Pre-Halloween Thanksgiving

Perhaps this isn't the most timely of posts (seeing as though it is just after Thanksgiving), but it is a funny story nonetheless. Teri's cousins invited us down to Sierra Vista just before Halloween for Thanksgiving dinner. After quickly perusing Wikipedia to confirm that F.D.R.'s fourth Thursday in November rule was still in effect, I began to ask, "Isn't it still October?"

It was. But actually Teri's aunt, uncle, and cousins were being very accomodating and were trying to have their big family get together (aka Thanksgiving dinner) at a time when Teri can still travel. Actually, at a time when Teri and Britney, our sister-in-law who is due the same day as Teri (Dec 21), could travel. Still, it is a little unsettling to be having all the Thanksgiving goods like turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and Cheez Whiz before you've even gone trick-or-treating.

Thanksgiving weirdness aside, I enjoyed my first stop in Sierra Vista. I saw the Wheel of Progress, something that can only be described as the poor man's perpetual motion machine monument. Sorry I don't have any pictures. I wanted to get one, but at the time I pulled of the road to figure out what the heck the thing was, Teri was pretty hungry and wanted to get home and eat. (I know - let's get our priorities straight.)

I also went to the Sierra Vista mall. McKay had lots of fun romping on the plastic/foam rubber tree in the playground area. His frustration was while the tree had two "slides" (basically the foam rubber went down at a 45 degree angle) there weren't any stairs to get up. For the bigger kids it was a problem. But McKay could not get up there despite his toddler stregth. So I spent my time there heaving him around.

All in all it was pretty fun. Teri and I even started to get into the Thanksgiving mood when we stopped for gas. This gem in Sierra Vista isn't quite the pilgrims and the indians, but it's pretty close. Here's Teri and the pilgrim,


Tad and the Indian,


McKay and his nap.

Funny things I have actually heard lately

These are actual thing I have heard recently. I think they are either silly or very silly.

1) The Writers' Guild of America is on strike. These are the guys who write the scripts for most all televisions shows and movies so you'd think they'd be pretty clever when it came to writing some kind of striking chant. They came up with,

"Eva Longoria -we write the storia."

Yes, I'm being serious. I guess I now know why it is that I have a hard time finding much of any television worth watching. Although, for the sake of the Office and Chuck, I hope the strike ends soon.

2) Arizona is growing like crazy and people are trying to figure out how to keep the growing transportation problem at bay. One suggestion has been to build a series of toll roads. As I was watching the local news one man they interviewed thought that they should just turn the HOV lane into a toll road because, "Everytime I drive on the freeway I am stuck in traffic and the people who are carpooling keep wizzing by. It's obvious that this system [the HOV lane] is not working."

Ok, I get it. If the car pool lane were as clogged with traffic as the rest of the freeway then it would be working right?

I have some more, but these were my top two.

Live from the Turkey Bowl

Ah, the Turkey Bowl. Who doesn't love a game with 17 wide receivers facing off against 15 cornerbacks and two safeties? Today's Turkey Bowl ended up being standard 14 vs. 14 football with no offensive line so not quite the full effect but still enough to be fun. We still decided to divide up and play 7 on 7 with two different fields.

Final tallies:

Games 1 and 2

Davis, Tad: [Offense] 2 receptions out of 2 intended passes (100%), 45 yards, 2 first downs

End of offensive highlights

(Yeah, not a whole lot of action offensively)

[Defense] 1 touchdown saving interception (which complements my 1 near Pick-6 which I wasn't able to intercept which led to an opposing team touchdown)

6 "tackles" (which really means I just got the guy's flag), 4 solo

5 quarterback hurries, 1 pressure sack (I can't really count it as a sack because right as I was about to pull the quarterback's flag he fell down)

End defensive highlights

Halloween 2007

Ugh...Halloween 2007.

Much as we tried to get all geared up for McKay's first Halloween as a mobile person, things just weren't quite working out our way. For all the ambitious plans we started out with, everything seemed to be converted to a Plan B, C or even Plan R.

For starters, our original Halloween costume ideas were, well, awesome! McKay was going to be the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. I was hoping for something cooler like everyone being Snap, Crackle, and Pop, but Teri was convinced that the Scarecrow costume would be adorable and so I relented. My costume - which apparently will be for the Halloween 2008 extravaganza - was the ever topical and relevant, Hamburglar. So cool. Teri hadn't decided on a costume, and being pregnant limited some of her options so she was going to be a Rubik's Cube - also a funny, topical costume.

