Out of the Mouths of Babes

Last Wednesday night, Jeff had to go to band practice which meant I was responsible for putting all four kids to bed (shudder). I was brushing Griffin's teeth when I came across this.

Anyone see something strange growing in there? Yeah, me too. So as not to embarrass him or draw attention to THE EXTRA ROW OF TOOTH in his mouth, I immediately sat him down and took nine rapid fire pictures of the oddity. And then I made a mental note to ask Jeff how long Griffin has had the spare and why it hasn't come up in conversation before now.

I was driving the kids to school the next morning when I realized I had forgotten to ask Jeff about it. So I called him on the cell and tried not to use words like weird, freaky, or Ripley's candidate to describe it. Ever notice when you are trying to have a conversation about one of your children, that this will be the one moment of the day they will stop whatever they are doing and really listen to you? Suffice it to say, despite my effort to be discreet, Griffin quickly figured out that I was talking about him, and started telling Carter about his twin tooth in the back of the car. Apparently, he has known about it all along and has conversations with the other Kindergarteners at school about it on a daily basis. Evidently, one of his friends, whom we'll call, K_ _ t_n, to protect his privacy, told Griffin that his brother, N_th_n, who is in 2nd grade, had a twin tooth too!

As you can imagine, I felt much better after overhearing the news that there was another child in the world with a twin tooth, and resolved to hunt down said child's m_m at pick-up on Friday to inquire about it. Well, K_ _ t_n's m_m knew right away what I was talking about when I mentioned the words, twin tooth, but in reality N_th_n had never had one. Their Better- Dentist-Than-Ours had noticed when looking at N_th_n's x-rays, that N_th_n had the potential to have a twin tooth, and had pulled some teeth to avoid the dreaded twin tooth scenario. Meanwhile, back at Chez Freshour, our twin tooth is reaching for the stars!

In other oral news, please observe the normal. Considering her predecessors, we have little faith it will last.

I hope you can appreciate what it took for me to get this shot.

It was basically a lot of this.

My First Sale, Vol. 1

This is a story about a Cameraman named Andy, and the awesome morning he had at our house.

Back in September, I came across an article in the Charlotte Observer announcing HGTV's show My First Sale would be taping in our area, and they were looking for "fun, high-energy people" to be on the show. Well. I am nothing if not high-energy. Also, our house had been on the market for 10 months at that point, and interest (if one can possibly refer to 11 showings in 10 months as interest) was waning. Obviously, I had nothing to lose except my privacy. And since I clearly do not value my privacy by virture of the fact that I occasionally blog, that seemed worth it to me. So I applied online and promptly forgot about it. Thus, when our phone rang a few weeks ago, I was stunned to discover that a) it was not a political call, and b) our application had made its way into the hands of a casting agent named Sami.

Sami listened very politely as I bored her with our current home sale story, which basically amounts to this: Depressed economy, blah, blah, blah, growing out of our house, blah, blah, blah, cannot compete with all of the foreclosures, blah, blah, blah, currently commuting 2.5 hours a day, blah, blah, blah, etc.. I knew our story was mundane and I didn't expect to hear from her again. By this time, our house had been on the market for almost a year, and Jeff and I were slowly realizing if we were ever going to dump the albatross that we needed to embrace a more agressive, forward-thinking sales approach. That's right. We needed to bring in someone with a decent Klout score.

Meet Lisa. She's our new realtor. Klout score = 58. My First Sale thought she would make for some great TV...or at least have the potential to drive some traffic to our house.

Lisa had prepped more than I had, which is why she was able to answer her set of questions in an intelligent and articulate manner.

So was Jeff. Although he was slightly more dramatic. If Wells Fargo doesn't work out, maybe he can get a job as a weatherman. This is his "cloudy day" face.

I, on the other hand, cried. Literally. The question I was responding to was simple: When I hand over the keys of My First Sale, I'll... But suddenly I was overcome with the realization that our current home still feels like sacred ground to me. We have experienced life changing events in this house, and my worst fear is not that we'll never receive an offer, but that we'll get one from some college guys that want to turn my Graceland into a frat house and trash the place. So my answer was weep. And then I did. Which is really quite pathetic considering all Sami asked us to do was, "Have fun with it! Smile a lot! Be happy!"

You would think my blubbering would have been the worst thing that could have happened, but no. When Andy filmed me and Jeff together, a rogue fly started flying around us and actually at one point landed on Jeff's nose. We flailed like idiots. Then Peyton crept in behind us and started playing with a really loud singing baby toy. After that, our dignity was pretty much circling the drain. Suffice it to say, if we eventually make an appearance on a bloopers reel somewhere, I think we can all be assured that the honor is well deserved.

Bath Night

It's a universal truth that soap and sunblock are interchangable in the summer.

Does anything make you look goofier than a pair of googles?

Here, we are taking a break from Griffin.

Casper going into the pool.

Our golden child.

Let the Countdown Begin

School is officially out for the summer in about 5-days. Coincidence? I think not.