Bless This Mess

Wow!  Can you believe there’s only 3 Mondays left this year!?!  I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by.

Not much has been happening here.  Mostly just getting ready for Christmas!  Love, love, LOVE this holiday!

I did want to post really quickly something cute that Mandy said earlier this week.

Mandy:  I can’t believe the school has the same song as church!!!

Me:  (trying to think of what song she could possibly be talking about)  What do you mean?

Mandy:  I can’t believe they have the same song.

Me:  What song are you talking about?

Mandy:  The Star Sprinkled Banner!

I had forgotten that I showed her a couple of weeks ago that ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was in the church hymnal.  They sing that song every morning at school.

I thought it was cute how she said it.

Sorry this is so late.  Someone here had the stomach flu.  No fun, that’s for sure.

On Tuesday Ashley had an orthodontist appointment… not a fun one either.

She got her top braces put on, which she has to wear for 2 years!

She also got a contraption put in to fix her over-bite.  It’s called a Herbst.  Never heard of them before, but it is cemented to the top and bottom very back teeth.  Every time she closes her mouth it forces her lower jaw forward.  It’s supposed to lengthen the tendons which will help the jaw bone grow longer.

This is the top part before it was attached to the bottom part.

She has to wear the Herbst for a year.  Once they take it off they’ll put on the lower braces.  She’ll have to wear the full set of braces for a year.

Here’s the bottom part before the top was connected to it.

The placement of the brackets.

All done and still smiling!

(she’s laying down in the chair in this picture)

Here she is 3 days later and still happy!

She’s gotten used to the braces just fine, but the Herbst is really rubbing her tongue raw.  She said it pinches her cheek at least once a day, so we’ll have to ask the orthodontist about that.

Even with braces she’s adorable!  She even sounds cute when she talks!

She’s a real trooper!

Happy Monday everyone!

Last week Ashley had a science project due.  Since Ashley didn’t care about going to region or state, we decided to do a fun experiment.

Question:  Which soda will fountain the highest with Mentos?

Of course you already know the answer, but do you know the reason why?  And if you say caffeine, that’s only a small part of the reason.

Here are the sodas we tested.

First she had to make a super tall ruler.

She tested each soda 3 times with the same amount Mentos each time.

First up, root beer!  And for those of you who might be interested, Barq’s put caffeine back in the drink.

Next up… Mt. Dew.  Now that has more caffeine than all of them, and it did the worst!

Here’s Sprite.  Not too shabby for having no caffeine.

Cream Soda… at least it wasn’t as small as the Mt. Dew’s.

And Diet Coke.  Of course it did the best.

But not just because of caffeine, obviously since Mt. Dew didn’t do well at all.

There are 2 other ingredients in Diet Coke, when mixed with 2 of the ingredients and the rough bumpy surface of the Mentos, causes bubbles to form the quickest.

We found out that Diet Mt. Dew had the same 2 ingredients in it as Diet Coke, but the store was all out of Diet Dew.  So we settled for Diet 7UP instead.  But that didn’t have the caffeine in it, so it wasn’t as impressive.  Oh well, guess we’ll have to try Diet Dew at some point just to see the results.

Ashley had a blast!  She said “I love this kind of homework cause it isn’t really work, it’s FUN!!!”