Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we didn't make any plans. Seeing that it is NOT a public holiday out here (or even celebrated) and that I am usually the host...which wasn't going to happen this year post jaw surgery, we didn't even bother.

THEN- a couple days before Thanksgiving, we received a text from a friend (Tash Bains) inviting us over to celebrate. He father is Canadian and they were going to have a harvest celebration (aka Thanksgiving), and since we were American we were invited. I didn't even bring anything to contribute to the table, we just showed up and ate food! It was great and most of the food was soft (mashed potatoes, stuffing, pie, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce etc...) so I could eat most of it :-)

The house we went to was outside of town near the farms. Tash had a horse that would stand by the front door with its head in the entry way- the kids loved it! All in all, I am grateful for friends during the holidays!

Family Pictures!

We get our family pictures taken every couple of years. We were due for an update and I found someone to take some snap shots of the family!  

Love this one Olivia & Mary

Family Shot (Olivia 10, Thomas 5, Mary 8)

Stan and I....we are supposed to be serious :)

Olivia in action

Mary adores her daddy-

Daddy and the girls

Daddy and the kids

Thomas and I

The kids and I

and a few black and white group shots-

Enjoy!

Olivia's first billboard!

So you may not know this, but Olivia was picked up by an agency called Triple Talent earlier this year. After she got so far in the Annie Auditions for Broadway (second to last kid cut), we had a lot of people approach us about getting Olivia on their books. We originally declined and let her sit for a year, and then decided to go with an agency called Triple Talent, after realising if you are not with an agency you don't get many opportunities to audition for work. After getting some head shots and attending a few auditions, we learned that Olivia loves the spotlight and she LOVES 'chat-to-cameras'. Basically when you audition for anything you just talk to a camera about whatever they tell you too-

On her second audition ever she landed a part as a kid eating chicken in a Coles commercial (Coles is a grocery store in Australia). It was fun, you get fed on set, do a lot of waiting around, finally film, and get paid pretty good (I think she got $750.00 for that commercial and she was only allowed to work for 4 hours- so we got to go home early)!  We set up a bank account in her name and all her money goes into this account which she can cash out once she is 18.

Anyway, as fate would have it, Olivia's photo shoot for Cottees cordial got rained out and postponed just a few days after my jaw surgery. I organised a ride for her (minors always have to be supervised by an adult) and since I was in and out of hibernation, I completely forgot about the photo shoot until I drove Stan to the train station and did a double take! I was absolutely flabbergasted to see a billboard of my daughter! Usually when you do modeling you have no idea what they will use the pictures for or IF they will use the pictures, so we were lucky to see it! 

 

I then looked on their Face book page and there were lots more pictures https://www.facebook.com/CotteesAustralia

We later found out this was a national campaign and that these billboards were by every train station in Australia. The best part about the modeling is that we usually get to keep the clothes later! I think Olivia has come away with over 1K worth of clothes in the last 6 months. I can't complain since she and Mary as the same size. Olivia is also very good at sharing and let's Mary have a pick of what clothes she wants to keep.

Halloween!

This year for Halloween Stan was up in Kuala Lumpar (Malaysia) for a quick business trip. He was sad  to miss it, as he was only gone for three days, but those three days overlapped with Halloween. This meant, that I needed to take the kids trick-or-treating 16 days post operation.

I am not going to lie, I had a lot of people doing double takes (I am sure they were thinking, 'is that a mask or her face?) Then someone finally did ask...and I was like "Nope...It's not a mask.... (then the long awkward silence) with me trying to flex my smiling muscles with my mouth wired shut...not pretty :-)

In the name of going the extra mile, I also arranged to come into my kids classrooms  (to Olivia's horror) to do a 1 hour presentation on Halloween. I was quite proud of myself. I researched how Halloween is celebrated throughout the world. I learned that France and Australia are the only two countries in the world that fail to celebrate Halloween. I showed the class what a Jack-o-lantern looks like and told them the history behind it. I brought in apples in a bucket and had them try bobbing for apples. We also tried donuts on a string and then the classic ghosts made with lollipops and tissue (then you draw the face on them). Everyone thought I was a genius which I got quite a kick out of.

