There be dinos...

A quick note: Eric, spouse of Tina, is posting this entry. Tina has done a good job of showing the antics of La Famiglia Dutton (a little Italian lingo there), but after the sun sets and Evan is asleep, many daily activities begin. Here is my story. And it's all true.

Evan received a bag of small dinosaurs for his birthday. It wasn't very expensive, but there were about 23,000 dinosaurs of various shapes, sizes and species. He loves these little suckers and cannot wait to dump out the dino bag each day. Between playtime, snack time, meals, errands, housekeeping and prime Daddy-time, the dinos get scattered about. Once Evan is asleep, one of my jobs is to round up each of the 23,000 dinos.

This is not an easy task. First, these creatures are small. Second, they blend in quite nicely against our multicolored oriental rug. Fortunately, nature provided me with adequate nerve ending on my feet to find the sharp pointy teeth, claws and spikes. But most of all, Evan carts dinosaurs throughout the house and leaves them about like a trail of breadcrumbs. Evan is getting older and smarter, so he now makes my task of the great dino round a bit more challenging.

A common place for finding the remote, loose change or last week's burritos is between cushions, so this was the first place I looked after prying any creatures from the soles of my feet. Note the oriental rug in the background.

This guy was probably here for weeks because it only seemed natural to have dinos among the family pictures at this point.

You've probably called someone a "snake in the grass" before, but here is Evan's interpretation.

Having segmented flat surfaces screams "put something here" so Evan complied.

But sharing an endearing moment among Tina's figurines was unexpected.

Now I'm stumped. He likes sticking objects into the peephole, but it's 5 feet from the floor...

Tina enjoys keeping her Nativity scene up year round. I'm not exactly sure the shepards were keeping watch over a flock of T-rex's. Or maybe they showed up with the wisemen because they say "murrr, murrrrr, murrrrrrrrr". (for you Obama voters...gold, frankincense and myrrh, get it? Sheesh!)

Enroute to the kitchen, I spotted a potential escapee. Evan likes to go into our pantry, close the door behind him, then wait for someone to notice he's gone. This guy almost got away...

...but ending up in the toaster is just plain cruel.

We constantly remind Evan to not put the dinosaurs into his mouth because they're dirty. Apparently, he listened because the dishwasher had a platoon of reptiles in it.

Cold dino... I was getting something out of the fridge when I saw a red dino next to the milk. He blended in nicely with the peppers behind him. Note the jar of Evan's Front Range Salsa below the dino.

With the lights on, I never noticed this, but after I turned the lights off, another T-Rex was found suffering from radiation burns and chronic dizziness from the rotating turntable.

The fire was warm for us, especially for the big blue dino. Not officially part of the sack o' dinos, the guy seems to follow the pack nonetheless.

I have no idea how Evan did this. Mental note: clean the fan's blades.

This is usually a bad sign, or possibly the dinos are trying to run for cover while Evan sleeps.

Over the many nights since our house was invaded by dinosaurs, a few have gotten away. I admit that I could have recovered a few, but I didn't want to dry them off and flushing them seemed the right thing to do at the time. I try my best to find them all, but Evan is a sneaky little guy. I just finished counting the dinos and we're down to 21,477. I guess it's a sign that Evan is growing up and has outsmarted his old man about 1523 times...

And I look forward to being outsmarted 21,000+ more.