On Thursday morning during the first orthodontic appointment, they removed Logan’s braces and the expander.  Logan’s teeth now look so straight and awesome, and his smile is even prettier.  Logan felt a little weird without all the apparatus in his mouth initially, but he said he could finally say “the” again.  In the morning, they also made an impression of the teeth to make a retainer and it was ready by the afternoon.  Logan chose a rainbow colored retainer and it was for the upper palate. They taught Logan how to put it in and remove it, and they taught us how to take care and clean it.  Logan had some trouble eating on the first night but afterward no other complaints from him.  He is doing great brushing and cleaning the retainer.  Stuart and I are very proud of how well Logan has been adapting throughout this orthodontic journey thus far.

Last day of braces:

Big Smile without braces:

    After we returned from SoCal, I had Wednesday and Thursday off with the boys.  We had arranged for the boys’ dental cleaning and Logan’s orthodontic appointments on those days.  Both boys had XRay taken and neither of them had any cavities which was great.  The next day, Connor and i accompanied Logan to both of his orthodontic appts; more on this at next blog.  On Thursday, we had planned with Lisa and Cole to go bowling together at the Bass ProShop, but unfortunately the wait was 1.5 to 2 hours.  We quickly changed our plan and headed over to miniature golf instead; the three boys were excited with this new plan.  We got our clubs and walked right up to the course.  We did not bother keeping scores, but all of us did fine and had fun playing the 18 hours.  Afterward, all three boys wanted to play some arcade games, so Lisa and I sat down to take a break while they played.  Both Logan and Connor also helped me do some grocery shopping those two days, so we had a productive break.

    For the rest of our time down south, we hung out locally and spent some quality time with the grandparents.  The boys had fun battling chess with Grandpa and playing Dominos with Grandma.  We also played some board games with them that we brought.  While the grandparents watched the Masters on TV, we caught the end of the competition and got ourselves excited about playing golf again.  We went to a mall and spent a lot of time at a game store; the boys had fun looking through their Pokemon card collection and Stuart browsing through the board games.  All of us enjoyed a dinner at home and another night at a restaurant.  We had initially considered going to the Universal Studio on one of the days, but later we chose to walk around Redondo Beach with Grandma instead and it was definitely more relaxing. 

    We had a good time seeing the grandparents during this trip and we made our journey home on Tuesday.  We arrived home early enough to go to the boys’ martial art lesson.  It was a smaller class as many people were out of town, so the boys had an extra good lesson and I enjoyed watching it too.

    We drove down Saturday to SoCal to have a celebration dinner for Grandpa.  Our drive was smooth and we rested a bit at grandparents’ before heading out.  We drove the grandparents and met up with Julie, Andrew, Trevor, Deanna and Jake at the Olde Ship.  It had been a long time since we saw them, so it was good to catch up with them.  Logan was drawing mazes before the food arrived and he ended up having everyone take the challenge.  A couple of his “Yeet” mazes were quite tough and got us stuck too.  The dinner was nice and we wrapped it up with singing to Grandpa and a cake.  I think Grandpa enjoyed the family celebration for this special birthday.

   Last Sunday, Rohan came over to play with the boys, and we learned that we forgot it was his birthday.  Rohan turned 10!  After they played, the parents came back; we then sang to Rohan and enjoyed some cake with him.

   While the boys were playing that day, I did some cleaning in the front yard.  We had a weed central at one of the corners, and I was proud that I cleaned that all up.  I also put new mulch on our new plants.  There are still a little bit more work to be done.