Our 11-year-old went through a recent growth spurt and needed a new outfit for church.  He and his younger brother had gotten stuck on wearing blue shirts with light khaki pants every Sunday.  It had gotten rather tiresome, but they refused to break their tradition.  When we went shopping, however, the only blue shirt that we could find was way too large, so our son agreed to try something different.  And, to my surprise, he even mentioned checking out the packages that include both a shirt and a tie.  After looking all of them over and trying on a couple of them, this is the outfit that he decided to get: 

We went to a funeral today and he insisted on wearing his new duds.  He has never been much for wearing ties, but he felt pretty good in it and told me so quite a few times during the day.  He even received some compliments from others after the funeral, so that helped, too.  Now, we just need to work on getting him to tie his shoes.  :-)

Here is a picture of his 8-year-old brother in his traditional duds:

He doesn't normally wear ties, either, but he thought his older brother's tie looked pretty cool, so he wanted to wear one, too.  :-)

It was fun watching them work on their appearances today.  It's so satisfying to see these transitions taking place... going from "doing this because Mom wants me to" to "doing this because I want to."  It's a process of taking ownership of ideals that we are trying to instill in them as they are growing up.

~Connie~