Birthday Boy

Johnny, Ace, Jameson, Beckett

Every Monday afternoon Jameson and 3 of his friends have swimming lessons together at an indoor pool. He has improved greatly and I'm excited to have him finally be proficient in the water this summer.

AJ had his 3rd birthday this week!  We thought a lot about him on his 1st birthday and again on his 2nd birthday wondering how he was doing and how long it would take to bring him home, but this year we got to celebrate with him.  It was also his first time celebrating since they didn't recognize birthdays at his orphanage.

These pictures were taken around his 1st birthday. We originally thought he would be home by his 1st birthday, but clearly that didn't happen.

This was the first picture we saw of him with any kind of a smile on his face.

These pictures were taken around his 2nd birthday.

I think of all of the pictures we received of him over a 2 year period this one is my favorite.  Look at that twinkle in his eye!

February 6th is AJ's legal birthday, but we have no way of knowing his actual birthdate.  He was found on April 6th and they estimated his age to be about 2 months old so February 6th became his birthday.  It's perfect for us because Jameson's birthday is also on the 6th of the month so now they are birthday twinners.

He has grown up in the last year, especially in the last 7 months of being home! He was wearing 18 mo clothes when we brought him home in June and now some of his 2T clothes are starting to get small. He is also our first child to be fully potty trained before his 3rd birthday. On his big day we took AJ and Jameson to the Fun Park to play in the soft play area.

And then it was home for pizza, cake, ice cream and presents with the older kids.  AJ is a ham so when I say "Smile for a picture", this is what we get.

He loved everything about his birthday.  I did learn however, that we will need to be prepared in future years for AJ to have a hard time on Jameson's birthday and for Jameson to have a hard time on AJ's birthday since that was our experience this year.

Britton was asked to Sweethearts by Kayla and they had a great time at the dance last night.

For Christmas I got tickets for the girls to see Alex Boye in concert with the American Festival Chorus (Directed by Craig Jessop), but then Alex bailed when he got an opportunity to sing at the Olympics.  They replaced him with a group that we had never heard of, but we already had the tickets so we decided to just go and be surprised with whatever we got.

I haven't been to Kent Concert Hall in a few years and was more than a little surprised to show up and see that it had been completely redone and had a new name. Wow. I'm really out of that loop!

The choir was like a mini-Motab with Craig Jessop at the helm (in fact they sang at Jon Huntsman's funeral earlier that day at the request of his family) so their music was great, but we really loved the group Take 6 who replaced Alex Boye in the concert.

They are an American a capella gospel music group who I found out is the most decorated a capalla group of all time with a slew of awards including 10 Grammy's. We thought they were fantastic and had a great time at the concert.  They did one song where they had people take out their cell phone lights and I got such a kick out of watching some very mature people who were swaying with their phones to the music. There was one gentlemen who had to be in his 80's standing in the aisle dancing with his cell phone light.  It was the cutest thing ever.

I spent 4 hours on Friday trying to get tickets to the Broadway musical Hamilton coming to SLC, but so was everyone else in the state and in the end I was part of the unlucky majority who didn't score tickets. What a bummer.