Sam's Birthday Shenanigans

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!

Dad was the dino designer extraordinaire!

Bronto and Tyrano.

Still has his squinty-eyed smile!

And still loves that teddy.

Sam got a triceratops pancake.

Present time!  This one was picked and wrapped entirely by
Callie.

Her old "Canoe tuck me in?" jammies.  :)

Books!  (This one is a cute Old MacDino had
a farm.)

bonus video!

"Charlie has these same shoes!"

bonus video!

"it's a car trans!"

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!

"why did you get me a lot of - two - cereal packs?"

Swinging at the park with BFF Charlie.

Loading up his "car trans" (his shortened name
for his new truck cracks me up).

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.

Mugs's weather.  Youch!

Dino digging!

We had the place to ourselves!

Callie by the Styracosaurus.

Sam by the Ankylo.  (He shortens everything apparently.)

She wanted to pose everywhere and have
a picture.

By the newly repainted brachiosaurus.

Group shot!

Dylan's for dinner!

And Farr's for dessert (I could not talk him
out of that playdoh flavor, I never can!).

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!)

Dino digging at the park.  Cutest idea ever!

What's inside?

Still not sure what it could be.  haha.

Oh!

Now he's got it!

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

Labor Day: An Adventure Story

Once upon a time, we decided it would be fun to take a dirt road drive on Ant Flat Road to Hardware Ranch and then on to Round Valley and Laketown.  We'd play at the park in Garden City, maybe splash in the lake if the (record warm) Labor Day crowds could be managed, and then chow on some LaBeau's burgers and shakes for lunch.  Then we'd cruise home through Logan Canyon, maybe taking a detour up to Tony Grove, and stopping in Providence for an afternoon/evening of visiting and playing with cousins.  That was the plan.  This was the reality:

So we awoke on Labor Day morning, ate some breakfast, threw some swim gear and snacks and water bottles in the car (just in case), and set off on our journey.  We kept calling it an adventure, but little did we know how true that title would become!  We were driving along on the tame dirt road, enjoying the scenery and our audiobook, when, suddenly, we heard a loud boom/pop and Gregg noticed the car was pulling to the right.  We pulled over and stopped and Gregg hopped out to check on the status of the tire and immediately noticed the front passenger side tire was flat.  Doh!  Then, when I hopped out to help him retrieve the spare and then we saw the extent of the situation.  The back passenger side tire was flat, too!  Argh!!  And also, what the?!  Like, how does that even happen?  Sigh.  This adventure had just turned into an Adventure with a capital A.

We were about 8 miles from Laketown and neither of us had cell service.  I wondered if I should start walking down the road, but I didn't know what I would do if I did that.  Luckily, we didn't have to wait long for help to come by.  About five minutes after the blowout, a couple dirt bikers came down, headed toward town.  (Miracle #1!)  We flagged them down, and they told us their buddy with a Razor was just behind them.  He had three extra seats, and they were all super willing to help out, so Gregg hopped in with them and they drove him into Laketown to see about getting the tires fixed at the shop there in town.  While he was there, he sent up an SOS to my parents, who were so willing and gracious to drop their plans for the day to come rescue us.  (Miracle #2!)  The kids and I hung out at the car until they brought him back (so nice!).  We had plenty of snacks and water because I thought to grab more than I thought we needed right before we left home that morning (miracle #3) and Gregg found that we could get service less than a mile down the road (miracle #4) so we walked down and found some shady aspens (miracle #5 - did I mention it was a hot day?) to hang out under while we waited for my parents.

The plan was for my parents to drive to Bear Lake and find us on the dirt road, grab the flat tires and take them to be replaced at the shop in Laketown, then head back to the car to put the new tires back on.  That is mostly what happened, but as we got calling around Laketown and Garden City we found that no one had tires our size in stock!  A quick call to my parents found that they hadn't left Logan yet (they were at the mouth of the canyon right when I called, so close call!) so they agreed to find and buy us some tires and bring them up to the Laketown shop where they could be install on our rims.  Since it was labor day, all of the tire shops were closed, but luckily Sam's Club was open and had the size we needed and they were able to buy two and head back up the canyon to find us.

Meanwhile, we just sat on the side of the road, eating our snacks and drinking our water and otherwise just hanging out.  The kids were incredible!  For having such a wrench thrown into our plans and not having a lot to do on the side of a dirt road, they were amazing.  They had great attitudes and the day turned out to be pretty fun despite the tire fiasco.  Lots of other vehicles of all shapes and sizes came by as we sat there, and I was heartened to see that most of them stopped to ask if we were okay, if we needed any food or water, if we had a plan.  That made my faith in humanity high, for sure.

Eventually my parents pulled up in their truck and we piled in and rode with them the mile-ish up the road to where we left the car on a spare and a jack.  We grabbed the two flats and turned around to head into town to get them fixed/replaced.  The kids, my mom and I hung out at a little park while the men took care of the tire situation.  Finally, around 3:30 pm, we were back in our car and on the road.  (The double flat event occurred around 10:00 am, so it had been a long day, to say the least!)  My mom and dad had invited my grandparents and siblings and others to their house for a bbq in the backyard, so they couldn't stay to enjoy LaBeau's with us.  We chowed down on our food and then headed to Providence to hang out with the fam for a couple hours before heading home and crashing hard.  What a day!

Back tire flatness (if you look closely you can see the slice in
the side wall).

Front tire, too.

Just hangin' out.

Still hangin'.

We're so glad grandma came to hang out
with us!

LaBeau's at last!

The sky was spectacular as we drove through Perry and Willard.

I found this after the fact on an old pinterest
board that I had forgotten I had even created.
(haha)  But I thought it perfectly described
our situation on Labor Day.  We could have
had a rotten day, but we decided to make the
best of it, and everyone kept a good attitude
and we have a funny memory to look back on.