Sasha's Braces

by Sasha

A little background from Mom: Sasha was born with a wide cleft palate. We had the cleft repaired when she came home at age 2, but as a result of the cleft her teeth enjoy a rather creative and chaotic arrangement (chaos and creativity being a hallmark of basically every aspect of Sasha). We've known for a while that Sash would need substantial orthodontic intervention, including a few rounds of braces and eventually implants to take the space of some adult teeth that forgot to form. This summer Sasha had an expander installed to help give her mouth some extra space and last week in came the first round of braces! The following is Sasha's description of the experience.

When I got my braces I didn't like it when they put the expander out 'cause the blood was coming a little bit but I rinsed it out. And then I was excited because I could feel the top of my mouth!

When they put the braces on it feeled a little weird because it hurt a little bit 'cause when you get braces it will hurt a little bit. It was like ticklish-hurtiesh.

I'll have braces 'till summer probably. That's what I think. [Mom's note: as long as she means that she'll be done with braces in summer 2035, I think our expectations are aligned]

When my braces come off my teeth are gonna look straight and neat. [Agreed!]

Picky Pizza Posters - SLAB

The ultimate quest for the worst pizza experience in Utah Valley

SLAB is designed for large groups of people who can’t agree on their pizza toppings. Cheese? Chicken cordon bleu? Pulled pork? At SLAB, everyone in your picky group can be appeased. Pizzas come in only one size, twenty inches. But you order your pizza by the quarter slab. Meaning an enormous pizza is created on-demand for your party, but you only get a quarter of it. Perfect for the college crowd it is catering to and located so close to BYU that you need to sign the honor code just to get in.

Ambiance

Large tables with seating for 8 in cheapish chairs, very convenient for large groups of college kids, which also works well for largish families. Everything designed for easy cleanup, which is also appropriate for college kids and our family. Copious amounts of napkins in dispenser, good for those with children who spill large drinks (sigh. we speak from experience). Maybe the restaurant should be renamed Slob?

This is the first place we’ve brought in a nice DSLR camera and felt like we blended in. Very “hip” here.

Large TV showing some baseball game. Boooring. But admittedly entertaining to hear Sam analyze the game, since his full understanding of baseball is founded on 2 seasons of t-ball.

 

Price for a large cheese

$18 (4 20” slabs equal one pizza)

 

Beverages

Bucking the trend of unlimited refills, the fountain drink machine clearly stated only ONE refill allowed for free. We assume this is in reaction to college kids who will keep drinking any free non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic beverage as long as it lasts. But they have Apple Beer so who can blame them for restricting it.

Pizza Impressions

Large slab served on wax paper. No plates. Apparently we and SLAB share a "pizza on fine china" philosophy.

Mildly greasy. Crispy crust. Thin and similar to a cracker, but soft at the end. Sauce is just enough to be there but not overwhelm the cheese. Mild flavor bleed over from one pizza slab to the next, which was quite a problem for the pickiest of the crew.

Rating

5/6 Slices

Flavor bleed-over is a plus or a minus depending on your point of view. We were heartily divided as to whether the flavor mingling was a good thing.

Camping in the World's Largest Organism

It's been on my camping request list for years and this weekend we finally did it - we camped in the World's Largest Living Organism. Allow me to explain. About 3 hours south of us, near the ever-so-creatively-named Fish Lake, lives Pando. Pando, The Trembling Giant, is a 100-acre aspen forest and DNA tests have confirmed that the whole forest is a single living organism, a giant grove of aspen trees that all share a single root system.

For years I've contested that depriving our children of the chance to visit and camp within the World's Largest Living Organism showed a serious lapse in parental judgement. Steve countered with the the inarguable point that it's just a bunch of trees. And so the debate circled.

But this weekend we were looking for a new place to camp and we wanted to hit some autumn leaves so off to Pando we drove!

It was cold (we were camping at about 7,000'). It was beautiful. And, yes, it looked like a bunch of trees. But it was still pretty cool knowing that all of those trees shared the same DNA!

If you're looking for a get-away with plenty of trees and a fun fact your kids will continually mock you about but you're convinced they secretly find kinda cool ("Wow, Mom, trees! Sure glad we got to drive 3 hours to see identical trees that share a giant root system!") then we can definitely recommend Pando.

Ben says it's "Pando-monium!" But he hastened to clarify that's not because it was actually chaotic there, just because it sounds cool.

I must disagree with the child - any place with the 4 Morningstar kids is bound to contain high levels of chaos. It was definitely Pando-monium.