Bethany is 12!

Wow, how am I old enough to have a 12-year-old?  Bethany celebrated her birthday on October 18th.  She was just one day into her new braces, so she was kind of sore, but I think she still had a good day.  She wanted Banana Brownie Waffles for breakfast, but they were too hard to chew with her sore mouth :(  

 

Look how little she used to be!

Braces!

At Bethany's last dentist appointment in October, the X-rays showed that her adult canines were becoming impacted.  This meant that we needed to get her started with braces sooner than we were planning.  We decided to go with the same orthodontist I used, Dr. Coleman.  He is great!  I know he'll do a great job.

Before!

It was the day before her birthday, so the staff gave her a balloon, chocolate cake, and sang to her.

After - isn't she cute?  Her glasses are crooked from a dodge-ball mishap at school.  We went to the optical center a few days later to get them straightened out.

Josh Groban Concert

October 11 - I had bought some tickets to the Josh Groban concert.  Being a cheapskate, I bought the upperbowl tickets because they were "cheaper" (not really cheap though).  When we got there, they said the upperbowl was closed and they gave us floor tickets.  We were pretty excited!  Until we got to the floor and realized they had given us tickets that had already been sold to someone else.  There was a whole bunch of people in the same boat.  They gave us a third set of tickets, again on the floor but in another corner.  Again, the seats were already taken.  We were getting kind of frustrated!  We had to stand in the back through the entire opening act while they figured out where to put us.  Finally some usher brought in stacks of more chairs and just set them up for us in a corner beside a spotlight.  The seats ended up being pretty good!  Although, I didn't really like the set-up with the stage in the middle, because I felt like we only got to see half the concert.  So it was kind of crazy, but ended up okay.  Thank goodness he can sing!  It was nice to have a night out with Dan, something we haven't done much since Violet was born.  

Raking Leaves

I love this time of year.  The kids love to play in the leaves.  They do this every year!  I have picture from many years of this same activity.  Like this one from 2007:

Or these from 2009:

Or this from last year, 2012:

Here's this year's photos.  I love seeing how they have grown over the years.

Random Tidbits

These are some pictures that don't really fit in their own post.

Violet would not go to bed one night, which is pretty typical.  Around midnight she just crashed on the floor.

We are planning a trip to Disneyland in January.  The kids have to earn each mile by doing jobs.  I took this picture back in September.  We are currently to St. George, so about half-way.  The older 2 kids are motivated by this, but Jorgen is not.  He doesn't really care if he gets points or not.

The kids were off-track in October and bored, so I got out a box of random paper, felt, and other craft supplies, and they just created whatever they wanted.

Lego Creations

My boys love Legos.  They also love the Lego magazine that comes every couple of months.  One day they decided to make something and have me submit the pictures to see if they would get published in the magazine.  We'll see (I have to remember to mail them first).  

Andrew's Lego creation is called Lego Zombies:

Jorgen's creation is some various vehicles: