Sixteen Years Old!!!

Levi is sixteen today. Amazing!!!

Our day started at seven this morning, when I woke up and made breakfast for Leviticus before he went to registration for his junior year. He had eggs, scrambled with ham and cheese, and also crisp bacon. Yum. I was happy to help him eat the bacon.

I made carrot cake (a mix, not from scratch, don't get impressed) with orange frosting. Not orange colored, but orange flavored, made with orange zest and orange juice. (I love the Spanish language because they have separate words for orange the color and orange the fruit.) Levi had requested mint ice cream and since Aussie doesn't like minty things, I also bought a vanilla that was entirely too good to be from the store. Fantastic!!!

I just can't believe what an awesomely cool kid Levi is! He asked for a binary watch for his birthday, then when he got it he excitedly announced that he was a very happy nerd. He is so much like me sometimes----happy to be different than the crowd. We play Scrabble, and he almost always beats the socks off of me. He has my vocabulary and Myron's gift of strategy, which makes him a formidable opponent. I have absolutely no scrap of strategic skill whatsoever. Lucky for me, I also have fun whether or not I win!!

Leviticus is going to be ordained a priest on Sunday, another surreal happening. Yes, Justin had a sixteenth birthday, but being----Justin----he didn't get ordained. This is all new territory.

I call Levi "Captain Tall". He is 5'9" and still rapidly growing and wears size 13 shoes. From my 5'4" perspective, he is a giant. From the outer reaches of the house, the call is heard, "Captain Tall!!!" and Leviticus rapidly appears, standing tall and proud to reach the desired object from the high shelf for his height-challenged mother.

He is so smart, it just kills me. He is a deep thinker, another gift he shares with his father rather than with me. Math makes enough sense to him that the hardest part of acing a math class is going through the effort of showing the work. He keeps trying to teach me to play chess, but I am lousy with strategy (have I mentioned that?), and tend to lose quite rapidly. I am a terribly unworthy chesster. Jester? Yes. Chesster? No. Definitely no. Absolutely not.

Levi watches the history and science channels on purpose!! He finds them fascinating, and what's more, he can recall the details about them for eons. I watch House on purpose, and though I can recall the details of the kidnapping of House's guitar, I don't know how much that speaks for my intellectualism.

Add to these traits a caring, perceptive soul, and you get a rather remarkable guy. You may also hear the faint echo of a proud mother's cry, "That's MY boy!!!"