School Days

This one is for Mrs. Quist.

I had a test today in school. I had to read this book that was really easy. First my teacher would go, then I would go. She would say an example and I would read the right things. Then we did numbers and I got done so fast. If that was a test about dinosaurs I would get done even faster.

Sometimes I really miss Mrs. Quist, my kindergarten teacher. I found a good shortcut to my class now so I can go by and see her sometimes.

Evil Genius Musings: Experiments, Dolphins, & Stegosaurs

This one is for Stephy.

Stegosaurus skull

I think I know how make experiments. First you take the snake-like thing and you turn this switch down. That's you charge it's molecums. You want to charge the molecums or the experiment will have a glitch and it will die some day.

I would make an experiment that can shoot things out of its tummy. I could make one that could turn into different things. I could make a dinosaur experiment, maybe one that can make stegosaurus have bigger brains. That way it would be smarter and you could have a conversation with it.

Like dolphins have large brains, not small ones like the stegosaurus. Dolphins are so smart that they can talk to each other and even type on a 'puter. If Stein was an experiment I think he could turn people to be really smart like him.

Then I could make an experiment like Clip that cuts hair. But you better make sure you don't want that hair, because it will never grow back. That also makes it easy to take care of. Plus mumma says when I have shorter hair it makes me look handsome. I would definitely get a haircut from Clip. That way I'd never have to get haircuts from my haircut lady Angel. Angel is a nice lady but I just don't like getting haircuts.

There is so many cool experiments I could make. The only thing I'm missing is an evil genius laboratory.

Clip (Experiment 177)

[Dad's Note: 'Molecums' = molecules. The stegosaurus is sometimes called the dumbest dinosaur (but we don't use the words 'dumb' and 'dinosaur' in the same sentence in our house) because their brain was the size of a walnut.

The typing dolphin thing is true. Bridger is referencing a recent article about SeaWorld trainers using a special underwater computer to teach dolphins how to surf the Web.]

I Want An Easy Button

This one is for the T-Rex. They used to think t-rex ran very slow but now they found out he ran pretty fast. I always knew he ran faster than they thought he did.

What's an easy button? I think I might want one of those. Do they sell them at Wa-Mart? I seen them on commercials. I want one because I been trying to ride my bike without training wheels. Every time I try to put my feet on the pedals and try to balance, I have to put my feet on the ground before I could even move a muscle. It's very hard and I'm still working on it. But if I had an easy button I could just push it and I would already know how to do it.

[Dad's Note: Oh boy. Bridger is referring to the easy button commercials for Staples. Well, at least he's right about the t-rex. See this article at National Geographic. Not sure how he heard about this one.]

[Mumma's Note: Trust me, If such thing truely existed I would've used it on him long ago!]

I Wish

I wish I never had school.

I wish I already learned everything.

I wish I could be 6 forever.

I wish I could live on the beach.

I wish the dinosaurs never went extinct.

I wish I had a dinosaur cave in my back yard.

I wish I was an evil genius.

Wednesdays with West on Thursday: Pokies

[Dad's Note: Ok, so our timing's been a little off this summer. With school starting back up, our days should be a bit more structured, and Wednesdays with West will appear on Wednesdays again.]

Do you know what's weird? Dadda is getting older because he's starting to get pokies on his face just like Bompa has pokies on his face. Those pokies is hard and sharp. I want to stay a little kid because I never want to get those pokies on my face.

[I guess the shaving every other day thing isn't working any more. I was sort of a late bloomer and didn't need to shave until well into my twenties. Since then I've only really needed to shave every other day. I guess those pokies have finally caught up to me.]

The Dinosaur Boy Goes Back To School

This one is for Dadda.

Today was my first day of school. Dadda took me over there and I saw my new teacher. We had to read this book that was close to the end and we got little prizes. I didn't make any new friends, but I like all those kids and I want to be all their friends. McCall was just trying to tell me what to do and be in charge of me, just like in kindergarten. I don't know why she thinks she's in charge of you. She doesn't try to be in charge of Preston, just me. Why does she do that?

They have dinosaur toys at school, but I don't know what they're for. I hope they're prizes or something that someday my teacher will give me when I do something good. I told all the kids in my class that I like dinosaurs, just in case they didn't know that.

The best part about school is at the end you get to have gummy bears. I like my teacher because she is very nice to me. But there's too many girls in my class. There's a ton of them. Nobody but girls to play with. Boring.

