For New Year’s, we traveled to Charlotte to visit Erin. Erin has come to Wilmington so many times we can’t even count! We exchanged Christmas presents (you can see the adorable elephant sweater vest Harper got and the Giant Microbe – a brain cell – that Erin got from some crazy lady).

We played dominoes, watched Toy Story 3 (the most depressing of the trilogy), toasted champagne at midnight, walked around some shops and watched Harper play on the playground.

What a nice way to bring in the new year.

 

Today was a snow day in Wilmington. And a pretty impressive one at that. The snow cover has hidden almost all the grass (and I’m not being ironic here) and was sizable enough to build a snowman (albeit small). I got the day off work (we have no plows or salt, the natives don’t know how to drive in this, and all the schools were closed) so I took pictures of Tom and Harper in the snow. You can see how happy Tom is to play in the snow – even his eyes are sparkling!

 

Ah, wisdom teeth. I got mine taken out between Christmas and New Years. What a great way to spend a Christmas vacation…

However, I was rather thankful that all four of my wisdom teeth had erupted already, so it was just removing four teeth, not digging them out. I didn’t have to worry about nerves and sinuses being damaged and the probability of dry socket decreased significantly.

The actual extraction took less than 38 minutes (I was paying my co-pay at 12:26 and in the car at 1:04). The sedation wore off really quickly – I’ve heard others talk about being out of it all day long, and I was back to myself (I was going to say completely normal, but that would be misleading) by the time we got home. Granted, we had to pick up Harper and get my prescriptions, so that was about an hour.

Other than this picture right here, where I still have gauze in my mouth (this was taken right when we got home, so about an hour after surgery), I didn’t have any post-op swelling, or “chipmunk cheeks.” My pain and discomfort was easily manageable, and I didn’t get the dreaded dry socket.

I still feel the holes in my mouth and I’m not real sure if they ever fully close, but I feel just fine. All in all, it was considerably better than I had thought it would be. But still, not my favorite way to spend vacation.