Our favorite little Sammy guy is 4! He's been excited for his birthday coming in September for a couple of months now, but once September hit and he realized he still had to wait a week or so till his birthday came, he was a little bummed. But it was short lived, and he started counting down the days till his birthday "on September 11th". And at last that day came! He requested dinosaur shaped "regular" pancakes for breakfast, couldn't wait to open his gifts as soon as he finished eating, played with friends at Music Makers and then at the park afterward, had a family date to the dino park, Dylan's for dinner, Macey's for case lot food storage, and Farr's for ice cream cones. Whew! What a day! And what a four-year-old!
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| Dad was the dino designer extraordinaire! |
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| Bronto and Tyrano. |
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| Still has his squinty-eyed smile! |
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| And still loves that teddy. |
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| Sam got a triceratops pancake. |
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Present time! This one was picked and wrapped entirely by
Callie. |
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| Her old "Canoe tuck me in?" jammies. :) |
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Books! (This one is a cute Old MacDino had
a farm.) |
bonus video!
bonus video!
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Callie also gave him a grab bag of random things - cheap finger
puppet, little hippo eraser (that was already Sam's), toilet paper
tubes that she decorated and called cars and cargo ships. Cute, but
mostly junk. Haha. |
bonus video!
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| Swinging at the park with BFF Charlie. |
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Loading up his "car trans" (his shortened name
for his new truck cracks me up). |
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Eden weather, though the it was dry
enough every time we wanted
to be outside - including
walking Cal to and from school,
playing at the park after music makers,
and going to the dino park in the
sunny afternoon. |
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| Mugs's weather. Youch! |
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| Dino digging! |
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| We had the place to ourselves! |
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| Callie by the Styracosaurus. |
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| Sam by the Ankylo. (He shortens everything apparently.) |
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She wanted to pose everywhere and have
a picture. |
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| By the newly repainted brachiosaurus. |
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| Group shot! |
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| Dylan's for dinner! |
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And Farr's for dessert (I could not talk him
out of that playdoh flavor, I never can!). |
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| Callie chose orange sherbet and it was fantastic. |
We didn't end the fun on the 11th, though! When he woke up from his nap on his birthday he found a present from his primary teacher, Sister Bott. He opened up a fun styrofoam glider plane, but we didn't put it together till Thursday morning, where he spent the whole morning throwing it around at the park. Then, Thursday afternoon, Charlie and Erin set up a dino dig for him in the Liberty Park sand. Sam, Charlie and Callie all had fun digging for little plastic dinos in the sand (and Sam was thrilled when they said he could keep them all for his present!) and snacking on "dinosaur bones" (white chocolate covered pretzels with chocolate graham cracker dirt sprinkled on) that Erin had made for everyone. What fun and generous friends! That evening, his last present from us came (it had come earlier from Amazon, but the first one was snapped in half, and I sent it back and the replacement made it a day late) and he opened it right before dinner. (Scroll down to see what it was!)
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| Dino digging at the park. Cutest idea ever! |
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| What's inside? |
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| Still not sure what it could be. haha. |
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| Oh! |
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| Now he's got it! |
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| Yes! A Lightning McQueen fishing pole! |
And now, because I always like to remember what he's like and what he's accomplished in the last year of his little life, here's a bullet list:
- he's obsessed (OBSESSED!) with dinosaurs - he can identify them by name and by whether they eat meat (carnivores) or plants (herbivores). Funny story: one day Gregg was reading an illustrated story about a dinosaur named Rex (normally he gravitates to the nonfiction section for dino books, but I like to sneak in some fiction stories every once in a while, too) and they were almost to the end when Sam whispered, "Why do all the plant eaters have sharp teeth?!" Can't pull one past him! He also recently set up a "Triassic Period" on his play mat with all his plastic dinos in place.
- he's also obsessed with all "things with wheels": cars, trucks, motorcycles (he really, really, really wants his own little dirt bike after seeing some kids riding theirs in a field near Liberty Park recently), planes, construction (he calls it "instruction") vehicles, trains, etc, etc, etc. He will lay on the floor pushing his toy cars around and just watch their wheels move. He'll set up "races" with all his little cars lined up on his play mat to either watch or race in the race (a la the movie Cars). (Today it's rainy and I asked him what he wanted to do while Cal was at school. His reply was: "I'll play with my cars and you can read a grown-up book!")
- he knows and will point out each and every logo of each and every vehicle on the road and comment on it (i.e. "that's a green Toyota like Grandpa Blanchard's", "that's a Chevy truck like Grandpa Elwood's", "are all Chevy's white?").
- he loves going to the "big class" and "little class" in primary and his favorite friend in church is Wyatt. He's said the prayer in the "big class" once and has gotten up to share how Heavenly Father loves him (on Fast Sundays) all by himself once or twice, too.
- he loves his best friend, Charlie (and the fact that they have matching shoes).
- he loves watching airplane (and other) videos with Gregg on youtube.
- he will still snuggle up with us in the morning or after naps for stories.
- he's moved up to Cal's old red pedal bike (same size as her new white and pink bike) (he started pedaling on her old little pink and white bike in April) and thinks he's big enough to do "tricks" like standing up while he rides or holding on with one hand. he rides that thing all over - to school every day to take and pick up Callie, to music makers, to the trailhead for a hike, to the open market one evening.
- he's starting to sound out super simple words and gets so excited when he can decode one.
- he's got quite the mathematical mind and can add things up in his head without much thought, it seems (story time: we were riding our bikes to pick up Cal one day and he noticed a house with two trailers that had two jet skis each; he said something like: "they must have four people in their family, two big people and two big kids because there are four jet skis!")
- he's as sporty as ever, and would probably love and excel at soccer or t-ball or some other team sport, but I'm holding off on signing him up for those things (mostly because I'm not ready to give up my evenings and weekends!), but he loves to kick a soccer ball around our yard with Gregg and Cal, will play baseball with sticks and rocks, can hit a plastic baseball (onto the roof!) with Gregg pitching to him, can catch a football, can throw a frisbee, can ski! - if it's sportsbally, he loves it and is good!
- he always wants to help me cook and is getting pretty good at dumping and stirring ("I'm so strong!") and kneading, even.
- he weighs as much as and is almost as tall as Callie (which has resulted in more than one instance of strangers asking if they're twins) (I'll update his stats after his well check next week).
- he wears a size 9 shoe (but I probably should have bought him a 10 for his new ones), 3T-5T shirts (I keep squeezing him in those little ones haha), 3T-4T shorts/pants.
We sure love this smart, dino and train-obsessed, bike-riding, fun-loving four year old boy!
Watch Samuel grow: 3 years | 2 years | 19 months | 12 months | 11 months | 10 months |
9 months | 8 months | 7 months | 6 months | 5 months | 4 months | 3 months |
2 months | birth
Oh my goodness, what a cute kid! I think he and Grace must be related - she knows everybody in the neighborhood's cars, and everyone in the family's as well (though she doesn't know their names yet, except that we have a Subaru like Sam).
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