Cheap Flight to the PNW

Wanna visit Seattle! SW has some amazingly cheap flights for the next couple of days. We had some booked and were able to use their online travel tools to cancel then repurchase at the lower fairs so if you have something already scheduled use this discount window to get some money back!

Open!

After an unbelievable three year delay, I am finally able to say that Snoqualmie Falls Dental is now open! Below are some pictures of the office. This first one is of the outside and has the future sign overlaid on the picture.


Here is the start of the hallway coming out of my office.



My office with some plastic still on the window. We are 95% completed, but we still have a couple things to finish up before we can say we are completely ready. We'll do an open house in a few weeks when it is complete so people can drop by and check it out.


This is the view out the windows on the South side. The office I have been working at is like a cave so I have been dying to work here where we have windows almost completely covering three sides of the office.


New digital panographic xray machine with a picture of a rose taken with xray film, very fitting. :-)

Operatory, 1 of 6. Only three have chairs in them right now.

Cerec machine that does the single visit crowns! First patient today had an onlay done because he recently broke his tooth. It was nice to start off with that.

Dark woods, natural stones, etc for a craftsman feel to everything.



This doesn't show up well with the flash.

Reception room.


Reception desk, with check in computer where the patient can enter in all the medical history. Being a completely digital/chartless office is great for a computer nerd like me. The monitor on the wall will display videos about the various types of dentistry that I do. There is still some trim wood that will go on the columns on either side of the reception window. The wood will wrap the bottom and the top of each column.

Staff lounge, looking messy because this is where we put all of our construction trash until we do our weekly haul to the dump.

That's it! It was a huge stress to pick so many options and do all of the design and equipment choices ourselves, but now that it is over it has been very rewarding to see it come together and turn out well.

Missing Link

The big problem with the delays that have occurred during the last few months has been the elevator. Today if finally was signed off as usable! We should only be a few more days until we are open.

Not surprised

Nope, not open.

Christmas Letter 2008

I (Marisa) wrote the letter this year. We only were able to try and get the kids together for a picture once and as you can imagine, getting three boys to all keep their hair from being messy, sit still, smile....at the same time did not happen. Carson and I separately chose different pictures to edit and couldn't ever come to a compromise on which one to send. I thought Carson's incorrectly exposed one was way too dark and grainy, even though he achieved the effect he was trying for. He said he would rather send no picture than the overly exposed and therefore faux pas brown-on-brown one that I did. Which do you like?

Hi Everyone! Here’s the scoop on the Maple Valley Calderwoods:

Caeden is almost 2 and he is CRAZY. As the youngest of 3 extremely active boys he definitely knows how to hold his own. I think he must be bi-polar: either he’s jumping and dancing and charming everyone around or he’s throwing himself on the floor or screaming “no, No, NO!!!” Right now he loves making popcorn, pointing out letters everywhere we go (he calls them all “A” or “B”), Little Einsteins and Finding Nemo. He has graduated to a big boy bed and wants to be potty-trained. Our baby isn’t a baby anymore!

Beckham is in preschool and wants to be a rock star. Pretty much he thinks he already is one. The other day he said, “Mom, everyone thinks I’m awesome!” He loves Bumblebee from Transformers and says every yellow car we pass is “Bumblebee!” much to the dismay of his more specific older brother. Now Caeden does it too and points out the window yelling “Buh-bee!” Bex loves Dora and Diego, the color orange, snuggling, and building forts. He played soccer in the fall and is looking forward to basketball this winter.

Trey saved up his money over the past year and put it towards his half for a Wii on his birthday. He likes to play Sonic the Hedgehog and make Miis. He’s in 2nd grade, and loves math and art. He’s always coming up with creative new ideas. At his field trip to the Pioneer Farm, I was trying to show him how lucky he is to have so many toys when the pioneers only had a few simple toys. He said “Mom, if I were a pioneer, I would just make my own toys!” Then he explained how he could make a car out of wood, with an axle and everything. Right now he’s into Legos, Pokemon, Bakugan and Tech Decks (mini skateboards). He also played soccer and will play basketball next month.

The boys keep asking when they’re going to have a baby sister. They’re sure that if I get pregnant it will be a girl. A few weeks ago, Beckham asked me how to spell “baby sister,” wrote it on a paper, folded it up and asked me to send it to Jesus. I told him if we want to talk to Jesus we pray. So now he prays for a baby sister every day! I tell the kids if they want another baby they have to behave better, and that’s the truth!

Carson and Marisa are mostly just surviving under the stress and whirlwind that this year has been. I know that’s pathetic, but it’s true. We will be SOOOOO happy when the office is finally finished and Snoqualmie Falls Dental is running smoothly. If you want to hear the whole story, you can read Carson’s sob story on our blog about two posts back. We did get away for a couple of days in May to Baltimore (our favorite vacation spot!) so Carson could “hood” the other Dr. Calderwood, his brother Cody. Carson spent a weekend in Utah and saw BYU kick UCLA’s trash and Marisa went on a shopping trip to Portland with her friends in November. Probably the most fun thing we’ve done this year is play rock band. We got it for Carson‘s 32nd birthday in October and we love it! The kids made it out of the state to Marisa’s Pond family reunion in Idaho. It has been a crazy busy year and mostly we are just glad it’s over and looking forward to the future! We hope to never move (in the snow) or sell a house by owner in a terrible market or landscape a backyard from scratch or start a new dental practice with a 2.5 year delay and do all the design, research, purchasing and marketing ourselves or move into a perfect new house with three destructive little boys or potty-train two kids in one year again. Ever!

Best of luck to you all in 2009!