A A A, what begins with A?

Today's post is brought to you by the letter A in the L.A.Z.I blog. I appreciate him understanding my previous posts being mostly about Zach and our rainbow journey. He has told me how important he knows this is to our family and others. But today we'll celebrate Ace.

On this day 17 years ago we brought our first child into this big scary world. And now he's so close to heading out into the big scary world on his own it's scary. Adam has amazed me since he was a wee lad. It's a wonder he has survived the mistakes I've made as his father. He took the brunt of it as I think I was the hardest on the first child trying to make him perfect. I only hope that he can forgive me for these mistakes and not make the same ones I made so he's a better father than I was. I have full and complete confidence in him that he will. 

He's loving, kind, thoughtful, smart, and a typical big brother that loves to tease his brothers. To the point of tears. Often. 

He hardly has to study and can nearly pull off straight A's. Hopefully his study habits improve for college, but I probably wasn't any better until I was paying for my own education. 

He plays a mean trumpet. He loves jazz band. And he gets to go to Hawaii next year with band. Mom and Dad might need to chaperone. 

Adam is always smiling and happy. Unless he's playing a video game. Then don't bug. Unless you want to be hung out to dry. It's serious business and takes much concentration. And he loves to make fun of my video game abilities which amount to punching buttons and pulling triggers as fast as possible. It's not effective but highly entertaining for video game experts that like to make fun of the old geezers that can't play.

Adam has read voraciously since a young boy. He gets lost in books. I love that he finds great joy in them and know this will serve him well his whole life. It was problematic in grade school since teachers would tell us he couldn't put books away to focus on other school work. How do you tell a kid to stop reading books? We have the opposite problem with his youngest brother, but that's another story for I day.

He can sleep like rip van winkle. 

He has a love for being healthy. We've never had him in one sport where he's doing camps and specializing in it. Maybe I should have, but I want kids to have a love for it, not what I wanted. And he has experienced many sports from wake boarding, snow boarding, soccer, baseball, cross country, golf, racquetball, tennis, and wrestling. I wish he would have been willing to start wrestling at a younger age, but he was always so self conscious about appearance that the wrestling singlet was not cool. Until he's a junior in high school. Oh well, he had a great season and now bloodies me when we wrestle. 

I love Adam's personality. He is more of a solitary kind of guy like me. He is quite confident in himself. He doesn't follow the crowd. He has high integrity and expects those around him to live with the same kind of integrity. 

He is funny and loves to laugh. It's contagious and brings great joy to my heart. It's hard to get a normal picture of him smiling and not pulling a face. 

He loves adventure and always wants to do something fun. 

He loves cats and money. He likes to save one and tease the other. I'll let you figure out which is which. 

He's a hard worker and helps me on the farm whenever he's available.  

He loves his brothers and sets a great example for them. He and Zach entering their teenage years struggled to get along or even communicate with each other. I think this had much to do with Zach figuring out he is gay and Adam was quite homophobic and made statements that probably were hurtful to Zach without knowing it. Adam is now a defender of Zach, an ally, an advocate, and sees things entirely different. I love his passion. 

In short, I truly love and admire this boy. It is an honor to have him in our home. He has taught me so much and continues to do so. I know you will be a force in the world for good and wonderful things. Love you Ace!