{"id":11067,"date":"2014-12-31T01:28:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T08:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettiesworld.com\/?p=11067"},"modified":"2017-06-28T21:20:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T04:20:21","slug":"celebrations-of-december-jeff-turns-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/?p=11067","title":{"rendered":"Celebrations of December: Jeff Turns 50"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Holiday<\/a>
Megan and Jeff, sitting beside me in the loge — seats that we saw sitting empty from our perch in the top row of the balcony, and into which we moved at intermission, for a much more comfortable second half of the concert.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The notion that my big brother greeted his 50th year this month is\u00a0pretty much incomprehensible to me. \u00a0It was hard to imagine a proper way to celebrate a birthday so momentous! That it happened within the same week that the final installment of The Hobbit hit the theaters was, however, fortuitous (remember, Bilbo Baggins started out on his adventure at the same age!). \u00a0Attending Lord of the Rings movies around his birthday became “a thing” back in 2001 with the release of The Fellowship of the Ring, and nothing could have crowned his 50th birthday more satisfactorily than to finish the series with the last Peter Jackson Middle Earth movie (which, despite their sometimes misguided digressions from the books,\u00a0even being the geeks that we are, we all loved). \u00a0So, as soon as we knew the release date, it became “the thing” to do for his birthday. \u00a0However, by the time December rolled around, there were other “things” that were added to the roster of celebratory events, such that the whole month became one of celebration. In the first week, we attended the Phoenix Symphony Holiday Pops concert at Symphony Hall, in which Laurent sang with the Phoenix Symphony Chorus<\/a><\/strong>, Phoenix Girls Chorus<\/strong><\/a>, the Desert Bells<\/a><\/strong>, and of course the fantastic Phoenix Symphony<\/strong><\/a>, giving us an evening of top notch musical enjoyment.<\/p>\n

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Although it was a Wednesday, which meant that all the girls and Paul were at church for the evening, I was able to join Jeff and mom with the boys, as well as Koos and Talitha, to celebrate on the actual day by going to dinner at Ichi Ban for sushi and teppanyaki. Both the company and the\u00a0table-side chef were delightful, and of course there was more beautifully presented and delicious food than we\u00a0could possibly consume.<\/p>\n