happy birthday, gabe!!!

so, our gabe turned the big 7 yesterday!!! it is so hard to believe that 7 years ago today, we were bringing home our first little boy - so scared, so excited, so tired!!!! well, we made it and were crazy enough to do it again! our gabe, what can i say about him!!! he is the brightest, most loving, wittiest young man i have ever known. he thinks and understands way beyond his seven years and at times beyond his mom's 30 years!! the things he remembers blows our minds....vacations we took when he was 3, exactly what year he received a certain book or monster truck, passing conversations shawn and i have had with him...we had forgotten, but not our gabe. in sunday school, they have began memorizing bible verses - gabe looks at the verse one time and the whole thing is memorized - he never ceases to amaze shawn and i. and now 7 years after we first brought him home, we are celebrating so much more than just another birthday....each year we celebrate the wonderful fact that God put this young man into our lives - he has taught us more than we will ever know!!! well enough of the gushy mom stuff that will inevitably come back to haunt gabe someday - on to the celebrating!! gabe's birthday celebration actually began on sunday after church by going to chuck e. cheese's!!! gabe loves this place and secretly so does shawn. they both honed in on the video games the minute we had our tokens. grady and i found our place by the ride on toys and tried each one of those little babies out!! we enjoyed our pizza and the afternoon of play! after conquering chuck e. cheese's, we headed home for our sunday ritual - the fox family nap time! gabe woke us all up around 4:30 so the celebration could continue -- it was present time! he had opted to have his party on sunday the 27th, because dad would be at work on the 28th, we had a game we were going to on the 28th, storytime in the morning on the 28th...we would just be too busy for a party, so he would take one for the team and open presents and eat cake a day early! well, i sure am glad he could sacrifice!! ha! gabe received so many great cards and presents. he had a blast just opening and opening....everything was his favorite!!! for dinner he chose tacos and he also wanted a monster truck party. so i went online and ordered the monster truck plates, napkins, and decorations, but when i went to order the cake - what do you know?- they don't do a monster truck cake! after some researching, i found that apparently monster jam has not sold their rights, so i was on my own for the cake. a brief little history on my cake decorating experience-the last cake i attempted to decorate was for gabe's baby blessing. noone, except for shawn, ever witnessed that horrid mess, and thankfully dillon's bakery has cakes on stand by (no doubt for mother's who think that it is sooo easy to decorate a cake) so one of those little beauties was purchased and decorated within minutes and noone was ever the wiser!!! ok, so here i am decorating my little guy's b-day cake...long story short, it turned out great. yes, i had a back up plan, there is a safeway only about 5 minutes from our house - and they too are prepared for mom's who think they can decorate!! gabe was very pleased with his cake, dinner and presents!! it was a great first day of celebrating. on the 28th, gabe, grady, and i headed to storytime on monday morning with the lee family. in the afternoon, gabe brushed up on some wii playing, received numerous phone calls and then after shawn got home, we picked up gabe's best buddy,charlie, and headed off to an aquasox game. we chowed down on all of the baseball goodies - pizza, hot dogs, clam chowder, popcorn, nachos-oh yeah, we were stuffed! the aquasox announcer even announced gabe's birthday over the stadium speakers!! and the best part, even better than that--the famous san diego chicken was at the game!!! i had seen the chicken when i was younger at a royals game and i remembered how funny he had been then, so i was really excited for the boys to see him! he put on quite a show!!!! all of us really enjoyed the game and the chicken!!! we celebrated gabe's 7th bday all the way until 10:30 p.m., now that's what i call making the most of the day!!!