Derrick's Fifth Birthday

Usually when we are coming up on Derrick's birthday I think, "what? He's turning three? I already thought he was three?" or "Oh I've been telling people that Derrick is four for weeks now, I'm glad we can make it official."  But this year I was like, "What? He's turning five already! How is that possible?"

I just can't believe that he's five. Five just seems so grown up. One minute he was this little baby, and now he'd getting ready for Kindergarten. Wow.

This year we decided that it would be fun to do a dinosaur themed birthday for Derrick.  I know that a train themed party would be the obvious choice, but honestly we live and breath trains every day in this family.  I wanted to do something a little different.  (And maybe help guide Derrick toward other interests.)  Besides, in the 5 months we've lived here we've already been to the Ogden Train Museum, ridden Frontrunner, ridden Trax, gone to a model train show, ridden the little train in the mall - twice, and have plans to go to the Golden Spike National Historic Site in May.  We've done pretty much every low-cost train related thing in the area. 

But we haven't done any of Utah's dinosaur related things yet.  And I really wanted to take the kids to the Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden. Going there for Derrick's birthday seemed perfect. 

The kids were on Spring Break this whole week (I'll blog more about that later.)  I had work so Brandon took care of directing the kids in the art of making and frosting Derrick's cake. We'd bought dinosaur figures to put on the cake, but Brandon ended up decorating it so well it didn't even need the dinosaurs. (It's a volcano, a river, and dinosaur bones in case you can't tell.)

 On Friday night Charlotte and Lydia stayed up and helped me blow up balloons. I'd picked these out because they looked so happy.

 And I picked these out because they looked like dinosaur eggs.

 When Derrick woke up this morning the girls directed his to the balloons right away.  I heard him say something like, "Oh WOW, Happy Balloons!" He carried around three balloons most of the morning.

Since Derrick's birthday was on a Saturday I decided to invite our siblings and their kids along for the activity at the Dinosaur Park.  This was for two reasons.  The first, and most important reason, was because we love our family and we were excited to celebrate one of our kids' birthday's with them for the first time since Charlotte and Lydia were two.  The other reason was that we would get a group rate discount if we had a group of 10 or more people.

Brandon's sister Melanie would be out of town with her family for Spring Break, so unfortunately she couldn't make it.  But Shannon and her kids said they could make it.  My sister Hillary and her husband were also excited to come.  And of course Brandon's parents would come.  So I called and reserved us a spot several weeks ago.

The weather ended up being a little iffy (it was snowing while we ate breakfast) and Shannon was worried about making the drive.  So she had to cancel.  Hillary's husband had to take a final, so he couldn't make it either.  We missed them but we also understood.

For a few minutes I was tempted to just cancel the whole trip and try again on a day with better weather, but the kids still wanted to go so I decided to just go along with the original plan.

I'm glad I did because the weather improved on our way down to Ogden.  We could see blue sky as we came out of the canyon.  We drove to the Dinosaur Park and the kids could see some of the dinosaur statues on the other side of the fence.  They were so excited.  Derrick immediately started saying, "Help me out." and trying to get out of his seat belt.  We got the kids out of the car and they RAN to the museum entrance.

Derrick noticed some brochures for the Golden Spike Historic Spike right when we walked into the building.  I was like, "how did you even see those."  He wanted one so I gave it to him, he started jabbering on about Dinosaur-Train.

We'd brought umbrellas, but it wasn't raining at the moment so I decided that we should see all the outside statues first before going into the museum part.  So we went out there. The kids had so much fun running around and looking at the dinosaurs.

 Later we were joined by Brandon's parents, and my sister Hillary.  Veronica was so excited to see Hillary.  She kept saying, "Hillary wook - Dinosaurs."  Later we all talked about our favorite part of the day and Veronica said her's was, "Seeing Hillary."

 This wasn't Derrick's first time here.  We'd come here in the summer of 2014 when he was two.  Back then he could barely talk.  He couldn't even say "Choo Choo Choo" when he played with his train.  Instead he's say, "Boo Boo Boo."  But when we walked into the park he started growling at all the dinosaurs.  I didn't even know he knew about dinosaurs.

This time he ran around and yelled, "Dinosaur!"  They had some dinosaur noises playing and Derrick would keep saying, "Hear it Mommy? Hear the dinosaur?"

 I really like this place and how each of the dinosaurs is posed differently.  It's fun.

 I kept trying to get a picture of Derrick, but he didn't want to pose for me.  He just wanted to look at the dinosaurs.

 The first time I came to the park was with Brandon when the twins were babies.  Brandon posed with this dinosaur and Charlotte and Lydia have always loved the picture.  Charlotte wanted to reenact it with her.

 Derrick and Veronica wanted to do it too.

 And I like this one of Lydia protecting Charlotte.

 And of course Brandon and I had to jump up there too.  This perfectly illustrates how well we are handling life this year.

