The Day Before My Birthday

The day before my birthday started off with an unexpected revelation and a chuckle: Derek got hold of my phone and somehow dialed Nana - all by himself. Mom told me later she could hear Mitch and I talking in the background and heavy breathing in the foreground. She realized it was Derek and it cracked her up. Mitch realized Derek had made a call and hurriedly hung up. When he realized it was my mom, he called back and they had a good laugh about it. I locked the phone and gave it back, and this is what Derek did...

The next E-Trade Baby

Surprising text? Or maybe he's surprised it isn't responding...

I love how happy he is!

My mom, Rick and Val came up to Mckinney to take me out to dinner. SURPRISE! We were going to Gamm's! That was an awesome surprise. We had a blast eating pizza and went for DQ's pumpkin blizzard to round out the evening. Derek was super cute the whole evening - just chock full of personality. Gamm had a train set she wanted us to pull out for Derek. He LOVED it! Aunt Valerie helped him figure out how to push the button to make it go forward and push the only other button to make it go backward.

Content to sit in the lap of luxury and watching the wheels go round

He tried to kick it off the track - Val didn't encourage it

Sweet bonding time between Auntie and nephew

The poor train engineer got stuck. Not sure if he just lost a dare or lost his mind.

When the engineer finally fell off, Val had an idea...

Derek was more than happy to run him over. See his little blue feet? Ding dong, the witch is dead!

Reading one of his favorite books: A Scooby-Doo, count the treats book. The ten bones glow in the dark.

Ok, so the story behind this one. All of us were eating our blizzards and Derek wanted some. Unfortunately, the kid is lactose intolerant, so ice cream was out of the question. Nana gave him applesauce though and he started playing with the empty container. When he held it up to his face, it covered his nose and mouth and looked for all the world like the emergency oxygen masks that fall from the overhead panels in the plane - sans oxygen bag, mask strap and tube though. Still, really funny observation that had us cracking up.