Since I was talking funny I just had to tell the class in the beginning that I had just had an operation and while my mouth was wired shut I had just had it loosened so I could talk a little bit. I had one little girl walk up to me and tell me that her class had just learned about "not staring at people" I was like "that is nice...." and then she walked off :-)

This year we probably got about 20 pieces of candy after trick-or-treating for an hour or two. It was cold weather so people were not up to the trek. We did have a lot of trick-or-treaters at our house. We live on a pretty busy main road and this year we decorated very well so everyone was pulling over to ring our door bell. Olivia loved it and would wait by the door to hand out candy. We also passed out announcements to our neighbors explaining Halloween and telling them when to expect trick-or-treaters. I don't think people bothered reading the announcement because while we were handing them out people started handing my kids candy. I was like 'tell them Halloween is not TODAY' but my kids kept getting candy (even without a costume).

Either way- Happy Halloween!

Jaw Surgery

So I haven't blogged for a while! Sorry!! Just after my last post I underwent jaw surgery. It sucked (no pun intended :-)

Long story short, I love love love teeth and when I look at anyone for the first time I usually have something good to say about their teeth. Sometimes I even read about teeth online when I have free time. So I love all things about teeth and so you would think that I would take care of mine RIGHT?

No- I didn't wear my retainer post 2 years of braces as a teenager, I am a bad brusher, don't even ask me about flossing. But I LOVE my teeth because I just NEVER get cavities and what's not to love about that?

Anyway, I went to the Whitsundays (Great barrier reef) for my 10- year anniversary afterwards while looking at the pictures I saw a picture of me smiling my heart out and realised my gummy smile has gotten pretty bad. Yes, click on the picture and zoom in - that is a row of gums!

 So I promptly interviewed about 6 orthodontists... thinking maybe a retainer at night or invisalign. After the first 5 told me 2 years of braces + jaw surgery I decided all orthodontists in Australia are charlatans and then sat on the decision for a while. I read blogs, looked online, and then interviewed one last orthodontist (the most expensive I might add), who took all these pictures of my face and profile and then sat me down and did a 10 minute power point presentation where he showed me where my jaw was wrong and how they would fix it and how I would look and then sent me home with a CD so I could review his procedure at home.

He spent and extra 20 minutes giving me a full diagnosis while the other orthodontists met me for the first time, took a quick look and rattled off the same solution...This orthodontist is also a little OCD and gets impatient with his staff when they do not work efficient. He is an extreme perfectionist and so I decided this is EXACTLY the person I want to work with.

I did my first consultation in October, then in November I had to get ready for the braces. Impressions, x-rays, replacing a cap that I had on my front tooth. (I knocked out my front tooth as a 9 year old and the cap was still holding strong 20 years later- but since we were putting braces on we decided to replace it so it would be strong).

Stan was not happy about the braces option so I paid double and got them on the inside of my teeth (this is called Lingual braces) They are more expensive because they are a massive pain for the orthodontist. Everything is done backwards and there is also less surface to stick the braces to from the inside, so it can get quite tricky.  All in all I LOVED lingual braces, as my smile started to look better and better and people couldn't put their finger on what was different (note: picture off the Internet).

Anyway, the plan was to have braces on for 1 year then do the jaw surgery and then keep the braces on for 6 more months. We moved the jaw surgery up to mid-October for some reason and in hindsight this was good as it gave me more time to recover. 

The surgery was good- I was asleep and can't remember anything. My surgeon was the best in Melbourne and even the hospital staff who would bring me water all commented how lucky I was to have him. My recovery was awful, but compared to just about everyone else who has done it, it was awesome. I didn't have any complications, I got feeling back in my face, my swelling went down quickly, I weaned of medicine very quickly and so I really shouldn't complain, but seriously I shutter at the thought of anyone ever doing jaw surgery in the future. 

I lost a lot of weight (got down to 105 lbs), and I wasn't going in with much (115lbs). I was so hungry and tired that I spent almost 6 weeks straight sleeping- it was like hibernating. I wanted to eat, but it took so much effort and time to suck 1 cup of soup that I just didn't have the energy.  I was cold a lot too- which was odd because we were going into the summer. 

The scariest part of the whole surgery was when my kids came home from school with gastro. I was worried if I caught it and needed to vomit I would drowned in my vomit because my mouth was wired shut. As fate would have it I did catch it, but because I was eating so little to begin with I only dry-heaved. 

Anyway, it is now 6 months post surgery and I have two months left of braces. I get them off in June. I don't look much different- some people look really different after jaw surgery- I look the same, but my teeth look better!