Birthday Cake and Beautiful Music

Jon Felipe turned 9 today. We spread the birthday celebration out over the course of the day to keep it from being too overwhelming. This morning he opened the package from my parents. After school, he opened the cards he got in the mail from Dwight's parents and from our friends the Swarts. After dinner, Jacob and Tony came over for cake and he opened his presents from us. These included a new Sponge Bob toothbrush, a hat and mittens, and a DVD of High School Musical 3. He also got to wear the birthday hat all day at school and pass out birthday candy. He had a wonderful day.

To bake the cake, I borrowed a mixer from Regina who lives just a few blocks away. In Holland, we would borrow a mixer from the Pikaarts, but we couldn't convince them to move to Iowa with us. As Jon and I were walking back home last night with the mixer, we were talking about his upcoming birthday celebration. He told me that they don't have birthdays in Colombia. Since we participated in a couple birthday celebrations while we were in Colombia, I'm assuming that they did not celebrate birthdays in the orphanage. Obviously, with so many children to care for, this would be difficult to do. Jon Felipe didn't seem upset that they didn't celebrate birthdays, but he has certainly enjoyed celebrating his birthday here.

After the birthday cake, it was off to Luke's orchestra concert. All the music groups sounded really good, but in my opinion the orchestra was particularly good. The best part was that when we were waiting for the concert to begin, I saw Luke talking animatedly to another boy in the orchestra. Most days, when Luke leaves for school in the morning, I encourage him to try to talk with at least one person during the day. Some days he gets this out of the way by talking with someone on the bus, occasionally he will talk with someone during break, many times he comes home and says, "I just couldn't do it today." He isn't unhappy at school, it is just that starting a conversation with someone he doesn't really know is difficult for him. So, I enjoyed watching him talk with a classmate as much as I enjoyed the concert.