This and That Volume II

We still have more things that we we need to catch everyone up on so here they come.

Boys and their Noise(s)

McKay has recently become aware that all animals make noises and he has been very eager to share this discovery with us. McKay just has one problem. Every animal we see now, be they stuffed, real, big, small, feathered, finned, desert-dwelling, or Antarctic based, they all make the same sound. They all growl. And not just any growl. McKay has a very deep throat based growl that also leads to the expectation of expectoration. Rrrrraaaawwwwr. If I can ever capture him doing it on video it would be worth a post. But noises appear to be the one area where McKay is camera shy.

Davis Family - Bowling Champs 2008

For quite a few years now my family has faced off against the Lang family on December 31 in our annual New Year's Eve bowling championship. This started way back before any of the kids from either family were married. Eventually the Langs went out and bought a "travelling" trophy for the bowl off. Unfortunately, putting travelling in quotations marks is appropriate. In the history of the bowling championship only the Langs have won.

Much of the Davis family bowling problems can be attributed to a lack of personal training by some of our team members. Unfortunately, Lisa and Amy have had a history of bowling like this lady.



Notice that she actually threw the ball into one gutter and then the ball made it all the way to the other gutter without hitting any pins.

Now that members of both families are married, the new spouses have become critical in enhancing our bowling average. We tried to get Lisa to marry this guy, but she fell in love with Tyrel. And despite my prodding about Tyrel's bowling scores, Lisa kept those a secret before she married him. Here's hoping he can beat out Lisa's high - 47.

But it looks like 2008 could be the Davis' year! Teri and I were very pleased that we can up our training regimine because we know live super close to a bowling alley. That and we try to get in at least 2,000 frames a week on the Nintendo Wii bowling game. (For a well-produced and very funny look at a senior citizen Wii bowling tournament, click here.) So watch out Langs - you're trophy may be travelling soon.

Tad & Teri Get Callings

Tad just got out of the Elders Quorum presidency where he'd been for the last 3 years so he was very excited when he got an opportunity to grow in a new way - in the elders quorum presidency. Yup, I kind of feel like the Juan Pierre of elders quorums. (No, not in the sense that I only produce 25% of the time and only in non-clutch situations - although we are similar in the fact that we both need a 5th grader to relay a ball from the outfield into the infield.)

Actually, Juan Pierre has the longest streak of consecutive games played in the major leagues at 434, (see bottom of article for details). I mean, I'm sure there's a Cal Ripken of Elders Quorum presidencies - the guy who long ago spent the 35 years in the presidency in one capacity or another and now holds the record. But I feel like I'm on my way. Truth be told, I'm holding out to be called to the nursery - or the ward flyer maker.

Teri, on the other hand, is excited at the prospect of being in the Relief Society each Sunday. She was called to be on the Enrichment Committee over personal preparedness. Apparently, the Primary tries to snag every new person in the ward and does a pretty good job too. But Teri had made a couple of friends in the Relief Society Presidency and they called dibs. It took them a few weeks to figure out a calling, but Teri is excited about it.

Finally, McKay Loves Music

McKay loves singing and music in general. Regardless of his mood, if you will sing to him he starts to calm down. If you play Josh Groban for him, he's silent within seconds. But finding good McKay songs can be difficult. So, I'll leave you with my personal favorite song to sing to McKay. It's a blast from the past - a song that I loved as a kid - and features two of my favorite childhood heros, Ernie and Lefty the (Crooked) Letter Salesman.

Uni-Watch

I've been saving this post since sometime in late June, allowing the topic of college football to slowly simmer back up to the surface. And here it is, September and we are now already in the middle of the season. It's a perfect time to bring up one of my favorite time destroying activities...evaluating uniforms.

For those of you new to this type of keen evaluation, there are a boatload of resources to help ease you in. In fact, ESPN online actually pays a guy to write a column about uniforms that appears every once in a while. In addition, he has his own blog which is updated more frequently. Based on the time and effort he puts in to evaluating uniforms, I wonder if he does it full time.

Anyway, my post stems from a list released in June from Sports Illustrated giving their top 10 best and worst uniforms. They came up with the list after Oregon State announced their snazzy new duds.



All in all I thought the list was a little silly. For example, SI lists Michigan on their best dressed and Delaware on their worst dressed. Huh? Did they same guy/team of editors work on these projects? The other funny one was their inclusion of Yale.



I guess no one bothered to look at BYU?

The one thing I did think SI got right, which to me should be unanimous across the globe, is that the Oregon Ducks have the worst uniforms ever. One of my favorite photoshopped pictures has Oregon ties. Here is the latest in Oregon fashion. Notice the chubby fellow second from the left. He's no lineman. Actually, he's in his costume carefully photoshopped to show us all what the movie Tron would have looked like if it would have been shot in Oregon.


