Time at the Playground

Summer is racing by without looking back and soon it will be time to enroll Dillon in school. We took him to see where his new school was the other day and discovered lots of fun stuff to play on. It's a short distance from our house, so we rode our bikes there.

Dillon gets to ride Halle's bike for now until we figure out what to do about a bike for him. He doesn't seem to mind. He's just happy to be riding a bike.
Our monkey climbing the crazy noodle monkey bars.

Halle's taking it easy on something more her size.

While the kids play, Neal and I decided to throw the frisbee around. Then the kids decided they wanted to play too. Dillon couldn't decide which hand he preferred to throw it with, but oddly he seemed to do better with his left hand.
And Halle is practicing her "alligator" catch as we call it.

Sucker or a Sticker? I'll take the Valium.

Dillon had a doctor's checkup today, and it wasn't supposed to be a big deal which is why I took him myself.  But after the doctor looked at his immunization record, he said he did need to get a few shots.  Fortunately the immunization nurse was in so we could just walk over and get it done while we were there.  No big deal. .  .

 

Well, it turns out that our boy who is in the 92nd percentile for his size is also incredibly strong and extremely afraid of needles.  No amount of ice cream or suckers or fun bandaids were going to calm him.  After four of us attempted and failed to hold him down and give him his shots, I asked if they could hold off for about 10 minutes so I could call for backup. 

 

Neal, my white knight, showed up in a flash and we pinned the poor kid down.  You would think we were doing surgery without anesthesia or something (and then we realize he must be ours, right ;-).  But once he sat up and saw the bandaids, the nurse let him have two suckers, and then he proceeded to reward both Neal and me with suckers too.  And believe me, I needed one after that.

Ballerina and a Birthday Boy

A couple of young women from our neighborhood were doing a values project together, and they decided to teach ballet to the little girls in our ward for a week. Halle was on cloud nine the whole time. After four lessons, they got to do a "recital" for us and it was adorable.

Here's Dillon patiently waiting for it to start.

She's a natural performer, as you can tell.

And thanks Jake for bringing her flowers.

After the recital, we headed to the park for a small get-together with friends and family for Dillon's birthday. We had a few surprise visitors. My cousin, Marci, and my aunt Sue were in town from Missouri. It was fun to see them again, even for a brief time.
Nick couldn't quite reach the handles of the tractor when he was on the seat, so he decided there were other ways to make it work.

Everyone was playing so hard out there. It was time to sing happy birthday and eat treats.

Happy Birthday Dillon

We were lucky enough to have Dillon here with us when it was his birthday. We celebrated on his birthday with just our family. Then family and friends joined us the next night to celebrate and meet him.

According to tradition - meaning since Halle did it on her last birthday- he got to put as many sprinkles as he wanted on his cake. He also got to place his own candles. If you look close, he has matched each side in the same color pattern. As my mom and many others would say, he's defintely our son.
Halle is wishing she got a playdough ice cream maker for her birthday.

And his favorite present was the Nintendo DS with a math game in it, as you can see by the look on his face.

Is Dillon showing Dad or is Dad showing Dillon how to play it? Not really sure.
Halle had to wait for an eternity before Dillon was done checking out his DS so he would be ready to do playdough with her (since it was his gift and all). We were actually surprised how soon he put it down, but she did use her "will you pleeeaaase play with the play dough now" puppy dog eyes that are truly hard to resist.

Happy Birthday Dillon. We are glad to have you in our family.

Another Day with Dillon

Dillon got to have his first friend over last week and they had lots of fun together. Dillon has a pretty large vocabulary for his age. It seems normal to us because Halle is the same way- it tends to come with the territory when you are around adults so much of the time. But Dillon wanted Will to play the nemesis in one of their pretend games, to which Will's response was, "huh?"
We also went to the park by our house and he climbed just about everything. Halle was jealous that he could do the rings. She's been trying to do those.

We often find them playing in each others rooms. Here's Dillon playing with his cars in Halle's room . . . with a pink unicorn hat on his head.

"4th" of July Parties

When the 4th of July falls on a Sunday where we live, it's celebrated on Saturday so we had all our parties yesterday. We love our local small town parade so that was our first stop of the day.
Once Dillion figured out that there was candy getting thrown, he would come back with 4-5 pieces each time when the other cousins would maybe get one. So here he is sharing some with Nick. What a sweet kid.

We thought this one was pretty cool.

After the parade, we headed to my parents house for lunch and hanging out. Neal and my brother Ryan were in an ice cream making contest.

Here's all the kids jumping on the trampoline.

For the rest of the afternoon, we went over to see Neal's side of the family. Of course, they found the trampoline right away.
Here's Nixon trying to explain to Dillion which "car queen" he needed. Dillion was a little confused about why it mattered.
They got along great though.
Here's Dillion challenging Uncle Dave to a contest of tricks.
It doesn't get dark very early around here, so we waited as long as we safely could to start the fireworks on the driveway. But all our kids go to bed before the sun goes down so it was still pretty light.

The boys watched the first few but wanted to eventually go back to the trampoline. Halle stuck around and got to light a smoke ball.
But she was sure to run away fast after Neal's major serious talk to the kids about getting close to the fireworks.
Tiffany is showing the brothers how to light a smoke ball properly.
And finally the sparklers came out. It took a lot of convincing to make them believe it wasn't going to burn their hand off when it got to the end. Dillion was still a little skeptical.

Happy 4th of July to everyone who couldn't celebrate with us. Even though it was only about half of our immediate families, we thought Dillion would be overwhelmed meeting so many people in one day, but he took it in stride. He picked up names and associations very quickly and even recognized them today when we showed him their pictures on our wall. It turned out to be a really good day.

Day 1 as a Family of Four

We brought Dillion home on Friday. He was so excited for his new family (or maybe just the plane ride, but we'll stick with the new family story) that he could barely say goodbye to his foster mom. I know she misses him. He's been with her for over two years.
He did awesome on the plane. Take off was a little loud, and he insisted that Ellie (his elephant) needed him so we found her in his backpack.

We got home in time for lunch, and he felt right at home when he found our construction calculator sitting on the counter.

After lunch, they played with bubbles in the backyard and various other imaginary games that I couldn't keep up with.

We were planning to get the swimming pool out when he got here, but it was pretty chilly with the wind blowing so we just turned on the sprinklers. Dillion was a little nervous about going down the slide with the water spraying on it.
But once Halle did it a few times, he decided he was at least as brave as she was. He went down with his eyes shut tight the whole way which meant a big crash at the end because he didn't see the ground coming. He thought it was a blast though and went back again and again.
The round yellow swing is his favorite.

And all bathed and ready for bed.