I Have Perithal Vision

This one is for Stitch.

Did you know that I have perithal vision? I do. That's when you can see out the sides of your eyes and you can see things double. I know how to do a lot of things with my eyes. Kaden thinks he knows a lot of things. He may know how to burp whenever he wants to, but I know how to make pretended things look real with my eyes.

Like that Santa Claus over there. It's really pretended but it totally looks real. I just look at something with my eyes and my eyes do something to make it look real. It has to be something flat on a piece of paper and I can make it look not flat. That's a pretty cool thing to know how to do.

[Dad's Note: I think he's squinting and using double vision to make flat images look 3-D. Definitely cooler than knowing how to burp whenever you want- something, by the way, Bridger mastered at a young age and is now mentoring Weston on.]

Happy Birthday Jane!

This one is for Jane.

It was Jane's birthday and she had a really fun birthday party at her house. We jumped in a bounce house and had a water fight. The thing is we didn't use the hose to have the water fight. We used water that's in bottles that's kind of like pop, but it's not pop, it's water. There was this lady there and I got her real good.

I gave Jane a talking Barbie for her birthday. I don't like Barbies because their girly things. But it's ok for Jane to like girly things because she's a girl. I love her because she's just the kind of friend I need.

Wednesdays with West on Friday: Tadpoles

This one is for the little tadpoles in Moab.

I love those tadpoles in Moab. They live in this little river and I love them so much. I wish I could go back to Moab because maybe they would be froggies when we get back. Tadpoles is baby froggies that look like fish, but they're not fish. One's name is Tad and another's name is Polie.

[Dad's Note: Weston's tadpoles live under the Wolfe Ranch bridge in Salt Wash, along the trail to Delicate Arch.]

Watching tadpoles through a crack in the bridge.

Happy 6th Birthday, Dinosaur Boy!

I am 6 today! Gibran gave me a snake he got when he was in Mexico. Dadda got me a cool globe that only needs one spinner. I can show where America and Mexico and Australia, even Florida are. I also know where Europe is, Africa, the North Pole.

Gammy gave me a microscope that lets you look at really little things and some dinosaur fossils I can dig for. Mumma and dadda gave me a video camera so I can make videos just like dadda. Dus-E-Boy and Alyssa gave me a dinosaur doodler and Gammy also gave me a big T-Rex that I love so much.

I wanted to go to Burger King for my birthday, but we went to Leatherby's instead. I got chickies and plain white ice cream with peanut butter. Then the workers came and sang Happy Birthday to me and gave me an extra plain white ice cream with a candle in it.

I got a Backyardigans cake because Wal-Mart doesn't have any new dinosaurs for their cakes. I had the same dinosaurs on my cake the last two years. But I did get dinosaur plates and Gammy had dinosaur candles.

I DEFINITELY feel six!

Climbing

This one is for Mumma.

Do you know what I've been doing lately? I've been trying things that I don't think I know how to do but I really can do. Now that I'm almost 6 I'm not afraid of a lot of things any more. Like I can jump right off the bars at the park and I can put my feet on the bar and hang upside down. And I can climb whatever I want- even arches in Moab.

Do you know who the best climber is? Stitch. He is the most powerful of the experiments. He can climb walls and climb on the ceiling and not too much blood will get in his head. That's how Jumba designed him.

Do you know what else is a good climber? Deinonychus. That raptor can climb all kinds of things. They climb trees to wait for food to come along and throw up the rocks in their belly.

The Sand Is Alive

This one is for all the experiments.

Did you know that in Moab, the sand is alive? Yep. It's full of little teeny plants and you can't step on it, cause if you step on it, it will die and it takes 250 years to grow back. The sand can't talk and it can't move, but it is alive. It probably lived so long that it was alive when dinosaurs roamed Moab. I saw some footprints in that alive sand. Why would somebody kill it? Maybe that person just didn't know that sand is alive.

Dad- write this on my blog- There is huge tall sunflowers in Moab and I got really close to one and it had a bee on it and I wasn't even scared.

[Dad's Note: He's right- the sand is alive. It's called cryptobiotic soil, and it's made up of cyanobacteria, microfungi, green algae, and lichens. It holds the sand together and provides a bed for plants to grow in arid areas.]

Moab Mania

UPDATE: Photo Added.

[Dad's Note: Bridger's dispatch tonight comes to you live from directly under Double Arch in the Windows area of Arches National Park.]

