What about the August birthday??!!

Whew, got in here before the calendar flipped again!

Here he is!

Oh, this guy... 

💛

This little sweet William...

Went and turned 16 in a blink of an eye earlier this month!

Blowing out the candles on the many year's birthday cake I've come to make, the Texas Sheetcake.

And managed to get his driver's license on the very same day!

What a cool kid William is. He has a great lust for life and experiences...and, as we're seeing this year experimentation with his image (last night the sides of that well-rounded hair above were shaved off leaving behind a light-orange mullet, as they say, hmmmm, as this mom says (-:). This summer William took great excitement in vinyl records, he bought some, got one of my record players working and listened excitedly to vinyls from the 60's and beyond. Then he bought himself an electric guitar with some of his Busch's meat department earnings:

Yup.

And then...his musical excitement shifted to getting a walkman and headphones, which he proudly wears out and about, back to school clothes shopping, anything, he's got them on with the 8 cassessts he bought. (-: I love that his listening interests range from Frank Sinatra, to Jimmy Hendricks to Beethoven and everything in-between and all over the place. For real. His thoughts for the future are just about as wide-ranging. Over the past year he's talked about truck driving, auto technician, mechanical engineer with the focus on automobiles a few more that I know I'm forgetting and yesterday, after his trip to the busy barbershop downtown...he now wants to become a barber. I just continue to smile and nod at this point, one can get whiplash with how fast this boy moves and changes. 

He just returned from his second year of a week away for marching band camp and loved it. He was going back and forth on band for this year so I'm glad he had a great experience there, good kids in the band...if I do say so myself (former band kid (-:). He also says he plans to run a marathon next year, so we'll see about that one. He is a natural runner, but I'm not really seeing much training going on. We'll see!

I actually had time to make the birthday meal for the family that came over to celebrate William's birthday. We had spaghetti carbonara which William likes and this great salad. Naturally you can improvise the salad ingredients, but this dressing is a lemony delight. Much encouraged to try the dressing at least, oh, the feta was a good addition too. (-:

William and his life-long good K-8 school and church buddy at our 12th annual family camping trip at the beginning of August. I couldn't pass up this pic and all the variations of orange going on in hair, shirt and tent. The one on the right's hair is natural! (-:

This one is titled:

Cool guy on the beach at sunset.

(-:

May God richly bless you and keep you, William, throughout this your 16th year and always!

Love always, Mom