New Traditions

The birthday has come and gone. It was more of a "birthday week" than a "birthday day" if I'm going to be honest. Even now, almost a week after, we still have a gigantic balloon that refuses to lose helium and a few decorations roaming about.

Aside from eating good food, hanging out with grandparents and friends, and enjoying some decent weather for a change we did a couple of other things to celebrate the event. To honor Jaden's Korean heritage we went to an excellent restaurant not too far from where we live where we were served this food.

It was excellent. But even better was all of the attention Jaden received from the owner, waitstaff and patrons. We gave him bites of everything and he gobbled it back. He only refused one thing which promptly landed on the floor after he sniffed at it. Yes, it was kimchee. I think it's fair to say that is the equivalent of an Iowan hating potatoes.

Before leaving for the restaurant we had a photo shoot in our basement of Jaden in his hanbok. This beautiful outfit was a shower gift from dear friends. While he only had it on for thirty minutes or so, I'm so thankful for these photos. It was such good fun watching him squirrel around in satin pants while playing with his toys.

Finally, as is tradition, before we opened presents we set up a series of symbolic items on a table. These items were supposed to represent different life paths for Jaden. We had set out a mouse (computer geek), money (banker), cooking spoon (chef), golf ball (Tiger Woods), football (Payton Manning), and a few other random items. Jaden quickly dove for the spoon, and secondarily fiddled with the mouse. Therefore, it is predicted that he will be chef with technological prowess. *Bam!*

The birthday series will come to a close once I convince someone to send me a photo of the cake, as I failed to record it on my camera for posterity.