Mostly About Dallin

Here are a few things that Dallin has been up to lately:

Laughing at Adam.
It seems it is a more recent thing, but Dallin thinks a lot of things Adam says and does lately are so funny. At three and five they are finally at an age where they are really good friends. It's more of a give-take relationship now. I totally love when Adam does something that Dallin thinks is cool or when Dallin laughs when Adam is trying to be silly. It's great. Today's happened when we were in the front yard having a morning snack. Adam points to the sun in the sky and says, "Look, it's Sunday." Dallin cracked up and said to me, "He thinks every day that the sun is out it's Sunday!" He gets a kick out of his brother.

Riding his bike.
A couple of weeks ago Dallin told Mark he wanted the training wheels off of his bike. He kind of tried to ride on his own but didn't try too hard that day. A week went by and Dallin wanted to ride his bike again. Mark says Dallin basically just started riding it like there was nothing to it. Mark came into the house to tell me Dallin was riding his bike on his own. It seemed like it came out of nowhere. He needs help getting started, especially since the bike we got him is a little tall, but he's getting pretty good at riding it around now.

This was about five minutes after he rode for the very first time.

Reading

Dallin is learning to read. He still has a long way to go to be able to read a book or something but he can read some of the store signs as we drive down the road or simple words. We are starting to work on a little phonics so he can get to the next level. I am excited for him to be able to read books by himself. It really will be a whole new world for him, I expect that he will love to read.

One Sunday a week or so ago Mark was gone for something and Dallin decided to make him a little treasure hunt when he got back. He asked me how to spell the words. The first note was on the front door, the second was in the mailbox and the third was inside the house on the wall. For the last part Mark had to search through the house to find where Dallin was hiding.

Photography
Every time I get the camera out Dallin wants to use it too. Here are some of his pictures from the last couple of days.
"Self Portrait"


"Adam and Hat"



"Owen and Hat"

This one looks like "Mom Making Peanut Butter and Mustard Sandwiches"

Just a couple of the many pictures he took of the pictures in a National Geographic magazine.

Instead of wearing his own pajamas every night, sometimes Dallin wants to wear one of daddy's shirts. One night he chose to wear daddy's sweatshirt to bed and tonight he chose to wear daddy's sweatpants.

And just because these guys are so cute, I couldn't leave them out:

Can you tell Adam is saying, "Owen, you're so cute." He says this maybe twenty times a day.

Adam and Owen with Grandma .

And to follow up on the last post, this is what we know so far about Michael the scam artist. We do have his full name, but I didn't want to post it for fear that he would track us down somehow, and we found his myspace page under that name, so it's probably his real name. We hear the police are working on a case and are going to arrest him. We found out from an officer Mark talked with on Monday that there were only two other families and they both got their money back from Michael. I guess he felt guilty, hid the money somewhere (under a trash can at a Wal-Mart and somewhere else) and called or texted the people and told them where he left the money. When they went there, the money was there. Apparently he doesn't feel bad enough for us. I think it's because we only paid half and then when Mark went to get the swingset and the police came to talk to Mark about the case they asked him to text the guy and tell him that we got the swingset and how were we going to get the rest of the money to him. The police were trying to bait him so he'd show up for the rest of the money and they could arrest him. But, he never responded. So, we can't even really send him a text to try and make him feel sorry for us and give us our money back because we already told him we got the swingset that he doesn't even own. Anyway, thanks for all of your kind comments and nice offerings of private detection.

And here is a sweeter note to leave you with: