Cameron, Stephanie, Andy, & Max: Maxy at age 9

Max continues to be a delight. He's such a fun, creative, silly, smart, funny presence in our home and we're so grateful he's in our family. He has a magnetic personality and anyone who gets to know him can't help loving him. He's such a special boy and such an important part of our home.
Max is in 3rd grade this year and his teacher is Mrs. Banks. His best friend is Graham. Other good friends are Ollie, Bentley, Cooper, Eli, Cohen, Ford, Braylin, Danielle, and Brynn. He's a social guy and loves to be with friends.
Max and Graham road their bikes to school every morning until it recently got too snowy. He loves to leave early and gets very stressed if he's not leaving early enough.
Max was taking piano from me, but switched to taking from Dr. Janae Williams this year in August (same teacher as Violet and Andy). I loved teaching him but we weren't doing a great job being consistent and thought he was ready for more. I do miss having him at my monthly group class and the rest of the class misses their class clown. :) He was a winner at the Encore Solo Festival earlier in the year and won 2nd place in the Keyboard Competition this fall playing a Latour Sonatina! He also just accompanied his whole grade in the Christmas Sing, playing the LH of Gift Wrap Riot (while I played the RH). He gets mad at us that we had him take a 9 month break from piano when he was five and says he'd be so much better at piano if we hadn't let him do that.
Max is very into his style. He has specific outfits he puts together very carefully and has a lot of opinions about which clothes he likes and doesn't. He's pretty into shoes lately and asks for shoes for many of his gifts--he got new converses, new vans, and new nike blazers this year.
His favorite books this year are mostly graphic novels--pup detectives, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, A to Z mysteries.
His favorite movies are Black Panther, Avengers 3, and cartoon Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies. He also loves to watch things on YouTube like Studio C, Preston, Shrekardo, and Mr. Beast.
His favorite songs right now are Waves (Imagine Dragons), Paradise (Coldplay), Top of the World (Imagine Dragons). He went to his first concert this year--Imagine Dragons--and loved it! But you couldn't tell at first, he had a pretty straight face for the first bit of it.
He loves food and is getting more adventurous. Eggs are his favorite and he learned how to make his own scrambled eggs recently. He loves them and makes them all the time. He also loves to make smoothies and invented a smoothie was his friend Oliver called the Molliver (Max and Oliver combined). He also loves to make popcorn for his after school snack. He packs his own lunch most days--usually an uncrustable, but he recently got a thermos and is very excited about bringing warm food too. He loves when I make White Chicken Chili.
Max is all around a really creative person. He loves to build forts. He likes to make his own lego creations. He likes his new wood-working kit. He likes to design his own things and really think things through.
He likes to play soccer. He's still on his rec team and is really mad at me that I didn't sign him up for tryouts for a comp team (he didn't tell me he wanted to play on a comp team until after tryouts were done).
The first half of the year he struggled a bit with his temper, but it's gotten better. He does feel things very strongly and isn't shy to express his frustration with his parents and siblings (especially Violet). :)
He gets very embarrassed of things I'll say and do. He doesn't want me to call him Maxy anymore. He doesn't want me to call it "potty" anymore. And when I was in line at Lagoon with him earlier this year and asked him who his crush was he was absolutely mortified that the people in line in front of us probably heard me ask him.
Other random things he loves: his squishmallows (he has 11), long showers, cuddling with his mom, back scratches (he begs for them).
His teacher this year is Mrs. Banks. He really likes her and she's really fun, but he does get in trouble for cracking too many jokes. :) Max continues to be extremely clever, funny, and witty.

Max loves Carson

Max is the king of selfies. He also loves this beanie and wears it a lot. He comes up with really cool outifts.

Max with two of his favorite squishmallows, Ava and Austin. He's also a big BYU fan and is always telling me we're not big enough fans and need to do more to support BYU. He's very offended that I went to a U of U gymnastics meet this year.

Max made up a character with his friend Graham called "Boar" and writes a lot of books about him. Titles include "Boar's Christmas," "Boar Goes to Disneyland," and "Boar Goes Skydiving." Their 2nd grade class loved the books and they created quite the sensation. They sold Boar things (t-shirts, pens, magnets, etc) at the 2nd grade market and made a killing. They sold out of t-shirts before it even started!

Max and Graham at the 2nd Grade Market.

Max's 2nd grade class. He sure loved Mrs. Correa!

Max and Graham got to go to Cooper's baptism.

Max is the sweetest brother to Davis.

Lost his front tooth!

Max continues to love to fish. Here he is fishing at Strawberry this summer (with a Ford photobomb!).

Max loves to help in the kitchen. He arranged all this fruit himself for our patriotic dessert!

Max with all his art from art camp.

I love to play games with my Maxy.

Lost his other front tooth!

At the Encore Keyboard Competition where he won 2nd place!

Max cuddling with Ford during a movie night. Max is very excited Brendan and Madi moved nearby and wants to go hang out over there a lot.

Max in NYC buying signs that illustrate his funny sense of humor. He was determined to spend all of his money when he was there and came home with many treasures.

max is very into fort building this year and built this cool one with Violet for their family birthday party guests to welcome them to their party. It's one of the few times I remember Max and Violet playing together this year. ;)