It's officially official

Andy and I are engaged!

He popped the question Saturday, the 19th. Pretended he was going to play tennis, but snuck back in and surprised me! It was nice to be surprised.

The ring is amazing. I need to find a way to take a good photo of it for the blog, but my digital camera won't do the job. The camera has a macro setting, so it should be able to take a nice closeup shot -- but it won't focus at all. Not to sound ridiculous, but I think it's because the diamond is really sparkly so it's throwing off the camera's ability to focus. We went with an ideal (or excellent) cut, which makes the diamond ridiculously brilliant (and thus disguises the "flaws" in the SI2 clarity and the I color -- still colorless, but the lowest grade on the colorless scale). It's gorgeous, but I can't get a good photo of it :-(

It appears I need to borrow my brother's camera. Jaime took really nice pictures of her ring using their new camera.

51 Weeks In: New Pics

At my appointment yesterday (51 weeks since the first brackets were installed), Dr. Stewart changed my bottom archwire to a counter force (or reverse curve wire). This is the same type of wire I currently have on the top. I also asked them to change the power chain because the poor baby pink polymer was all discolored and yukky looking. Too much red wine I'm afraid.

Six weeks or so ago, Dr. Stewart said the top arch was basically set. The teeth still need fine tuning with the custom-made Sure Smile wires, but the basic arch is set.

The following pictures illustrate how nice and straight the top is versus the bottom, which eventually will be straight too. Right now, the bottom teeth curve upwards and are much higher up in the front than in the back. The reverse curve wire will help to diminish this difference -- bringing the front teeth down some and the back teeth up a little to straighten the arch.

I was amazed when I drew the straight line under the top arch in photoshop to see just how straight the top arch is. Not bad. The bottom will get there!







And as a comparison, here are two older images. One before the treatment began and a second 16 weeks in. You can see from the straight line below the top arch that the teeth were far from straight.