Anyway, evaluating uniforms is fun. Or at least can be if you have nothing else to do. With that being said, I'll leave you all with my all time favorite football photo with newspaper caption. Here's to you Marquis Weeks and your uncanny gift of description.

Mr. Weeks had just scored a touchdown on a 100 yard kickoff return and was pretty excited talking to the newspaper. His exact quote, in case you can't quite read it from the newspaper, "That was just instinct. Kind of like running from the cops." Awesome.

Have a great college football season and go Cougars!

McKay's First Cardinal (StL) Game

Teri and I took McKay to the baseball game on Friday night to see the St. Louis Cardinals play the Arizona Diamondbacks. We were all pretty excited because who doesn't want to go see a baseball game between two teams competing for the playoffs? Plus, seeing Albert Pujols in person is just plain fun.



The one problem with our plan was that the baseball game starts at 6:40 PM and McKay goes to sleep at about 6:30 PM. The good news was that we talked to McKay about it and he seemed fine going to bed way past his bedtime. He was even more excited when we told him that Smashmouth was performing after the game. He's wanted to go to a rock concert for a while now.


In the end, the game was a lot of fun to attend. Despite the fact that the St. Louis Cardinals lost, Teri and I were happy just to be there. After all, going to see the St. Louis Cardinals play is the only non-weekly thing I have done every year since moving to Arizona in 2003. Thus, this game proved to be my fifth year anniversary of seeing the Cardinals play. Having McKay there just made things more fun. He made really good friends with the old couples in front and behind us. The guy in front was kind of funny, wearing a Smashmouth band jersey to the game. Then behind us we had one couple who would cheer so loud it spooked McKay and the other couple who spent 75% of their time at the game trying to get McKay to pay attention to them.


The lone downside to the game was that some maroon sat in front of Teri and me for a while wearing his cowboy hat and skinny jeans. (See the top photo in that article for a rough version of what we saw or if you are interested in skinny jeans you can read more here.) For two innings Teri could only see the batter and I could only see the pitcher. Without consulting each other, we both thought about asking him to remove his headgear. The problem was that everyone in our section kept talking to the guy saying "Hi Cowboy, " etc. Because we had gotten our tickets for free from our cousin we figured we didn't want to interrupt a bunch of season ticket holders greeting each other, especially if they all knew him as a cowboy and we were asking him to remove his cowboy hat. In the end, we elected to not say anything and eventually he left.

So after the game wraps up we hear the cheering lady ask the guy in the Smashmouth jersey in front of us, "So, you're a big fan of the band huh?" I thought this question was kind of funny seeing as though Smashmouth was only really popular in the late 90s and early 2000s and here you have one 60+ woman asking another 60+ year old man if he's a big fan of the band. But as it turns out, he's not just a big fan of the band, he's the drummer's dad. So you know what that means, the guy with the cowboy hat wasn't a season ticket holder, he's a rockstar. I guess we should have asked him to take off his hat, but then again we probably wouldn't have been able to get this cool picture.

Next time we head to Chase Field, we'll just tell them we're with the band...or at least the band's parents.

This & That Volume I

During the past few weeks while we have been absent from our blog a lot of things have been going on. Here is our attempt to quickly update you on our adventures.

A few weeks ago, Teri and I stopped by the burned section of our subdivision to see how the rebuild was going. It all looks really good, and the burned houses are going back up quite nicely. But the big surprise was that there were three foxes hanging around in the grassy park area. They were pretty cool and even let us get somewhat close to them to take pictures.

McKay can walk. Actually, that is pretty much all he does anymore. He gave up crawling because he can't get around fast enough to chase his cousins.


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A few weeks ago, McKay was really upset and it looked like he was teething. We had always heard that the eye teeth were the worst and those were the next ones for McKay. But no eye teeth showed up for a week. And then we discovered McKay has a molar coming in. He now has three molars and no eye teeth. One of our dental friends informed us that some people never get their eye teeth. We'll see how that one works out for K, but the internet has provided hope. This website says that you will get molars before your eye teeth. I should probably ask my brother the dental student to make sure, but then again when has the internet ever been wrong?
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Our new ward has been very welcoming. In fact, they invited me out to play basketball one Saturday. They must have figured they had nothing to lose, because after all, I am shorter than everyone else there. But they let me play anyway. I was pretty rusty. Although I made good decisions and cuts to the basket, I could not make a layup. I think I went 1 for 30. I kept getting steals or fast breaks but just couldn't convert. It was terrible. I finally started passing up an open layup to kick it out to a guy behind the three point line. Sounds like my deacon's basketball team all over again. But next time will be better. Thank you Lenny Wilkens!