Right now I am in Moab. Moab is a whole different world. The dirt is red and the sand is orange. Even the sidewalks are orange.

Our camp house is so cool. You could also call it a little cabin. We hiked a lot of places today. Right now we are in a place with two arches. Me and Weston climbed so high.

There is a lot of shade under arches. When you're trying to survive it's really important to find water and shade. We have water because we went to Wal-Mart before we drove such a long way here. Bear Grylls teached me that you need to keep cool in the desert. He also teached me how to get out of quicksand.

I love Moab!

Bridger Featured at Popular U.K. Dinosaur Website

[Dad's Note: We recently received a letter from the good folks at Everything Dinosaur, a U.K. based online store offering a wealth of dinosaur related merchandise. The team at Everything Dinosaur also works with museums and actual dig projects. They recently worked on one of Bridger's favorite Discovery Channel shows, Prehistoric Park, which Bridger has mentioned several times on his blog. The team maintains a blog, which features Bridger in its latest article. A few snippets:

On one such visit to the blog sphere, Margaret found a web blog written on behalf of Bridger a young dinosaur fan from the USA. Bridger’s dad tells us that Bridger fell in love with dinosaurs when he was only 1 year old. He first called them "saurs" and he had a collection of 4 or 5 plastic dinosaurs that he carried with him everywhere. We'd always ask him "What are you thinking about?" and he'd respond, "Dinosaurs".

The other day he told his dad; "You know, a lot of kids like things, but then they stop liking that and start liking something else. I will never stop liking dinosaurs. I can't get them out of my mind."

At age 4, he started writing letters to people to tell them about dinosaurs. He'd call all of his family and friends and tell them all about them. His passion for dinosaurs was so touching that Bridger's dad decided to start the blog. He has written almost every night for over a year now. He calls it his "letter to the world”.

At Everything Dinosaur, we are always amazed at how much young people know about dinosaurs, they seem to be able to absorb all the facts and information like a sponge. When we visit schools to do talks and other activities we often get challenged and corrected by young dinosaur enthusiasts. Woe betides us should we actually get something wrong!

Read the entire piece here.

We'd like to thank the team at Everything Dinosaur for the kind letter and for reading Bridger's blog. Please visit them at www.EverythingDinosaur.com and see what they have to offer. Also check out the rest of their blog, where you can read all kinds of articles about prehistoric creatures and our quest to understand them better.]

Bridger's Sad, West Fills In

This one is for the real Lightning McQueen.

Bridger is sad tonight so I am writing his blog tonight. He is sad because he can't find his thing. He doesn't know what his thing is but he says he got it when I got my two Lightning McQueen cars from McDonalds. I love Bridger and I want to help him. When Bridger is sad it makes me want to help him, but I can't help him cause I don't know what he's looking for. He doesn't even know what he's looking for. Maybe he's just really tired.

The Story of Prehistoric Forest

We just got back from the mountains and it was so fun. The mountains are a special place. I think Jesus probably likes mountains. We were camping in the woodlands in the forest and I named it Prehistoric Forest because there is so many old trees that look like dinosaurs.

Like there is this one falled down tree that I named Styracosaurus Rock. Do you know why I call it that? Long, long ago there was some peaceful dinosaurs that lived in this forest. There was a valley too, down by where that river is. There was these bad dinosaurs that wanted to come and take the valley.

They had a huge battle and some dinosaurs died. Some were hurt. Some didn't die at all. The good dinosaurs won so they kept their valley and forest. But those bad dinos said they would come back one day, so the old styracosaurus stood on the hill to watch the valley. He stood there so long that he became a tree. Then the tree got petrified and it became Styracosaurus Rock.

Hiking in Prehistoric Forest

Going to Dinosaur Park with Silas

This one is for all the statues at Dinosaur Park.

We went to Dinosaur Park and we took Silas. It was so fun. I didn't see him for a long time. There is a cool slide there and do you know what? I can climb up that slide even if there are people coming down. You do that when you want to get up there fast and you don't want to waste time climbing the stairs. Plus, dinosaurs didn't have stairs. If they wanted to get up a mountain they just had to climb straight up it, not go on stairs.

What I do is just flatten myself if I hear people coming down, then they slide right past me. I can pretty much do that on all slides, but the slide at Dinosaur Park is an excellent slide.


[Dad's Note: Bridger will spend the next few days adventuring in the Uinta Mountains. He will resume his writings on Monday.]