Goodbye Family!

Sesame Street: Potty Time

Penelope. This is for you.

Annie Get Your Gun

Over the fourth of July weekend we ventured over to Grandma & Grandpa Newton's for family dinner. Penelope & Ayden had a crazy fun time playing with the vintage dressups. Penelope especially enjoyed wearing the hard hat & holding either the toy machine gun or toy rifle. I thought it was pretty cute.

Ayden also has an obsession over Penelope's shoes, so she's wearing Ayden's cowboy boots in the pic. So cute.

Reason #18736 Why a Trustworthy Dentist is Important

Our dental experience in California was traumatizing to say the least. We went through one dishonest dentist after another before we found one that we could trust. Why is that?

Upon getting dental insurance here in Utah, I emailed my mom to see who her dentist was as she had been raving and raving about her dentist for years. Dr. Blackwood married the daughter of a family friend, so my mom knew him & always told me that she trusted his medical opinion. As soon as I found out they'd take our insurance, I booked appointments for all of us. Dr. Blackwood's secretary said that it would be okay for Penelope to hang out at my appointment. OK. Nice. I don't like the thought of finding a babysitter.

Today was teeth cleaning day for the Esplin fam, SLC division. Upon walking into the office, Dr. Blackwood greeted me by name & asked all sorts of questions about my parents, Penelope, my family, etc. He even took the time to show Penelope the toys and play with her. Cool!

The dental hygienist took me to get X-rays & start on the cleaning process while Dr. Blackwood spent time playing with Penelope. I was afraid Penelope might cause a ruckus while I was gone, so I set her on one of the chairs with her blanket & my iPhone (which was playing Babe, her favorite pig movie).

While I was in the chair, the secretary came up to me & asked if perhaps Penelope would be more interested in Nemo on the big TV rather than watching Babe on the phone; I agreed, trusting that she'd probably put my phone somewhere. Maybe I should've asked for her to bring it to me, but I'm pretty sure my mouth was full of mirrors & a suction device to really say much of anything.

The cleaning went pretty well & the hygienist and Dr. Blackwood agreed that my teeth were doing really well, save a few broken fillings (darn you blasted crooked California dentists!) and a couple of minor cavities. Dr. Blackwood even went so far as to bust out his really nice camera to take close-up shots of my broken fillings. Yeah, those definitely need to be replaced. I left the chair feeling pretty empowered over my teeth (unusual for dentist appointments in my experience).

Penelope and I sat in the chair while the hygienist & Dr. Blackwood counted her teeth. She was so scared, but she did pretty well. Hopefully next time she'll be more receptive to strangers pointing gloved fingers in her mouth.

Once we were done, Penelope and I headed up to the front to gather our things & get the estimate on the work needed to be done. Where was my phone? I looked all around the lobby & couldn't find it anywhere all while trying to keep Penelope from spilling filtered water all over the floor. She was losing it. I was losing it.

Finally, I asked the secretary if she put it somewhere. She had put it on top of the refrigerator next to the water filter. Not there. The two of us searched through toy bins, under chairs, around plants & no phone. She called it. I called it. I knew the ringer was on, but I couldn't hear it anywhere! I was starting to panic. OH NO. I'm unplugged! What will I do without Tweetdeck! GoogleReader! MAIL! CATAN!!!!!

After about 10 minutes of thoroughly searching the entire office, the secretary started to call patients that were in the lobby around the same time. There was a mother that was there with her son, who could've mistook it for a toy & walked off with it. Perhaps? Nope. Now Dr. Blackwood caught wind of the missing iPhone. He sprung into action.

He recalled a woman (not a patient) who had been waiting for her friend (a patient-also a lawyer), and figures she was the only one that the secretary hadn't contacted about the phone. He called the patient and calmly said something like: One of my patient's is missing her phone. If your friend has it, could you please tell her to return the phone to the office by the end of the day? No questions asked. Otherwise, I'll be contacting the police to get this resolved.

What would you know, the phone was delivered to the dental office next door and in my hands in less than 15 minutes! Seriously. So awesome. I couldn't have been more overjoyed to see my phone! As it turns out this woman had deleted my mail information and was in the process of deleting all of my contacts. She was going to make it hers. What a tool. Who steals a phone? Who steals a phone from a 2 year old in a dental office? Obviously a crazy lady with red glasses.

Moral to the story: don't steal phones & make sure you have a rockstar for a dentist.

Fourth of July Staycation

Chris and I were fantasizing about going camping, hiking or doing something that involved getting out of the Salt Lake valley for our Fourth of July weekend. We made sure we had a good time, but we didn't really end up doing any of those things. Sort of.

We didn't feel like packing up the house & camping, so we decided to backyard camp instead. Penelope had a great time playing in the tent, but didn't actually end up sleeping in the tent. She was just much too excited to explore the backyard at 1am to sleep. She ended up sleeping in her crib. At about 5am the birds started squawking, so we also ended up in our own beds after a while. It was still fun.

Before we slept, we had a nice bonfire in the backyard with marshmallows, nutella, graham crackers and sausages. Nutella is the way to go if you want to make a good s'more, btw.

After we woke up & recovered from the late night, we headed up to Park City to wander around. We grabbed some lunch & headed to one of my favorite haunts: the duck pond. I remember going here several times a year with my family to feed the ducks. It was a real treat to share this moment with Chris & Penelope.

We headed to the Alpine slide to see if it was something that Penelope could do with us, but we totally bailed. I couldn't seem to justify spending $50 for all of us to go down a little slide. Someday we'll do it. Not yesterday, though.

We hung around Main Street & wandered around galleries. Some were definitely better than others. We walked through an art gallery of some photographer who put up field notes on his photos (cool), but I don't quite understand how you could get a wide-angle image with a 300mm lens. The lady at the gallery didn't get it either. She was ANNOYING with all caps!

Penelope had a grand time at the park just down the street from Main Street. She had the most fun hanging out in a little walkway tube. She also had a lot of fun spreading her legs & peeing all over part of the play structure. WTF. How did she get her diaper to move out of the way?!? Thankfully no one else saw so we were able to discretely clean up her mess.

We had a lot of fun, but now we're pooped. I'm certainly ready for a nap.

Mr. Elephant

For my portfolio to apply to the Industrial Design program at BYU, I was told to include sketches and drawings. Unfortunately I didn't have any good drawings, so this semester I came back to school for sixth or seventh hour art once a week or so. As of today, my drawing is complete.

TaDa!