{Gavin}

I would like to dedicate a post to each of my kids and my husband over the next week. First, i will start with Gavin.

Here he is....hahaha! This is Gavin with his SORT OF upset face. It's that face where he is upset and is making it more dramatic than it needs to be. He kind of likes to play it up a bit. :) Anyway, i thought i would get that picture out of the way first. He is fun to tease.

In this picture below he is playing some football with his friends. He invited a couple of them over after school recently. They played football and played mario on the Wii.

I feel like i need to apologize for my photos. I havent' been taking pictures like i used to, nor have i been TRYING to make them look awesome like i used to. I think what happened is that i was spending too much time on it. I was spending too much time on this passion of mine and it was taking my time away from my kids. It was frustrating me. So i stopped. I still love photography, but i guess i don't know how to find a balance. With photography i feel like i am either IN or OUT. And when i am IN it takes too much time. I really want to go out and take some good pictures of them by the beach though. I CAN make time for that. :)

Gavin is very outgoing. Socializing comes fairly easy to him. He loves his friends and loves having friends. And his friends love him. It's fun to watch him in his zone when he is around his friends. Gavin likes and needs friendships. And kids just gravitate towards him.

Gavin is doing great in school. He catches on very quickly to his homework. They give him lots of homework. Maybe it's not a lot for these days, but when i was a kid i don't remember hardly any homework! He has about 1 hour of homework to do each night, AND if he forgets one night then he has TWO hours to do the next night. There have been times where we are so busy and we saved the homework for the night before it was due. Not good. It takes hours. Each week he has math assignments usually involving counting the time, counting money, or addition and subtraction. He always has 23 new words each week that he is given a spelling test on. Throughout the week he has to write each word in a sentence, put them all in alphabetical order, say them out loud to me, i quiz him on them, he has to find them in a crossword puzzle, AND he has to unscramble the word into it's correct spelling. Then he has to read a poem out loud to me so that he can recite it clearly to his teacher on Friday. He also has a few sight words that he has to know. He has a story he has to read each week and answer questions to. It's quite a bit. But he is learning a lot and progressing quickly.

Another thing he has to do each night is read a book. When he reads each night he writes the title on a list. When he reaches 10 books on his list he turns the paper in and gets a star on the board at school. Once he reaches a certain amount he will get a prize from his teacher. He is working really hard on that to make sure he reads each night. Right now he is reading Magic Treehouse Books. They are books that can have up to 100 pages or more. We count a chapter as a book read, since most of the chapters could actually be counted as reading TWO books. He is doing well. Gavin really wants a skateboard. I told him that once he reads 100 books we will buy him a skateboard. He is so excited. So far he has read 20 books and as fast as he is going he will reach that goal in no time at all.

Gavin is such a good big brother. He takes care of his brothers. He loves to play with and tease his brothers. Emphasis on TEASE. :) He loves to go over to the basketball courts often to play basketball games with his friends and with Tanner. If it's raining out then they will dribble the ball in the house up and down the hallway, which isn't very big at all. He gets along , mostly, with Tanner and Jaydon.

Gavin loves to play games with me. He is always up for a game of cards...Old Maid, Go Fish, or his scrambled States of America card game.

He loves to talk and have conversations. He likes to listen to anything we have to say about our childhood. We have a list of 100 questions and it's called , FAMILY TALK. It has lots of questions you can ask each other and it helps start good conversation. He really likes to ask us these questions to hear what everyone says.

He likes to DRAW pictures. The pictures he draws are mainly of his family members, either doing something silly or drawing us the way he views us. It's funny.

He loves to be funny and loves to laugh and make his friends laugh.

While Gavin can be very emotional, i think with it also comes the ability to sympathize with others.

Gavin LOVES playing his DS or the Wii or XBox. Yes, we have too many electronic games. If this were a house of girls i might have more say in what we get around here. Anyway, for having so many electronic games, they aren't allowed to play very often. But when we do play he loves it.

He isn't very adventurous when it comes to trying different foods. He likes to stick with what he has known for the past 7 years. haha!

He loves to tease and wrestle around with dad.

He is understanding a lot about Heavenly Father's plan for us. We have many conversations and one time we were talking about people who do things that aren't right, but that doesn't mean they are bad. He said "Yeah, they just don't understand who they are and where they came from." I loved that he said that because i feel like if we know where we came from, our purpose on this earth, and where we are going after this life, it makes going through this life easier when you can keep an eternal perspective.When we know the WHY of what we are doing and being asked to do then it is so much easier to do what we are asked. I just hope he remembers that one day when things get more difficult.

He is such a good kid. We love him so much. He is our first born. He was my biggest pain, just as i was my mom's biggest pain. I can't imagine life without our sweet Gavin.