Another Tooth Gone & Mining

At our block party, there was a 4 year old boy who filled up a gatoraid bottle with water and threw it... right at Jack's mouth. They were in the kiddie pool and Jack started crying - I thought out of shock. I scooped him up to try to sooth him and realized his mouth was bleeding. At a closer look, I realized his top tooth, to the left of his middle one (already gone) was OUT! The impact of the bottle knocked out his tooth. Fortunately it was a baby tooth, but it was only slightly loose and probably could have stayed in his mouth until at least the end of the year. One of our neighbors fished out the tooth from the kiddie pool so we had the tooth to give to the tooth fairy that night. But now Jack is missing three, top front teeth and has a very big hole when he smiles.

We went to Zoo Mars (a petting zoo) for a friend's birthday in August and Jack really wanted to do the mining activity, but it wasn't part of the party, so I promised I'd take him another time. I took a day off from work and the kids and I went to Zoo Mars to go mining. I was so glad to be able to do that with them - fulfill a promise - and just watch them enjoy themselves with doing something new. They had fun sifting through the sand to find their gems; and then look up the gems on the brochure to see what they got. Little did they realize that THEY were the best gems of all.