Wow, what a gregarious 8 year old. We love being around Johnny and I’m pretty sure almost everyone he comes across feels the same way. He’s energetic, outgoing, smart, funny, wild at times with a very tender heart. Johnny has said for many years “today is such a great day” and he continues to say this most days. He often tells John and I that we are the best parents and he loves being in our family. I mean, we just melt over and over.
Of course, Johnny can be stubborn and have a strong opinion, especially if Charlotte is involved. He can be physical and try to tackle/tickle me to death (and almost succeeds). I admire his determination and usually have to accept it because he’s not going to change his mind. He can be so set on one thing that he will continue to talk about it, earn the money to buy it and then convince us all to love it as much as him. Pretty sure Johnny’s Apple Watch or German shepherd dog will be here soon.
Johnny loves baseball and is making that his first priority for sports right now. He also loves any sport he can play with friends. More on friends, Johnny truly adores his friends and doesn’t like being alone. He prefers to have someone come with him to his room to change clothes, shower or brush teeth. I don’t mind because he will usually make me laugh or share an interesting story. Johnny can make a human friend or an animal friend in any situation. He loves all things and loves hard.
Johnny and John have always been the best of friends but the dad and son relationship has deepened now that Johnny can do more grown up “boy” things. They work in the garage, love knives, think about survival skills nonstop, play fruit ninja with a baseball bat, work on projects nonstop around the ranch and play a lot of Walker Hayes country music. They are two peas in a pod and I love watching their special bond grow deeper.
For Johnny’s 8th birthday, he requested Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner, a cool knife from Main Street, laser tag with his friends and a lot of root beer floats. They all happened just the way he imagined. We had KFC for dinner on his actual bday (a first for three of us). We went to Main Street the following day to get his “dream” knife and then a day later we had about 10 of his best buddies over to our house for laser tag in our indoor arena. We blacked out the windows and had fog machines. The boys were a hot sweaty mess running for their lives. It was amazing! Afterward, root beer floats flowed like water to cool everyone off. Johnny remains the coolest little boy in all of our minds. Happy 8th birthday, Johnny!
To remember: John returned from Tokyo the day of his actual birthday and brought fun Japanese candy and toys, we drove to SLC to get a lot of KFC that night, Johnny did not want cake so he had doughnuts and rootbeer floats, homemade root beer with dry ice, the epic laser tag game with Charlotte and Charlee participating.
