Well earlier in my sister-in law Piper's blog she stated that she din't want her front teeth for christmas she wanted that cute wrinkly puppy. And I don't blame her. However, it is a different story for me. Actually, I don't really want my two front teeth, I want seven others. For those of you in my family, you know that this was coming for years. And today was the first day of a long process of moving myself out of the red-necked population of people walking around with no teeth, to the proper civilized people with beautiful teeth. Today I had my first implant on my bottom jaw bone. And granted a beautiful tooth will not be there for another 3 months or so, but a nice stainless steel stud is there until the space heals. Ofcourse this is a first of many steps.

The second step after this may sound a little vain but what we are going to do is whiten my bottom row of teeth. Why you ask, well on my top row of teeth all of them will be getting crowned, and my two front teeth which are already crowned will need to be re-crowned as well (explained in a minute). So I thought since all my teeth will be "new" and it is cool to have them whitened. Why don't I choose pretty teeth. So the second step is to have the bottom teeth all whitened.

The third step will be to put a plate over my mouth to to make it higher. So basically a retainer type thing will fit over my bottom teeth to see if my jaw bone can handle it. I will wear that for about 3-4 weeks. You see with years of not having teeth on top, and only a partial denture, my bit is "un-naturally" lowered. So this will help "lift" it so when the new teeth are placed in I won't have stress on my jaw bone with the new height of my teeth.

OK, fourth step is to put the crown on the implant that I had this morning. And since I will have had my teeth whitened on the bottom I can have a color close to the whitened teeth.

Ok, on to the fifth step. This is kind of a pricy step. We will be crowning my 4 upper molars. There is 2 reasons for this. The first reason, is because of my bite sinking gradually over the years, the molars are shorter and need to be built up a bit to be even with the new teeth coming in. Plus, with the partial denture I have worn for the past 7 or so years, there was a big huge gapping whole drilled in between each molar on each side of the mouth. And I do not need those holes just sitting there open, it would be impossible to eat and try and get food out of there. Part of this process will be to re-crown my two front teeth as well. When my bite is corrected, and in its correct position, my two front teeth will have the appearance of sticking out . Well since I am trying to get away from the appearance of looking like Bugs Bunny, we will re-crown those as well to re-position those and have them look normal.

Ok what step are we on now? Oh #6. This is actually kind of interesting. I will be getting a CT scan of my head to have a stent made. At first when it was all being explained, I was wondering why in the heck I needed a stent. All I was picturing was the cathater that Jake had put in when he was going through chemo. But luckily I had it all wrong. A stent in this case is going to be guide to help Dr. Blazic place the 6 implants I need on the top of my mouth in the precise place so they can put temporary teeth on them. Which moves us on to the next step.

Number seven. I will have my 6 upper teeth implants placed. Three on each side of my two front teeth. As I was explaining in the previous step the doctor will use this stent for exact placement of the implants. The reason for this is because there is a new procedure that we are going to do where I will get to have temporary teeth put on at the time of the implants. Having these temporary teeth put in at the time of implants will help shape the gum and encourage that gum around the teeth so I won't have any space between the gum and the teeth. And for those of you that would like to learn a new "dental" term today. The gum that builds up and forms the peaks in between your teeth are called "Papilla". And after the papilla is formed then we move on to the last step.

LAST STEP!!! This will to place the permanent crown over the impants. It will take several months for this to happen. Probably 6 months or so.

So over all this whole process I am guessing it will take a little under a year to complete. Friday I learned what all of this costs. I had a very bad day on Friday........I about had a heart attack actually, because lets just say in paying for all this, I could have paid off my car and taken the our little family on a nice Disney cruise. And probably had a little left over. But it has to get done, and it will be worth it when it is over. Atleast that is what I keep telling my self. And when my mouth is a little less sore I will have Jake take a picture of my mouth today.........,

OUR NEW BABY!!!!!!!!


We would like to introduce our new baby Rosie to our family.
She is an American Bull Dog and is about 4 months old.
Tina it seemed, was happy to have her when she first came home, however, later in the evening I think she was wondering when this dog was going to leave. They have been getting along pretty well so far. However, Rosie just doesn't understand why Tina doesn't want to play, and Tina doesn't understand why Rosie can't just leave her alone.

Here is my old west cowboy gunslinger family!!!

Jake is getting ready to start competing in Single action shooting competitions. Part of the competition is dressing the part. Even Liz is getting into the act!!!! Now I need to get my clothes, I have a couple of good ideas. We have a great store in Mesa that has some great clothes from the old west era.

More Pictures of Cousins!!!

Here are some of more pictures of cousins from our trip in Utah. The top picture is Byron, Nate and Cassie, the bottom is cute Luke, Jared and Issac. We had such a great time visiting family in Utah, we can't wait to see them again soon!!!!!!

THE SIM BOYS

While we were in Utah we had the opportunity to drop in and visit with the Sim boys.
Jake and Ryon are at the top, cute Jordon, in the middle, and adorable Tanner on the bottom with Sam and Liz.

Here are some scuba diving pictures. It was alot of fun. WE got to see a Sea turtle, and octopus, a couple of eels, and a puffer fish. And ofcourse lots of tropical fish!!!!! I can't wait to go again.

We went to McDonald's one morning for a quick breakfast. At this one Mc'D's location we were surprised when they didn't have the original " Big Breakfast" Instead they had a platter with rice, spam and portugese sausage.

OK folks!!!! I have been lazy, so here are some more pictures of our Hawaii trip!!!!! This is pictures of the first night we were there. We ate at this fun place called Cheeseburger paradise. The view was great as you can see above. And the burgers were good too. When Hyrum came later in the week we took him there for lunch!!!!