Our little Dino Dan

Parker is 4 and a half years old! I cannot believe how grown up he is getting. We see more and more of his personality everyday. He loves to be in charge and make sure that he lets everyone else know what they are supposed to do. This doesn't always go over well. He is a smart boy that catches on to things very quickly.

Here are a few things that Parker does these days:

-His favorite show is "Dino Dan" on Nick Jr. He loves to watch it and learn about new dinosaurs. Of course, he remembers all of them by name and a lot of things about them. He even spouts off things like "defense mechanisms" and knows what it means.
-He is now back in preschool again and loving it, although he seems to have missed a lot of days to sickness lately.
-He started his soccer season. He loves to play soccer all of the time now. I get to be the coach and he is pretty happy about that too. But the thing he likes best about soccer would probably be his jersey.
-We finally replaced his bike (the old one got hit by a car last fall and is finally out of commission). I found this great tractor trike on craigslist for $10. He loves it and so do all of the other kids in the neighborhood!
-Parker gave another talk in primary. (Since Paul helped him with his first talk, I got to help him with this one.) He talked about safety in following the prophet and got to tell the story of his favorite prophet, Noah.
-Both, Parker and Autumn, have enjoyed the BYU basketball season with us. Each one of us in the family got to "be" one of the players. Dad got to be Jimmer, of course. I was Jackson Emery, Parker was Charles Abouo, Autumn was Noah Hartsock, Lincoln was Brandon Davies/Coach Rose, and Aunt Kimmy was Kyle Collinsworth. It was really fun to watch the games with them.  When they heard the name of their player on TV, they got really excited. And we all got 'High Fives' when our player scored.
-The other night at dinner we were all sitting at the dinner table and talking about our day.  Parker looked over to his side and hit his ear and said, "Stop it Ear!"  He then promptly continued on in whatever conversation we were having.  We asked him about it and he said that sometimes his ear makes it sound like he is talking in a microphone and he wanted it to stop.  The next day at dinner, he started looking up and knocking on his head.  This time Paul and I didn't ask, we just looked at each other and laughed.  What a silly kid!
-Lately, Parker has become very thoughtful during his prayers.  We usually mention each one of us by name in our prayer and he does this every time he prays; morning, night, and meal time.  He has even started blessing anyone else who is in attendance with us for the prayer.  After he blesses each of us, he sometimes prays that we can be a family forever.  I thought it was sweet the other night he prayed, "Please bless Lincoln not to cry and we don't know what he wants."  What a thoughtful little boy.