A Little Space in the Universe: The little dude is three

Technically, it is still the month of September, the month of Dylan's birth, and while his birthday was the 7th, I'm not totally a month behind...just nearly that.

Dylan's third birthday happened to fall on Labor Day this year, which made it so all of us were home and able to celebrate with him.

Evan's parents invited the grand kids over for an impromptu sleep over the evening before Labor Day. Amelia slept in a tent with her cousins in the back yard and then apparently moved to the living room because she was hot and couldn't sleep outside.

Dylan came home with Evan and me and slept in his bed. We figured that if we wanted him to be even remotely happy on his own birthday that he should at least get a chance at a good night's sleep.

So the next morning we took him over to see his cousins, eat pancakes, and play at a park until it became entirely too hot to be fun any more.

Here he is on a sea horse in the sand.

Amelia selected the horse horse for her stationary ride in the sand.

Dylan has pretty much lost most of his baby face (sigh), and we can now really start to see what an older Dylan is going to look like.

We came home and sang happy birthday to Dylan. He blew out candles on a cake that I didn't make. It was an Oreo cake as Oreos or Joe Joes from Trader Joe's* are his favorite treat at the moment.

*Somehow I have convinced myself that Joe Joes are somewhat healthier than Oreos because they have natural ingredients. And on a small scale, absent of partially hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup, they probably are. But really, they are just sugar, sugar, sugar. And this is never really healthy.

Dylan has learned from his sister that it's totally acceptable to sing happy birthday to yourself. So he does.

We saw Up at the discount theatres near our house in the afternoon and then took the kids to a nearby mall for a whirl on the carousel and a dinner at Paradise Bakery. PB is one of their favorite places to eat...good mac n' cheese, apparently.

Originally, on Saturday that week we were going to have a birthday gathering with family that would not be small because there are so many of us who live in town. But Evan had an uncle visiting and his family wanted to get together for that uncle in Mesa. So, we decided to just bring cupcakes and ice cream and sing "Happy Birthday" to Dylan at that event.

So on Friday, we got together with my family and a few friends and did likewise for little D.

I have no idea how the giant sombrero fit it. Random.

Here is Dylan blowing out a candle on his chocolate cupcakes with Oreo crumbled sprinkles.

And then he opened a million presents. We have cars and trucks of various sizes and shapes scattered everywhere as a result of the abundance of them that he received as gifts.

And he loves every single one of them.

Grandma Brenda and Grandpa Ed gave him a couple of books as well. They are his next favorite thing to use besides cars.

The next evening, Saturday, was the Rogers Family Event where we caught up with Uncle Dale at Uncle Denton and Aunt Kay's house. They have a little "rock" water slide in their back yard, which provided much amusement for the evening.

Here are Evan and Amelia ready to slide down.

Various uncles were tossing various children into the pool off the top of these rocks. Dylan was in the pool for about 3 minutes before he decided he wanted no part of it. I helped him get changed but he was still mad for a short while that his hair was wet.

At the moment, he does not like anything wet except things to drink--as long as they stay in the cup or in his mouth. Otherwise, he doesn't like beverages either.

And Crew expressed his exasperation at being tossed in the pool a few times.

Or maybe he didn't like his green teeth. Who knows?

Wyatt loved the cake intended for the grown ups.

I made more Oreo crumbled cupcakes...again. Forty-eight total, in fact over the week. I think we came home with about 30 of them.

So we became really neighborly and shared.

Amelia and Brooklyn have banded together against the ocean wave-like force of their boy cousins. They surround themselves with giggles and pink. And it fends the boys off pretty well.

And you know those pictures you have of you standing around in the back yard of some family member in the summer time eating ice cream, half-dressed and happy?

Here's one for future reflection.

Dylan opened more gifts, about which he was ecstatic. There were more cars, a giant car transporter, a cars puzzle and a coloring book, not about cars... incidentally.