Football Playoffs

This spring was the season of flag football around our place. Both the 11yo and the 7yo signed up to play. It was a lot of effort getting them to practices and games, but we really had a lot of fun watching them learn and compete! You might notice from the picture that the 11yo is getting to be almost as tall as him mom. He's really excited to pass her.

A couple of weekends ago was the playoffs. The playoffs were sudden death elimination, and some of those other coaches were pretty intense, especially with the 7 year old teams. Pretty lame. The 7yo lost his first game, partly due to some shenanigans by the other coach:( but he was just glad to get a real trophy! He wouldn't let me put a picture of it on here because he wants to show everyone in person. The 11yo won both of his games and his team ended up champions of his league! It was very exciting.















Look how mean these 7 year olds are! These kids started the season never having played at all and they had a great season. Flag football at this age is hilarious to watch.


















Here's the championship team for the 11 year olds. They also didn't have a lot of experience when the season started, but they had an amazing coach who taught them a lot. Honestly, I learned a lot about football from watching their practices and games. The first game in the playoffs was against a team that had already beaten them twice. It was a hard fought game, but they pulled ahead toward the end of the game and won! The second game was also very exciting with a lot of long passes being caught, and it stayed close through most of the 2nd half. But the Bulldogs won again! Congratulations, guys!

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Oral Surgery

Some of you may have noticed a mention on my facebook page about the 11yo's oral surgery this week. It's funny because when he was a little boy, he had the most amazing perfect teeth. I remember wondering how he got such good teeth from two people who had braces and REALLY needed them :)

Anyway, when the perfect baby teeth fell out, the adult teeth came in poorly. Or, in the case of the teeth relevant to this post, didn't come in at all. He's had braces for 9 months or so, which has really helped his teeth a lot. However, he has a small mouth and there isn't room for all the adult teeth en route. Also the upper adult canines decided that they didn't need to come down and were planning on just staying up in the gums forever. So his orthodontist recommended (that's the nice way to say "insisted") that we take him to the oral surgeon. The final decision was that he needed 6 teeth pulled. The 2 upper baby canines, two adult teeth (for which there was no room), and two other baby teeth that hadn't fallen out yet and were interfering with the braces.

The big mess was the adult canines. To get them to come down, they cut slits in the upper gums (on the outer side of the gums, not inside the mouth) so that they can get to the teeth. Then they attached a little knob to each tooth, and a chain to each knob. The orthodontist can now attach these chains to the braces and pull the teeth down into place. Apparently one of them will take up to 6 months get pulled down :(

He was very scared and very brave, even when they put in the IV. The doc let us keep the teeth. (click below if you want to see them. I purposely overexposed the teeth, 'cause they're really gross)


The patient is doing well, but his face is swollen up by his nose, which makes him look like a gefling. The swelling has gone down a bit, but you can still see the "gefling' in there!

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