Happy Birthday Gager!!

What can I say about our Gage, Some days he is the joy of our lives with his quick whit and great Gage-isms and other days he's the kid I want to duck my head and walk away from at the store while saying 'whose kids is that?' In all honesty Gage is our joy. From birth he has had the biggest smile and when he smiles it feels like the whole world should smile with him. His eyes have always been so expressionate so that you always know what he is thinking just simply by looking into them. He is always getting into mischief and somehow with a flutter of his lashes and a half-hearted apology he is back on your good side and leaving you to wonder 'what just happened here, am I still in charge?' Somehow he is able to trick us into staying up just a few minutes longer, and swindle us into video games on a school night... He is probably going to be a handful later, but for now I am going to love him and enjoy him just the way he is!! I feel like it was just a couple of months ago that we brought him home from the hospital... wow time flies!! Happy 6th birthday little buddy!

Gage Goes to School

So this past week has been quite interesting for our family. Last Saturday we moved, Sunday we went to a new ward, Tuesday Chili, Giuseppe, and Mason started at new schools and on Thursday Gage started kindergarten. It has been an interesting week of changes. The one that was funnest for me as a mom was of course that my youngest son started kindergarten. The day before school started the teacher had each of the kids in one at a time and showed them around the classroom and visited with them for a few minutes which was really good for Gage since he was quite fond of his preschool teacher, Mrs. Spencer, and he wasn't quite sure that he needed the change. After the meeting we both were very happy with the teacher. She's seems to really know how take care of things in her classroom with a variety of types of children. I am confident that she can handle my Gage.
The night before school started we laid out his clothes, read a couple stories, and tucked him in as usual; He was ready for school. He woke up and got ready without any trouble. Gage was so excited about school that he wanted to ride the bus the very first day! I was a little nervous about this but atleast he had Mason with him to help him out. The cool thing about school in this district is that there aren't any 1/2 days they go the same 2 full days every week and then every other wednesday which is a late start day. So not only did he ride the bus, but he also had the opportunity to have lunch at school and have the 'whole experience' all in one action packed day.
When he got off the bus I was there waiting to hear about his day and he was all smiles and the first words out of his mouth, on the first day of school, were -"I went to the principals office!" Inside my head I'm thinking "already on the first day of school!!" but logically I was thinking "maybe they went on a tour" "maybe he didn't really do anything wrong" Thankfully I asked him and apparently at recess he saw another little boy bite a kid while they were all playing soccer...FWEW!!! I was soo glad to hear that he wasn't actually 'in' the principals office, yet : )
I asked him how everything was on his first day and he told me about as much as you would expect from a boy... I got almost nothing... but after some coaxing I did get a few details from him and the he asked me, "Do I have the SAME kids in my class everyday all year?" i told him yes and asked him why he asked to which he replied, "Because there is this chubby kid that just pisses me off." I held back a couple giggles and reminded him that he doesn't get to choose what he looks like then Gage tells me he doesn't like him because he's mean, not because he's a bigger kid... I guess that'll be a little victory...
For the most part Gage's first day was a good one and he seemed to really enjoy himself, but what an adventure, the bus, school lunch, and the principal's office all in a days work for my Gage!!

Mother's Day

So my Mother's day was a little bit different than most of the ones I have had in the past. first of all Jer was in the hospital so I didn't have the opportunity to spend the day with my boys like I had been planning and there wasn't huge fanfare or anything but I really did have a fabulous experience. There was a need that day for the boys to 'hold their own' because I was needed at the hospital and Glorya(Grandma) was taking the day to visit her own family. Now the fact that the boys were home alone isn't the amazing gift since this was something that happens on occasion and isn't exactly a new idea, but what made it special and significant was that I was gone all day long and not once did I here negativly from the boys. Often when we leave we get to have phonecalls and complaints from the boys because 'so and so did this' and 'so and so did that' but even when I called and asked how things were they were all so happy and getting along... I think I would take all the Mother's Day presents in the world and trade them for more days where the boys love and enjoy eachother. Gage also had a small preschool program for mothers which was very cute...

Our Special Day With Gage

Somehow over the last few years we had simply neglected to take our little Gage to the zoo. His older brothers are just not interested anymore and we almost never have just Gage. Yesterday Sandra had the older boys, Chili, Beppe, & Mason, and she took them skiing so we decided to have a 'special day with Gage.' We did a lot of things with him... first we went to the zoo, then to eat a special lunch out, then we helped him ride his motor cycle, we let him play his favorite video games, we even played a couple rounds of 'Candy Land' and then when we were too exhausted for anything else we talked him into watching a couple movies with us. At one point in the day he turned to me and said 'Mom, I love Spring Break.' We are so thankful for our Gage!!!

Gage's First Win

So there are many mile stones in a child life that are important, first tooth, first steps, first words, and so on. In our family a first wrestling win ranks right up there with first day of school. We wrestled at state this past weekend and all of the boys did their very best. Most of the kids are grouped into brackets by age and weight but Gage is in a special category called Peewees which is made up of 4 & 5 year olds. They pair these guys into groups of 4 by weight and they all wrestle each other once which gives them 3 matches. The Peewee group is probably the cutest, funniest, wrestling you will ever see. Gage's winning match started with a handshake as usual and the referee blew the whistle and Gage grabbed the other boy's leg and took him down, put in the 'half,' and rolled the kid to his back... he held on as tight as he could while the other boy wiggled and wiggled trying to get free... he then took a quick look at us to make sure we were watching all of the action... and then it was back to work... it seemed like an eternity to me as mom and I am sure it did to Gage but finally the ref slapped the mat giving Gager the pin! Gage jumped up to his feet and giggled profusely as he realized that he had just won his very first match. We were tickled! After all of this action we looked at the clock and saw that Gage's very first winning match lasted all of 16 seconds. Gage spent the rest of the day stopping everyone he came into contact with and letting them know that he had won a match. So technically since Gage lost 2 and won 1 in a group of 4 he takes the title of 3rd in state! No matter the outcome of the tournament the most important thing to us was the smile on Gage's face. We are so proud of you. Go Gager!

Gage's First Wrestling Medal

So this past weekend the Holiday Tournament. Well here is how it went, Giuseppe and Mason placed 4th and both received medals. They both did their best. Now Gage was in a slightly different part of the tournament. While Giuseppe and Mason were in a regular 8 man bracket style tournament, Gage was part of what is called a Round Robin where they pair up 4 kids of similar age, weight, and ability and they wrestle each kid once. Gage has done this a couple times now and for some reason he seems to get the similar weight part but almost never ability and age. I suspect it is because since his big brothers have been around for a while they assume that since Gage has the same last name he must be better than average. Well as it turns out he's not. He is just quite simply a 5 year old with a couple of months experience. So he always is paired with kids with a couple of years experience. So he hasn't even scored a point all season. So we were a little bit bummed when we found out that Gage was wrestling 7 year olds. But Gage always seems to have fun so we drove on as usual. He ended up losing all of his matches but he felt like he was king of the world. In his 2nd match he scored 2 points, his first points ever, then he got pinned. For his third match I think he remembered how much fun scoring was so he decided to do it some more. He scored 8 points and almost pinned the other kid. In the end the other boy won by just a couple of points. His coaches were so proud of him that they gave him a special star patch. One of Chili's friends saw how excited Gage was and even bought him a shirt. So yeah... all the kids at the tournament received a medal and really Gage got 4th out of 4... but isn't it the little victories that count?!!! GO GAGER!!