in a huge snowstorm. Well, not huge by Utah standards, but huge by England standards.

Here is Tom. Fact: Mary and Ben LUH-HUV Tom and spent all of Thanksgiving day rubbing their heads on the condensation on the French doors in our living room, trying to get their hair to look like his. Also, Tom is about 8' 10" ( I may be exaggerating, a little) but Ben spends a large part of his day standing on stuff and saying, "LOOK, I'm like Tom". Stalkers.

Here are Trev and Mary. They've been kindred spirits from the minute they met when we first brought Mary home. Here's Mary bossing Trev around and eating all of his food. He looks a little afraid I think.

We left the restaurant and had a little snowball fight and took turns pushing each others cars out of the snow for the next two miles home. It was good seeing them though and look forward to the next visit.