Gage Becomes a Teenager and Joins the Band

Gage shared his 13 year old birthday with Claire's baptism so his birthday was a bit crazy.  One big benefit of having his birthday overlap Claire's baptism was that my sister Rachel and her daughters were in town and staying at our house so he got to celebrate with his much cooler older cousins!

Tim took Gage, his friend Ryan, Lex, Bianca and Luke to an escape room.  They had so much fun but did not escape in time.  When they got home we laughed until our sides hurt playing a game called Telestrations.  If you have not played it, I highly recommend it.   It's like the game telephone only through drawings.

Gage was also given his first new mountain bike but since we had ordered it online it didn't get here in time for his birthday so he got a drawing.  Which is lame, let's be honest.  But when the bike got here a few days later he and Tim had a great time putting it together.  Good dad and son time!

Gage loves puzzles.  He has all these infuriating metal puzzles that he loves and he solves them pretty quickly. 

Seriously love this kid.  He is a lot of fun to spend time with and talk with.  He is still nerdy, doing well in school, and continuing to do well as a swimmer.  He took 1st in butterfly at the first meet of the season!  He calls these his "Michael Phelps" googles.  Sometimes you gotta just wear them as sunglasses...you know?

He also joined the marching band this summer.  Alta High School has a summer band camp that they open up to middle schoolers and Gage decided to join.  He plays the trumpet and he was excited to learn that many colleges are looking for people to play in Brass Bands and so there are often scholarships offered to people who play brass instruments.  I love that a 7th grader is thinking about how to pay for college.  That kinda sums up Gage.

One fun thing from band camp was that Fox 13 news came and did a segment on the marching band.  I had to die laughing that while everyone else was in formation here is Gage totally distracted by the reporters car.  He loved showing the recorded news to anyone who would watch! He felt famous for a day!  

Gage loved being with High Schoolers.  He was fascinated by their hand holding and how respectful they are!  He said he is ready for High School right now!  Please, no.  Practices were 4 hours a day for 2 weeks and they played in 3 parades.  It was fun to travel around and see him.  They were also so cursedly hot that I do not know how the kids were able to hold their instruments and walk and play.  I never realized that playing in a band is exercise.  At practices they had them running a mile and running stairs to prepare.  It was a little brutal in 100+ heat, but he loved it.

This picture was taken after his first 4th of July parade.  It was the longest route at over 2 miles and ended with a very steep hill at the end.  The HOA fed us breakfast afterward which was nice!

Luke and Tim were helpers for the Sandy parade and distributed water and sprayed the players with water and poor Luke's face was as red as a tomato by the end of the 2 mile route.  He is a good brother.  Pretty sure Gage had some heat stroke.  eeek!

What did I tell you....band = exercise!  Hahaha!