Gabe Updates End of 2018

Dear Gabe,

I haven't done a "general" update on your for quite a while! So it is time now that 2018 is almost done!

• This whole year you have been doing First Lego League Robotics club for homeschool. At the beginning of 2018 I was your coach together with Katrina Lantz. At the beginning of the 2018 school year, Sarah and Chris Ashworth became your coaches and they are awesome! The focus from Sept-now has been on SPACE. Your competition is January 5th for this semester. I'm excited for you and everything you are learning!
• You are still doing Karate with Joshua Judd as your Master. You are enjoying it quite a bit... and working really hard. You were stuck at purple belt for QUITE a while. Talia advanced before you did to blue and it hurt your feelings for quite a while! But you just did your belt test a couple weeks ago and you made it to blue! yay!
• You are still in piano lessons with Tauna Buckway. Right now your favorite thing to play is ANYTHING from "Pirates of the Caribbean". You have learned quite a few songs from that movie and you LOVE it. You memorize EVERYTHING you are given. I never have to remind you to practice, you sit down at the piano about 4-5 times a day and just play. It is so great!
• You are still in your mind A LOT. You get distracted a lot because of something you start playing out in your mind. You are a daydreamer... sometimes it's a cute thing and other times it is a little tough. But you are getting better and better with attention span and capabilities. 
• You unload the dishwasher for me each morning so it is ready for the day. You always take out the garbages. I love it.
• You are getting quite frustrated when we don't give you space to do your own thing. I can't believe you are 10 years old! You will be going to the temple at the beginning of 2020!
• Your primary teachers LOVE you. You know the scriptures so well and remember EVERYTHING you read. 
• You love to learn about animals and anything about the ocean. You remember the most random facts about animals and the ocean and blurt them out at random times. 
• You still LOVE scouts and everything about it. 
• For homeschool you just finished reading 20 chapter books! Your favorite was Treasure Island. You are into EVERYTHING that has to do with pirates right now. 
• You are starting to babysit together with Talia for short amounts of time and it is HEAVENLY while I go run errands here and there.
• You love Home Alone (the movie) and after watching it set up traps to get "bad guys" for like 2 weeks after. 
• Throughout the Christmas season this year you gave money to people who were needing help from your own motivation... dad and I didn't prompt you at all to do it. You gave 20$ to a homeless couple in Salt Lake while we were up there, you gave money to the Salvation Army every time you saw them outside of a store, you bought a gift for 12 days family by yourself... all of these things from your own wallet. You are SO giving!
• "Hey mom, you should watch all the Pirates Movies tonight with dad for mom and dad movies so that you can tell me all about them in the morning."
• You earned 100$ to buy your own tablet about 3 months ago and you are doing AMAZING at self control with it! You are learning about how to use technology the right way so far. I'm very happy with you about it. 
• You got a BB gun for Christmas and want to shoot it with dad all the time. 
• You are CONSTANTLY wanting me to snuggle with you at night before you go to sleep, you want to tell me all about your day and have me tell you all about mine. You are always wanting to talk through your frustrated feelings about your brothers and sister to try to figure out how to make it better. 
• You still love to build with Legos!