birthdays!

We had our week of birthdays...Dallas' on the 9th, mine on the 11th and Teag's on the 16th.
It makes for a fun and busy week in the Whiting house!

Dallas chose where we went for his b-day dinner - he told us he wanted to go to the place "with fish, fire and flip the shrimp in daddy's mouth" which means NINJA in Cedar City.

A Benihana-esque restaurant that we all enjoy. He is a boy after my heart because I LOVE Benihana and always chose it for my birthday dinner growing up.

Our little mister being silly

he was a little nervous when they did the fire part, so he chose to sit on the floor facing away from our table

but when it was time to eat he was all business...he ate the majority of my filet mignon!

Teag tried to give him some of his steak, which wasn't filet, and Dal tried it and spit it out.

I guess he is a steak snob like his mom ;)

Dallas and Daddy playing around after dinner

our buddy was so excited and so proud of his CARS cake!

He loved blowing out the candles so much we re-lit and he re-blew them about 20 times :)

I love seeing how happy the little things make him and how happy this sweet boy is in general!

testing the cake...

then driving the cars across the cake...

...then digging in! As you can clearly see he loved it!

then it was on to more presents!

He opened some in the morning and finished off before bed.

We have such a hard time not spoiling this kid! He is just so great, sweet, cute and get's so excited about everything!

Gma Reynolds sent Dallas balloons, which were quite a hit.

Dallas had so much fun playing with them and thought Teag's helium voice was as funny as it gets!

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My birthday fell on a Sunday this year, so it was somewhat uneventful...

We did go out to breakfast at a little diner on Main Street (after Teag let me sleep WAAAAY in)

Teag is so good about getting me flowers and always a sweet, heartfelt card.

And I always love getting Dal's cards with his "pictures" inside :)

And I got the gift I had been wishing/hinting for - a flip video camera.

Now I just need to play around with it and get some video on the blog!

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For Teag's birthday we went to dinner at the great steakhouse SULLY'S on Main Street.

Afterwards we walked down Main Street and stopped at Bulloch Drug at their cute old fashioned soda fountain for ice cream, vanilla diet coke, and...

a HUGE banana split for the birthday guy!

African Princess update...

with the home-studies complete and the mounds of paperwork filled out,

the Francis Family is officially on the waiting list!!!

The next step is to receive their 'referral' or get the email with info and a picture of their baby girl :)

We are so excited they are one step closer! The wait could be a bit long (maybe close to a year from now) but it will be so worth it!!!

chicks

This was a little while ago, but I just saw the pics again so I thought I would share...

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Before Easter we took Dallas to 'CAL-RANCH'

(Teag described it as TARGET for hicks - so funny and true!)

They had a sign out front advertising baby chicks and I knew Dal would love them!

The chicks were so tiny and cute!

Dallas and Teag checking them out - no, we did not go home with one.
I am truly SHOCKED that my mom didn't get chicks for Easter when we were growing up!


Mister was SO excited about them! He was totally squealing the whole time!
We would try to leave and he would turn around and run back to see them again.

Awww!!!

He kept asking me which ones were my favorites.

I loved the little yellow chicks and Dal loved the little brown ones.

On our way out Dallas spotted a Diego fishing pole...

and this was his reaction when we told him he couldn't get it.

The poor kids is SO deprived ;)

three...

...years ago today was the best day of our lives, because that was the day

DALLAS WAS BORN !!!

I remember it as if it was yesterday. There was a short pregnancy followed by 47 looooooong hours of labor. When he finally got here he took one breath then stopped breathing. They rushed him away before I had any idea what was going on. Not exactly what you expect when you dream about having a baby. For the first 4 days we could only look at him in the NICU and sometimes hold his little hand. He was hooked up to so many wires and machines and was under the little bubble and just looked so helpless. I was lucky enough to be able to hold him for a minute about 8 hours after he was born, but Teag had to wait days. It made us love him even more and realize that we could not and did not want to imagine life without this little love!

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And now 3 years later we are so grateful for every minute and still feel so incredibly lucky that this boy is ours!

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We started the day by waking him up and telling him "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" to which he responded, "my birthday - wahoo!". Then we went in and opened a few presents. As he got each present unwrapped he yelled "TA-DA!" then told us over and over, "I LOVE my _______"

The hit is probably a CARS Mater jump/slide/shoot the car out of the cannon toy.

He actually noticed it in the back of my car a few days ago and said "Mommy...that for me for my birthday?!?!" I told him yes, but it was a surprise, so he had to wait for his birthday to get it. He responded "Mommy, I LOVE my prize!". He is always so apprecaitive :)

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We told Dallas we could go to dinner anywhere he wanted and he chose "the place with fire, sushi and flip the shrimp in dad's mouth" - which means NINJA, a Benihana-like restaurant in Cedar. Then we will go home for cake -CARS, of course- ice cream and more presents. One of his presents from this morning was the Disney movie 'UP' so we will finish off with a little movie night with popcorn and treats.

He told us he wanted the football guys to come over, but I think we will keep it just the 3 of us ;)

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We love our little buddy SO, SO much and love watching him grow up! (sniff, sniff)

He is so much fun and brings us more happiness than we ever could have imagined!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR DALLY BOY!!!