Gavin Turns !0!

This March marked the 10 year anniversary of Caleb and I becoming parents. Our first child is now a double digit. It felt big. One of those moments when you look back at all of the time that has passed and wonder how it went so quickly. Gavin has becomes such a grown up kid, and such a tween. What an interesting and strange phase of life, but he seems to be loving it. We celebrated parts of his birthday over several days because of our hectic tax season schedule. 

Sunday night we had a family dinner and presents. Gavin requested mulligatawny, and he even helped out Caleb in the kitchen to make it... chopping and blending away. 

He also requested mint chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

On Monday, for his actual birthday, I was able to score some great Jazz tickets from my boss, so Gavin and I headed to the Jazz game that night. He had a fun day at school taking treats and some things to show the class that told things about him.

This year he also got to have a friend party, and what he wanted was to take some of his friends to a trampoline park.  I loaded up my van with six 10 year olds and Henry and we headed off for some fun. It turned out to be the perfect party for this crowd. They are all active and a bit competitive even if it was only with themselves. It was also my first time going to a trampoline park and I loved playing with the kids. It was also 2 hours for the price of 1 that night, so we jumped for about 2hr and 15 minutes and we were all whooped at the end.

There was a slack line, which everyone tried.

Pits for flips.

Suspension ladder which only Henry and I made it to the end of.

And tons of trampolines all over the place to play dodgeball, dunk ball and just jump like crazy.

We also spent tons of time racing and climbing through the ninja course. There were a few of the kids that amazed me how hard they worked to get past some of the obstacles. They just refused to skip the ones that were hardest for them and go around. It was impressive. Henry had that kind of fight with the rings. He wasn't the only one that couldn't reach them, and most of the kids would just jump down and crawl through the phone, but he was So determined to do it.
He would be up and balance in the middle of the ladder, he was at least 18 inches short than the rings and they were probably that same distance forward from the ladder. He would jump for a ring and fall over and over, and then climb back up and do it again. Sometimes getting ahold of one or two.

I watch him do this for about 15 minutes and he was getting so frustrated and pretty close to tears several time, but totally ignoring anyone that would tell him to just crawl through the foam pit. And wouldn't you know, he showed us all. He finally got ahold and made it to the 4th ring before falling, and by the end of our time he made it all the way through the rings the last two times without hesitation. I was quite proud of him.

The fun and crazy birthday group of friends.

We finished off that fun night with frosties and fries and a lot of bad 4th grader jokes in the car, most of them starting with the phrase "Your Mama...". Though they all explained to me that not of these insults were about it. :-)