Category Archives: Family

Kylie Goes to the Dentist

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Kylie had her dentist appointment today, and in typical Kylie fashion, she did magnificent. At this particular dentists office they ask the parents not to come into the examination room with their children as they find this helps the child to be more responsive and cooperative with the doctor and hygienist; this made Mommy a little nervous but appeared to have no impact at all on Kylie as she happily waived good-bye as she walked away for her exam.

The exam started out with all of us (Kylie, Mommy and I) in a small meeting room with the hygienist who explained all the policies and procedures to us, including the above mentioned “No Parents” clause. She also told us that after the exam was completed we would come back into the meeting room and the doctor would tell us how Kylie did and what was found. At the end of this meeting Kylie went off with the hygienist to her exam (a little too nonchalantly for Mommy), while Mommy and I went back to the waiting room.

After what felt like an eternity for Mommy, Kylie came back out with hygienist and we went back into the meeting room to speak with the doctor. Both the hygienist and the doctor said that Kylie did fantastic and was one of the best first time visits they had ever had. We were then told that Kylie has no cavities and that the malocclusion of her rear molars is perfect at this point with a class 1 malocclusion with no spacing or crowding issues. The doctor also said that her jaw proportions were perfect and in balance which is great to see in someone so young and that typically this is not something that they grow out of. He told us this was really good news and that it basically means that, in theory, we should have no issues with her teeth developing and she will most likely not need braces.

All this information was discerned from both the visual examination and also from the images revealed of Kylie’s ex-rays. Yup, she even had some of those done on her visit to the dentist and even they did not seem to phase her! Kylie was very proud of herself for wearing the heavy apron and collar (to protect the thyroid) and said that “it didn’t even hurt.” Then the hygienist showed us a simple way to floss Kylie’s teeth; by having her lay her head in our lap and slightly tip her head back. Admittedly this is something Daddy does not do often enough for himself (his dentist reminds him of that fact every 6 months) so hopefully we can do a better job with teaching Kylie of its importance.

I have to say that overall this was probably the best possible outcome for her first dentist appointment, and Kylie is already talking about it and looking forward to her next one!?

Kylie’s a Cowgirl

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Tonight Kylie, Melissa and I all went to Meijer to buy a few things. On the way out Kylie asked if she could ride on the horse at the front of the store, seeing as we actually had a penny on us we were more than happy to let here have a few seconds of fun. Being a father has taught me that making your child happy is one of the simplest ways to make yourself happy. Share in my happiness and view the video here.

Wii Fit Begins…Again

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In an effort to maintain my New Year’s resolutions, today I took my first step in what I hope is a successful attempt to lose weight, I re-started my use of the Wii Fit. It turns out that the last time I used the Fit was 355 days ago. I know this because the system keeps track of that and is only to happy to make me aware of it when I started it up. I decided to clear my historical data and start fresh so I don’t have all the old data from almost over a year ago skewing out the numbers. It is my hope to be able to use the Fit everyday, though I am pretty sure that isn’t going to be possible, so instead I am setting my goal to be as frequently as possible. In any event it should be fun to earn enough credits to unlock all the activities again.

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It’s 2010!!

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Happy New Year!!

This year, in hopes of self improvement across various areas of my life, I have decided to make a few resolutions:

  1. Lose weight
    • I am going to try to be more conscious of what I eat and perhaps more importantly, how much I eat.
    • I need to find ways to be more active, which for me is more of a time issue than anything. However there are things I can do to assist in this:
      • Starting on Monday I plan on taking the stairs at work more often.
      • I am going to start parking on the lower parking deck again, thus forcing me to take an additional flight of stairs
      • I am going to start parking farther from the stairs on the lower deck, thus forcing me to walk further to get to the above mentioned stairs.
      • I also plan on starting back up using the Wii Fit as often as possible.
  2. Reduce debt
    • I plan to focus on paying off my smallest debts first and then snowball those payments on tot he next smallest debt.
  3. Learn something new, either a skill or useful knowledge
    • Read a book on a new subject or skill
  4. Finish reading The Bible
    • On June 1st 2009 I began reading the Bible, not for spiritual reason but rather for information and perspective, by using a website that would email me a daily reading that would allow me to finish the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) in a year. At this point I am about a month behind in the readings. As such I need to make time to read a little each day in order to complete the reading.

There I have it, nothing I think will be too overwhelming, and I think they are actually achievable. While I have mental number in regards to how much weight I would like to lose, I purposefully decided to implement that number in my resolution, lest I end up feeling overwhelmed and give up; besides any weight lose is going to be a good thing for me. I also didn’t set a solid number for debt reduction because again, and reduction is an improvement. Hopefully I can find something new to learn that will lend itself to help improve my career, as that would help the debt situation in the long run (or so I would hope), or perhaps a new hobby. Wish me luck.