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Teri's student teaching is going really well. She loves Moutain View and it seems like they really like her. Everything is a positive, except for the chair she gets to sit in. The funny thing is that Mountain View has amazing resources for their students. There is a math lab with computers for those students. They had lots of cool gadgets and programs to use at the board. But then they give their teachers these hard metal chairs to sit on. Well, Teri couldn't take it anymore and new baby was making her ache way too much, so we got her a new chair. It's the best deal you can find. Yet another reason we like Ikea.

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Because I feel bad that we haven't been active on the blog for so long I wanted to give you a freebie of sorts. So here is some legal advice. Take it for what you paid for it and realize that I wouldn't actually rely on this advice, but hopefully somewhere down the road it will come in handy.

#1) If you are ever charged with a crime hire a lawyer.

#2) If you decide not to hire a lawyer do not ask the judge to address you by your alias.

#3) When cross examining expert witnesses, do your homework. That may include thinking back to 9th grade biology before you ask something like "So sperm can't come from a female?"

#4) If you decide to put on a defense, don't just repeat the same eight questions six times a piece to ten different witnesses. It gets old and repetitive.

#5) Finally, don't ever admit that you don't care what the jury thinks about you and your case. Even if that's true and you're consigned to going to prison for the rest of your life, don't tell everyone. That just makes the trial MORE frustrating.

By the way, you can not follow my advice and get convicted on all 16 counts of criminal activity.

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Our last tidbit, Teri now works with me for CVLAP. She will be working something like 2 hours a week helping out with the grants. Yep, it looks like everyone in my family will begin working for CVLAP. We'll see how soon until McKay gets hired.

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Again, sorry for the absence. The house is finally coming along and so we should have a bit more time to dedicate to letting you all know what is going on. Pictures to come soon.

We really still are here.

Sorry for absence on the blog. We have not gone all isolationist. Actually, we moved into the new house a few weekends ago, but due to some wiring confusion the internet was not accessible on our desktop. That obviously has now been corrected.

Stay tuned for more fun updates.

Happy Pioneer Day Harry Potter

As some of you might know the 24th of July is a state holiday in Utah - Pioneer Day. The state uses that day to honor the Mormon Pioneers who settled the Great Salt Lake Valley. Interestingly those celebrations are not limited to Utah. Thatcher, Pima, and Safford in southeastern Arizona, as well as a few other Arizona communities farther north, also celebrate the 24th of July. Like in Utah, the Gila Valley 24th celebration often gets just as big or bigger than the 4th of July holiday and some residents are puzzled when they find out that the 24th isn't a national holiday.

Coming from Utah myself I was excited to go to the Thatcher 24th celebration because Teri had talked it up a lot. We had never been able to go in prior years because we had either 1) been in Utah, or 2) been taking the bar exam. 2007 looked like it was going to be the perfect opportunity to head down to Thatcher and enjoy in the small town festivities - that was until the monsoon hit.

Rain cancelled the parade which was too bad because I was looking forward to the scripture study float. While I have yet to see the float reliable sources tell me that there is a truck with people sitting in the back reading scriptures all along the parade route. Man, and I thought that the Murray 4th of July parade was awesome! There's nothing like the engine roar of a Pinto, which comprises 2/3 of the Murray parade.

After the rain started we figured all wasn't lost as McKay had never seen a rainstorm. As you can tell, McKay had a lot of fun. So did Mommy.


In the end, we were going to go see the firework show they put on, but McKay fell asleep and Teri gave in to the temptation of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Actually, she had her Dad go out and buy another copy of the seventh book (because ours had been delivered to our address in Mesa while we were in Thatcher) so that she could read. The funny thing was that despite our three year wait to celebrate the 24th of July in the Gila Valley, we all just ended up celebrating Harry Potter. That weekend I read Books 1 and 2 and half of 6; Teri finished 6 and read 7; Teri's Dad read 7; and Teri's Mom read half of 7. Oh well, there's always next year...or three years from that.

One real highlight of the trip was that Grandma got to give McKay his first haircut. As you can see he kind of needed it. This was him a few days before we went up to Thatcher.


This is McKay taking his bath to keep him occupied while he gets his haircut.


We'll see if this means the end of McKay's prodigious Sampson-like strength.

Announcing......

A new baby BOY. Thanks to all those who voted in our poll. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell me who voted for what so I cannot personally congratulate those who picked BOY. Nevertheless, you should feel proud of yourselves because after all, you went out on a limb and stuck it out with the minority of voters, but were vindicated in the end.

We are still not sure about a name. One option would be to auction off the naming rights to the highest bidder on eBay. I think the last time someone did that they made at least a couple thousand dollars. How about Random House Davis?

Or Coke Davis?

Or even Chili Davis?

Lots to think about. Which give me an idea for a new poll. What should new baby's name be? Stay tuned for your chance.