But after making our grandiose plans, we got caught up in the storm of life. Teri has been doing her student teaching this semester and she has to teach full time for 6 consecutive weeks. That has been really hard on her physically. All the standing and walking has just worn her down a little bit. She does love teaching, which was a good thing to find out, but I think she will be very happy when she can just take a break and be home with McKay. The student teaching put a crimp in our plans as Teri simply didn't have enough time to make McKay's costume, or my cape. I would have volunteered to make my own cape, but I know how I get along with manual dexterity tasks and I backed away. After all, the Hamburglar costume is a once in a decade costume and it needs sufficient craftsmanship to outclass all the other costumes. Teri's Rubik's Cube also got put on hold for time reasons.

We ended up repeating our previous performances for costumes. I was Woody from Toy Story. Teri was the Chick-fil-A cow. McKay was a monkey.



Besides not being able to finish the costumes, we never got to carve pumpkins. We bought pumpkins. We even put them on our porch. McKay thinks they're funny and likes to try and pick them up, but he can only really get a hold of the little one.

Then there was Halloween itself. We went to our ward's trunk or treat. It featured a chili cook-off which was interesting. I'm sure the good people at Hormel would be proud of how many votes their chili from a can received. While the chili cookoff didn't have its usual sizzle, the trunk or treat proved to be pretty fun. McKay got up close and personal with a horse. He liked it.

After we got back from our trunk or treat we still had some time for trick or treaters so we popped in a movie and waited for the masses to arrive. As it turned out we only had 10 total. But get this - 4 of the ten came twice. And not only that, but I wanted to unleash some Halloween shock and awe on those kids.

The problem stemmed from the fact that when I was a trick-or-treater I always liked it when adults would allow me to select my candy of choice. That way I could acquire the right mix of candy and make sure that my mom's "taxes" didn't mean I was left without a Snickers. So naturally as an adult now I wanted to give that same experience to other kids. But I found out the hard way that some kids these days have no self control.

The first time the four kids came to our door I told them Happy Halloween and then said "You can choose what you would like." To my honest shock the first little boy, probably about 8 years old grabbed a handful of candy, then another. His sister followed suit and found Hot Tamales whereupon the little boy came back - yes, came back - and grabbed some of those too. His other two siblings were far nicer preferring only to grab one handful a piece. It was absolutely shocking! They did this right in front of their mother and she must have not even thought about it because she brought them back again. The second time they came back they each only grabbed 1 additional handful despite me telling them that they could choose whichever piece of candy they would like. Wow.

But I guess Halloween will probably get more fun as McKay (and bro) get bigger. Besides, Teri and I are excited for our first Thanksgiving and Christmas at our own house (largely due to Teri being unable to travel) and for our new baby boy to be born. And in the larger scheme of things that sounds like a lot more fun than Halloween anyway.

McKay Chips a Tooth

McKay is becoming quite the adventurous soul. As his coordination allows him to do increasingly more things, his fear of potential consequences drops dramatically. It's like living with an invincible teenager only without the sass.

Truthfully, we would probably have a little bit of sass from McKay if he had learned how to talk yet. While he has mastered "Mommy," "Dada," "side" (short for outside), and "mallo" (short for marshmallow) talking seems to be about the only thing McKay hasn't tried to already figure out. Within the past two weeks McKay has started opening doors, and drinking from a straw.


And he even figured out how to turn on the dishwasher.



With McKay's ingenuity I'm beginning to think that child labor laws may be a bit outdated. Give McKay a few more months and he could probably earn twice as much as me.

The one concern with all this development is that McKay finds himself in situations above his head. And that's saying something considering he's 36 or 37 inches tall already. (I'm not really sure how tall he is. I tried to measure him with a tape measure as he was sleeping, curled up in the fetal position.) One of those situations has already occurred in what many people are calling McKay vs. the infant car seat.

McKay's friend Sadie came over for a visit and McKay wanted to play in her car seat. But he didn't just crawl in there, he tried to climb in and to the top. Just as we were trying to get over there and catch him the car seat shifted and McKay came crashing down face first into the tile. The end result was that he chipped his front tooth.


While the idea of baby dentures did sound promising at first, we figure that baby teeth just aren't worth whatever it costs to make them appear more cosmetic - or the flight to the Philippines. Plus, the chipped tooth just adds to McKay's personality.

Post Script - Just after I had finished typing out my thoughts Teri called me downstairs because McKay needed some help. It turns out that McKay might not be ready to enter the workforce after all. His twin cousins were outside playing with McKay when they rushed inside to tell Teri that McKay was eating mud. Of course, it's possible he just has a more refined palate. That's usually what they tell rich people when they like something that no other normal person likes.