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Strep Again

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We took Kylie to the doctor again today… Yesterday Tiffany noticed that Kylie’s eyes were getting glassy, which is one of the ways we can tell when Kylie is starting to not feel well, and then last night Mimi noticed that Kylie was running a fever and that her throat was red again. So off we went to the doctor’s office today, and as it turns out Kylie has strep throat again, this makes the second time in a month and a half that she has come down with it. When the doctor checked her temperature in the office it was 100.4, everything else, however, was good. She weighed in today at 43.5 pounds which is up 1.5 pounds from here last office visit last month. The doctor prescribed her some amoxicillin, so hopefully she will be feeling better in a few days.

Weight Update

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Well I would have thought that I was going to lose more weight considering how sick I was! Weighed in at 287.8 this morning, which is a drop of 1 pound over the last two weeks. I guess I can’t really complain, I mean i’d rather lose a pound than gain a pound in any event. Now I just need to make sure the trend continues into the new year, might be tough with all the yummy left overs though.

Merry Christmas

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Merry Christmas to Everyone!

Thankfully Melissa and I are feeling much better today, still don’t think I am at 100% but I am doing a lot better than I was the other day. Kylie had a good morning with Mommy and showed me all the nice things she got, like her new Barbie house and her many new books. When we came back to Daddy’s house she got to open even more presents! She was real happy with her new Leapster 2 and all the new Littlest Pet Shop toys she got. She got lots of new clothes at both Mommy and Daddy’s house as well, and I know she is happy with her new wardrobe. She even got a new Disney Princess Scooter Disney Princess Scooterlike the one in the picture, but Daddy will need to put that together first. She was real happy when she opened that one up because as she said “I always wanted a scooter!”

I am very happy to say that dinner turned out really good! The ham was very flavorful and tender, and the sweet potatoes were baked and mashed to perfection. Melissa’s pumpkin pie turned out excellent and was the perfect dessert to finish off a very good dinner.

After dinner Kylie wanted to play with here new Littlest Pet Shop Cozy Care Adoption Center, and let me say, getting all the pieces out of the box was a lot more difficult than it should have been! In addition she got a number of new Littlest Pets to go along with what she already had, Daddy didn’t realize how many that was. It was fun watching her play and enjoy her new toys!

I think this turned out to be a great Christmas Day! Now though it is time for bed, we’ll leave the cleaning and de-decorating for another day!

Perfect Timing

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This is shaping up to have the potential to be a very miserable Christmas. As of last night I have a pretty bad case of some type of flu. I haven’t been this sick in a very long time. I even had to have Tiffany come and get Kylie I am so sick. So not only am I feeling like crap, but I also miss out on time with Kylie. 🙁 I really hope Kylie doesn’t end up catching whatever I have. On top of that I think Melissa has it too. I can’t be certain, but I suspect I caught something when I went to Bronner’s earlier this week. I just hope I get better before Christmas so I can spend a nice day with Kylie and Melissa (she has to work this year, so she isn’t going back to her parents house), I even planned to make a nice dinner; ham, sweet potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, and Melissa was going to make a pumpkin pie. -sigh- I really hope I get better soon.

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A Day at Bronner’s

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In a rare occurrence Melissa and I both had the day off today, so we decided to take a trip up to Frankenmuth to go to Bronner’s. Neither of us had been up there in quite a while, so we decided that seeing as we had nothing else planned, and an entire day available, that we would take the ride up and look around. We picked up a few new Christmas ornaments (big surprise considering they are the worlds largest Christmas store) but mainly just walked around the store for over three hours, and still didn’t see everything. After we were done there we actually drove down into Frankenmuth to see the town, I think I would like to go back up there in the early fall to see the leaves change and actually walk around. Afterward we went to Tony’s Restaurant off I-75 in Birch Run, the food is delicious, the portions are huge, the service is great, and the atmosphere is fun. We had a very nice day, and it was even nicer because we actually got to go out and do something rather than just sit at home.

Hitch Cover

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I like that I am buying this truck because now I feel like I am allowed to do things to personalize it without feeling like it’s pointless. Case in point, today I bought a cover for my trailer hitch that also acts as an additional brake light. The best part about it is that it is a Skull! Here are a couple of pictures of it, the dark one was taken with my cell phone so the quality is low, but you get the idea of what it looks like when it is lit up. You can also see the locking hitch pin I bought to ensure someone can’t simply walk off with whatever I have attached to the hitch.