dominoes

oh the hubs. he had a tooth pulled yesterday, and the thought of such an occurrence literally makes me cringe. the problem started in april when he cracked a molar and he has been dealing with the troubled area with toothpicks and careful chewing for 6 months. the time had come for dental intervention. benjamin wickstra did his job well and brad spent the evening hungry, but with relatively little pain for an extraction. the pulled tooth did shape the evening slightly by necessitating activities that did not raise the patients blood pressure. so instead of chase and ramming, we played DOMINOES.



i felt very laura ingalls wilder as we sat by the fire with the dominoes strewn about and the tv off. it was a very good feeling. now, do not get impressed that the boys were playing such an adultish game. for they were not. instead, we set up huge (more than 10) runs of dominoes that the boys would knock over and create the chain reaction of tipping over the dominoes. not normally a difficult feat, the presence of little boys made any attempts at more elaborate systems impossible. maxer and bear would shake the table, "accidentally" bump a dominoe, or set some of their own dominoes too close to one our trains and the whole thing would start crashing. oh they would laugh.

max exemplified what would happen if you gave your child drugs by running wild through the whole house when the dominoes would fall. wes would look at brad and imitate exactly the noise and motions that brad did. we moved on to building domino towers. brad turned the activity into a lesson about stability and taught both max and i some tips on tower building. weston insisted on sitting right on my lap and carefully place dominoes on top of mine. so cute.

being in one another's company with christmas music blaring in the background, the night was sweetly enjoyable. the beauty of each family member's presence was exemplified by the lack of other distractions; a rare treat we typically opt out of for the sake of watching a little mike rowe on dirty jobs.

thank you christ jesus for the gift of family. you have blessed us so much with each member, thank you for the opportunity to appreciate the uniqueness of gifts and characteristics you have bestowed upon each member of our fam.