Birthday Recap #3 - McKay

I think Teri and I have been excited for McKay's birthday for about 9 months, no joke. I'm not really sure why. I suppose it is because McKay loves Cars and there are some many cool toys to get excited about. So a few months ago, we decided that it would be fun to play "Pin the Tow Cable on Mater" instead of on the usual donkey. Teri took the challenge head on and came up with her own Mater poster.



I think it looked awesome. Teri had to take 2 pictures of Mater, combine them into one side profile shot, draw it all out, and then paint it. It got a little hectic there at the end when Teri's mom and Teri were frantically slapping background paint on him, but they got it done just in time for him to dry and be ready for the game.

I probably should have won the actual competition, but because I had purchased all the game prizes and knew that they were probably too complicated for me, we let Miriam win. She's 4; I think she'll have a good old time with that 24 piece puzzle.



McKay had his own troubles, although none of them were behavior related. (Thankfully, our fast wasn't in vain.) Actually, McKay struggled with blowing out his candles. Apparently, I should have spent less time teaching him what sounds camels (spitting) and peacocks make and spent more time teaching him how to blow out candles. Oh well, McKay's cousins seemed happy to lend a helping mouth.



McKay loved opening his presents. Interestingly enough, he wasn't more excited about the boxes the presents were in than the presents themselves. At least not until the very end when he realized he could make the boxes into race cars. But McKay had good reason to be excited. He got a lot of cool stuff.



Gibson was very pleased with the day as well. Not only did he get a cool new hat, but he was pretty sure at least some of those toys would be making their way to him.



McKay was pretty worn out by the end of the celebration. He wasn't able to take a nap that day because he was too excited. He just sat in his crib singing, "Happy Birffday to me. Happy Birffday to K. Happy Birffday to me-eeee. Happy Birffday K." So by the time 5:30 PM rolled around he was zonked.




Happy Birthday buddy. We hope you had as much fun as we did.

Birthday Recap #2 - Tad

For my birthday I got what I had always wanted - another 3-D cake. Years ago, when I was something like 2 years old, my mom made me a 3-D Care Bear cake. It looked something like this, although my mom's cake looked more like a specific Care Bear and didn't have all the cupcakes.



I don't remember which one my mom made for me, but if I were to get one now I would ask for Champ Bear...or maybe Good Luck Bear. I'm kind of on the fence on this one.

Anyway, for my birthday I got another 3-D cake. And this time it wasn't even a Care Bear. It was an entire castle.



I bet you're jealous. I would have been if I were in your shoes.

I suppose I should mention that I basically share a birthday with 2 of my neices who were turning 4. One of them was born on my birthday and the other came 16 hours later but on the next day. This year was apparently not my year to pick the cake design (although they did console me by putting my flag on top of the very highest turret). Here we all are by our respective flags.



The true highlight of the night came just after we blew out the candles. Teri got the kids a pinata. McKay thought this was a great idea. He handled the bat quite well. Of course, he's had a lot of practice doing this to Gibby.



Concerned that I might be upset about not getting enough pinata swings on the parrot, Teri bought a pinata just for me.



The showdown between me and Cookie Monster took longer than expected. Cookie Monster had obviously put in a number of hours to get in peak condition for our bout and if I hadn't had a bat I think he may have defeated me. Cookie Monster was being manuvered by Teri's brother Kevin who managed to get Cookie Monster to whack me in a reasonably strategic fashion. The end result was that I had to assume a defensive posture which limited my offensive capabilities.



Despite the embarrasment of taking 25 minutes to break open a pinata when the kids took a whopping 12 swings (including McKay) it was a great birthday. Kudos to Teri for organizing my fun day. I think she totally deserves the entire turret that she ate.

Birthday Recap #1 - TeriDel

A good chunk of the year has passed without us blogging about birthdays. We intend to change that in 3...2...1.

Teri's Birthday

In February we got a call from the Young Women's leader in our ward asking if there was a small service project that the youth could come over and do at our house as part of a service scavenger hunt. We heard that most people were having the kids wash windows, weed, or somethign along those lines. Teri decided to use them a different way - cutting coupons. So one Wednesday night we had four kids show up to do their service. They were a little perplexed by their coupon cutting role, but I think they were excited not to have to wash windows for a minute or two. Teri thought the whole thing was fun and mentioned that she used to love scavenger hunts when she was that age. And that's when an idea popped into my head. Why not do a treasure hunt/scavenger hunt for Teri's birthday?

The Saturday just before Teri's birthday she got to spend the whole day deciphering clues and making her way across the greater East Valley area. Included in her journey was a hike up "A" Mountain in Tempe,



a math equation using paddleboat prices from Tempe Town lake, secret codes hidden in a book at the Tempe City library, a jaunt through Bass Pro Shops to find her favorite candy, an intense racquetball battle against Sven - the semi-pro racquetball champion of the world,



recycling old computer parts, performing a 1 woman play depicting a scene from the Lord of the Rings with McKay starring as Frodo (so technically a 1.5 person play),



and my personal favorite, having to jump into Chris and Lolly's backyard pool to fish a clue out of there. Keep in mind this was in early spring and as you can tell by Teri's facial expression, the water was a little bit cold - even for Arizona.



To assist Teri in figuring some of these rather obscure clues I proided her with a clue hotline. Teri's brothers knew a guy from work who could do a lot of different voices and so we plugged his number into Teri's phone and whenever she completed a task or got stuck she had to call him for further instructions. And judging by the fact that Teri thought there were at least 3 or 4 people answering that phone at different times, he did a great job.

All in all I think it was a pretty fun birthday for Teri. Plus, her sister Julie made her this awesome cake.



So happy birthday TeriDel. We love you and are so happy that you are a part of our family.

Love,

Tad, McKay, and Gibby

"Another mystery is history" as said by Tigger in My Friends Tigger and Pooh

Last we parted, TeriDel was this close to dying of a heart attack. But she didn't. And there was much rejoicing.

It turns out that Teri had a particularly violent reaction to a viral infection that has been going around in the Phoenix/Mesa area. We found this out because Teri's sister-in-law's sister (say that 5 times fast) is pregnant and she came down with the same thing. They did a bunch of tests and presto! viral infection it was.

While most people just get gastrointestinal symptoms, (occasionally resulting in an Oregon Trail incident), other people come down with violent illnesses consisting of chest pain, difficulty breathing, and other heart attack symptoms. I ended up in the first group, but Teri made her way into the second. Regardless, we're just glad that everyone is relatively healthy now and all we have to battle are allergies. Well, I don't have to battle them, but Teri, Gibby, and K all do so I just cheer them on. Go team.

On a tangentially related note - if you are yearning for the good old days when you could play the original version of Oregon Trail, pine no more. I found the online version of Oregon Trail complete with hunting and the original graphics. So take your best shot and see if you can navigate the trail without losing at least one member of your party to some random illness. I am in the Top Ten scores; I bet you can't beat me. And right after I say that Teri plays the game for the very first time and beats me. Now we're both in the Top Ten.