A little bit after this picture was taken Derrick did something that surprised me.  He walked by another family and said Hello to a little boy who was about his age.  The boy didn't say anything so Derrick said, "Say Hi" and then the boy said hi.  Derrick showed the boy his "Dinosaur-Train" brochure and said some other stuff.  Then he said bye.  I've never seen Derrick initiate a conversation with a stranger before.  It was amazing. 

 The kids got really into posing in front of the dinosaurs.

 We through this was pretty funny.

 After we had walked by all the statures outside we decided to go inside.  This is where the best part of the whole park was waiting for us.  They have an anamatronic display set up.  The T-Rex and the Tricerotops move and look like they are getting ready for a fight.

 The kids LOVED it.  Derrick and I actually came back to this display a little later and watched it for about 15 minutes.  (Thankfully they have chairs against the wall so we could just sit in those.)

 Last time we came here Charlotte and Lydia had been so worried about the baby dinosaurs that they had prayed to Heavenly Father to keep them safe.  Charlotte was still pretty concerned about them.

 There were also gems and other cool rocks on display upstairs.

The rest of the museum was displays of fossils.  

There was a little place for the kids to color.  Derrick gave me a second surprise and said he wanted to color.  He scribbled on a paper while saying, "Rarrr" and then he told me, "It's a dinosaur picture." I've hardly ever seen him scribble, let alone say that he was actually drawing anything.  

 We'd been at the museum for about two hours when everyone decided they were done.  Originally I'd been thinking that we'd find somewhere to roast hot dogs for lunch, but the iffy weather had canceled the plan.  Instead we planned to just go back home and have sandwiches and hot dogs. Derrick was super happy to have all of his favorite foods; hot dogs, chips, and root beer.

 Brandon had bought large french bread loaves and we'd put together a big sandwich before we went to the park.  When we came back to the house all we had to do was cut it.  Everyone could add the whatever extra toppings they wanted.

 After lunch we brought out Derrick's cake and put the toy dinosaurs around it.  Derrick was so excited to see everything.  He kept saying, "Dinosaurs."

 We lit candles and sang Happy Birthday, but Derrick got upset by the loud singing and was kind of flustered with the candles.  That was the only time he was grumpy the whole day.

 He was happier when it came time to eat the cake and ice cream.  Brandon's dad, Steve, put the dinosaur near Derrick's ice cream and Derrick thought it was funny.  All the girls wanted dinosaurs to pretend to eat their ice cream too.

 And then it was present time.  We got Derrick a few things that he would like. ( A train/alphabet puzzel, a plush Charlie Brown doll, and a car garage.)

 But let's be honest here, certain siblings were almost more excited about the toys.

 Derrick's favorite presents were the train hat and train shirt that Steve and Jacque got him.

 I assumed the bought the shirt, but really they hadn't been able to find one they liked.  So being Illguth's they just made one.  Steve drew this train.  Let me repeat that, he drew this train!  He did it on Adobe Illustrator and printed it out on iron-on transfer paper.  Then they ironed it onto the t-shirt.  Derrick wanted to wear it right away.  And he'll probably want to wear it every day for the next week.

That was the end of our plans for Derrick's birthday.  He spent time playing with his toys.  Hillary gave Charlotte and Lydia haircuts, and we later gave Hillary a tour of the RV.  After she left I took Derrick and Veronica to the library.  Derrick had been talking about getting Dumbo from the library for several days so I figured today would be a good day to do that.  We also looked for "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" because Derrick heard about it on a pre-view for another Charlie Brown movie.  Seriously he has been repeating, "I want to watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown on DVD" for at least two weeks. They didn't have that movie, but they did have Dumbo.

On the way back we drove through a crazy storm where it started out raining and then turned to sleet. I'm also pretty certain I saw lightning strike the ground.

Derrick wanted me to watch Dumbo with him so I cuddled up with him on the couch. Watching Dumbo always reminds me of back when Derrick didn't talk at all.  Both of them have big blue eyes and are so expressive even without words.  And I like to think that there are similarities between Dumbo's big ears and Derrick's autism.  Both things can be seen as a problem, but there is also a lot of potential for greatness

As much as I love Dumbo I couldn't stay awake during it.  I've seen that movie like 500 times (it was on Netflix when Veronica was a baby, and now we get it from the library at least once a month).  So I dozed while Derrick and Veronica watched the movie.  Brandon made waffles for dinner and we ate those as soon as the movie was over.

We'd also picked up Wreck it Ralph from the library so we watched that for movie night. It's been about 3 years since we watched that so everyone was really into it.

And then it was bedtime.  Derrick was actually willing to take off his train shirt and hat.  He climbed into bed and just seemed so content.

There are a thousand things I could say about Derrick.  How he's so enthusiastic about things, how he has the most contagious laugh, how he is generally the most cheerful little boy.  But right now I just want to say that I'm so glad he's mine. Derrick is one of a kind. I love all my kids, but there's something about the bond between a mother and her son. I'm glad that he became my buddy 5 years ago.