Deck the halls

Last night we finally decked the halls and finished putting up our Christmas decorations! Yay, us!

(Now off to work on cards and gifts and such, lol...)

Out of the hack

Yesterday Nathan and I journeyed down to the Denver Curling Club...

...where, together with our friends Molly & Mark (and about 24 other people), we took a two hour class to learn the basics of curling. 

This was me during our initial practices pushing out of the hack (those things that look like starter's blocks)...just learning to stay balanced. It's tricky, folks!

Altogether, we learned some of the lingo, began figuring out how to deliver the rock (preferably without falling over, lol), made our attempts at sweeping and got to play a couple ends! We ended up tied with the other team, and Nathan managed to score for us with a sweet shot right on the button! I managed, finally, to get my last rock at least into play (past the far hog line), lol. It's further than it looks and difficult to judge how much oomph to put behind it. :)

Thanks to having watched the British coverage of the last winter Olympics, I felt at least familiar with how it all worked...which helped. :)

Basically, it was stinkin' awesome...we seriously had so much fun!! 

Braces!

So yesterday was the big day. Asher started his journey with braces. :) Most of the day (and the week leading up to it) he was pretty miffed about the whole thing and walked around with a scowl and muttering to himself, having entire conversations with some pretend orthodontist about why he didn't really need braces. (You'd think maybe I'm making that up, but you'd be wrong, lol.)

But. Fortunately, he's still cooperative and let me take this "before" picture in the morning:

His appointment was in the afternoon, and the orthodontist and her staff were lovely...putting him at ease and explaining what would happen and just generally being efficient and kind. This is him as they were gathering a few last things to get started...

And then they were done. It was actually quicker than anticipated and went off without a hitch. Turns out, too, that they're going to ease him into things. They started just with the top, front braces. In January, we'll add the top, back braces. And then a month or so after that we'll finish things off with all the bottom braces. Ta da. :) 

Whew. :) Asher's in a much better mood now, actually. I think the apprehension and the unknown were the worst of it. So far there's not been too much pain. He says it just feels weird. I've explained that he should let me know when there's pain...that I don't dole out medicine for "weird." ;) (I fully anticipate that there will be more pain this afternoon, as that's what the orthodontist told me, but I'll take the happy smile this morning.)

(For what it's worth, Asher's pretty fortunate in that the list of "don'ts" doesn't really apply to him, as he already doesn't eat many of the things on the list and has always been a very careful eater--taking small bites and such. Really the only thing he'll be missing out on will be certain candies. Micah, on the other hand, has been looking at the list in anticipation of his own braces journey and is not very happy, lol...)

Winter program

The younger two had their Options winter program last night. Micah had some artwork on display and Asher played with his Guitar 2 class:

All good. :)

Micah funny

I almost forgot! Yesterday, on the drive to the tree lot...

Noah: (to the car at large) Who do you think would win of the three of us?

Me: Win at what?

Asher: Yeah! I'd win at doing the splits first!

Micah: What about irritability and rage?! 

Me: Yes, Micah. Yes, you'd win at that.

Let's just say that certain nine year olds may be going through a growth spurt or something, eh? He's been sleeping a LOT and has been so moody the past couple weeks. Please tell me that he's not going to start puberty early. Please? ;)