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Isaac turned 14 last week.  Here is what I wrote about him when he turned 13.

Isaac enjoys spending time with his siblings.  His sister Charlotte was his first best friend and he loved her from the day she was born.  He almost never fights or argues with his siblings.  My dad personally thinks Isaac’s kindness towards his siblings is responsible for their ability to get along with each other with very little fighting.  That, as the oldest, Isaac set the tone for how all the children relate to each other. When the other children need help with something on the computer, they ask Isaac and he stops what he’s doing to help them.  I didn’t realize how much he helped them until he spent a week at boy scout camp and the children had to ask me for help.

Isaac loves technology.  He loves every kind of technology from cameras, to drones, to printers, to computers, to tablets, to smart home technology.  If it has a circuit board or advanced feature of some sort, Isaac is interested in it. We had an old color printer that had been sitting for years.  We decided it was time to either get rid of it or set it up.  When I had trouble finding a driver, Isaac volunteered to take over.  He discovered that the printer was too old to have a driver that would make it compatible with the latest version of windows.  Most people would have accepted failure at that point, but Isaac didn’t give up.  He spent hours working on the problem and in the end was able to modify a driver to make it work. He loves that printer and is always looking for opportunities to provide people with color prints.

Isaac has now completed his second year of Jr. High and will be a Freshman when school starts back up again in August.  He still generally likes school.  He likes his classes and his teachers.  Other than the required courses, he has been taking band (playing trumpet and keyboard), French, accelerated math, and any technology/computer class available.  He got to be a teacher’s aid for a math class this year which he enjoyed.  He attended math club, chess club, and robotics club after school.

Isaac has started to really enjoy playing the piano. His school band played a Journey song for a pop concert and Journey became Isaac’s favorite band.  I bought him a Journey piano book and Isaac spent hours practicing and playing songs from the book.  He also started regularly requesting Journey songs from our Alexa.  Recently, Isaac picked up a Billy Joel piano book and started working on some of the songs in that book.  Now he falls to sleep to collections of Billy Joel songs played by the Alexa in his room.

Isaac got his braces off in January. He had braces for about 18 months:

Isaac enjoys reading nonfiction.  He reads his grandfather’s hand-me-down science news magazines as well as books on math, science, engineering, and history. Recently he picked out a book about DNA and medicine that he really enjoyed.

Isaac loves food.  He is always the most excited about dinner, tries everything, gets excited about new food combinations and really appreciates a good meal.  He loves meats, especially bacon.  His most frequent snack is probably popcorn, but that’s only because I don’t allow him to eat as many Sunchips and jerky as he’d like. The only foods he isn’t particularly excited about are salad and chocolate.

Isaac has taken a greater interest in pets recently.  He loves to give the cats a treat or coax a cat into his room to sleep in his bed.

Isaac’s favorite pastime is playing on his computer, but he also likes to ride his new bike, swing on our tree swing, build things, and play strategy games.

Isaac is a great adolescent (he always corrects me if I call him a kid) and I’m glad we have him in our family!