Parenting for Dorks

I have decided that being a parent pretty much automatically makes you a dork. All of a sudden, the baby does some little tiny thing, something rather insignificant in the long run, and we come all undone and call everyone we know.

Earlier this week, I was changing McKay's diaper and he reached up and pulled my glasses off. I immediately called for Christina to get the camera and come quick! McKay repeated the stunt once for Christina to see, then kept his hands to himself once the camera came out.

Yesterday, the little bugger rolled over. Yep, went right from his tummy onto his back like it was no problem. I was at school, but the news was important enough to be communicated immediately, so Christina got the feat on her cell phone video camera and sent it on over. I tapped my foot until my class went to break and excused myself into the hall and watched the 40 second video 4 times, beaming with pride each time. I probably watched 10 more times during the day, and it took every ounce of self restraint I had to avoid showing it to everyone in the lunch room. I didn't see the feat in person until tonight, but after a little coaxing and coaching he pulled it off again. In my eyes, he might as well have won an Olympic gold medal.

Dorky, I know. I've come to terms with it.

Some pictures:

Christina had the idea to put him in a pumpkin in respect for the season, and the idea is cute, but unfortunately, our model wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea. The pumpkin was also a little too deep for him, and since he has decided he likes to chew, he immediately leaned forward and grabbed a mouthful of pumpkin. Yummy. Needless to say, the final result wasn't the "Ahhh" inspiring , blue-ribbon winning photos we had in mind. They weren't all bad, so we decided to share anyway.

Here is McKay chewing on the pumpkin!!

Halloween Preview

Here is a little preview of our Halloween costumes! At least for McKay and I... There are some details still forth-coming, and, of course, Christina's and Bella's costumes. We just got this together to go to the ward Trunk-or-Treat party last night. It was a HUGE event with hundreds (not exaggerating) of costumed kids. Apparently everyone in the ward, active or not, and all their neighbors come out. They had a nice Chili-cooking contest, so there was plenty to eat and people in abundance. We handed out more than $10 worth of candy and I didn't eat one piece... Looks like I might have to trick-or-treat on my own...

As a little side note, I wanted to mention that Christina made McKay's costume from scratch. She didn't even use a pattern... Pretty awesome, if you ask me!

Also, McKay turned 3 months old this week, and we had intended to take some nice pictures of McKay, but Father Time has been unforgiving this week. Maybe tomorrow, after church, we'll get something together, but for now, here is a cute one of our little big man asleep in his Bumpo.

An Update and some pictures

I know its been awhile since I posted because I can no longer find our blog on the sidebar of other blogs and especially because my brother called to check on me because the blog hasn't been updated for so long. We definately appreciate the concern and love good conversation for whatever reason.

It has been a busy few weeks down here. I have been in the middle of midterms and trying to keep up with the temporary test increase (instead of one every week, which is normal, I had five in two weeks). Christina is almost always busy with McKay, and if she can catch a breath from that, she is working feverishly to construct Halloween costumes for McKay and Bella. (Yep, Bella.)

We also had my white coat ceremony last week, which added to the general business. The white coat ceremony is where medical students receive their white coats, officially welcoming then into medical education. It is a neat ceremony, sort of like a reverse graduation. Unfortunately, Christina had to care for McKay through most of the ceremony, so we didn't get much for pictures, but I did get a nice one with "The Guys" that I frequently study with.

We have also found some time to explore Phoenix, and we took advantage of Free Musuem Day and went to the Desert Botanical Gardens. This place would definately be worth the price of admission if we went during the day. Unfortunately, because of everything else going on, we didn't get there until just before sunset. We still enjoyed the park, we just couldn't get the beauty to translate into the camera in the dark. We posted a few pictures, still: a nice one of a Monarch butterfly that Christina took a few minutes before the sunset and one of me and a Sahuaro, just to show how massive these things are.

And, of course, McKay is growing like crazy. We have been taking some pictures, and we are always looking around the house for stuff to use to dress it up a little. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't... We thought a couple of these picnic basket pictures came out pretty well, but some others certainly haven't...

Chick-fil-a

So today, well more like yesterday, I'm waiting for little McKay to fall asleep, but a least he's not screaming!

(I'm telling him it's bed time and he is just smiling at me, little bugger.)

Anyways, I would say we had a good labor day nothing exciting by any means and we didn't leave the house until 3:00pm. But we got a free meal. Michael didn't have the enthusiasm like I did. But I was deturmuned to go.

I don't think we spent more then $10 and we went to the mall and Kohl's. We might have gone over due to the sales tax here. 8.5% Yuck!!

Well my little man has finally thrown in the towel, my turn to go to bed, luckily it's only 2:00 am.

Oh the things you find in Arizona

So last night we took Bella to the dog park which we do every other day. And I'm just sitting there with McKay watching Michael play with Bella when I see this thing go running across the yard. I go running to look at it, "It’s a scorpion, hurry come look!!" Michael comes over, I'm trying to get a better look because I really didn't think it was a scorpion, but I had to say it was something cool to get Michael's attention. Bella tried to catch it. Michael counted its legs, 10 legs? Spiders don't have 10 legs. So we came to the conclusion it was either a spider, and one set of legs were not legs or it was a scorpion. Well in my Internet findings it was neither. It's a solpugid. Whatever that is.. It's called a Camel Spider.

(Side note: Where I even got the idea to look up Camel spider was, there was the guy looking at like we were crazies. I told him to come look at the thing. He didn't know what it was, but he was from California and said it looked like the spiders in California that were called camel Spiders.)

P.S. Sorry if you get itchy after reading this post, I was freaking out the whole time writing. I hate spiders. Or whatever it is, creatures with long legs that bite.

Here is some info I find on the nasty thing!! Do I need to cite my info? Well I didn't write this stuff.

Camel spiders top speed - 10 mph. Which is very fast for a such a small creature..
Size: Up to 8 inches, although many of our readers report larger.
Called camel spiders because they live in the desert.
Camel Spiders are solpugids.. Along with spiders, they are members of the class Arachnida. For more camel spider pictures..

Solifugae - Camel SpiderA Solifugid (plural form Solifugae) is an arachnid belonging to the order Solifugae. The name Solifugae comes from Latin and means "flee from the sun", a reference to their nocturnal nature. The order is also known by the names Solpugida, Solifugae, Solpugides, Solpugae, Galeodea, and Mycetophorae. The order includes 900 known species of wind scorpions, sun spiders and camel spiders.Most solifuges live in tropical or semitropical regions, where they inhabit warm and arid habitats. Some species however also live in grassland or forest habitats. The most distinctive features of solifuges is their large chelicerae. Each of the two chelicerae are composed of two articles forming a powerful pincer; each article bears a variable number of teeth. Males in all families but Eremobatidae possess a flagellum on the basal article of the chelicera. Solifuges also have long pedipalps, which function as sense organs similar to the insects antennae. Pedipalps terminate in eversible adhesive organs.Solifuges are carnivorous or omnivorous, with most species feeding on termites, darkling beetles and other small arthropods. Prey is located with the pedipalps and killed and cut into pieces by the chelicerae. The prey is then liquified and the liquid ingested through the pharynx. Reproduction can involve direct or indirect sperm transfer; when indirect, the male emits a spermatophore on the ground and then inserts it with his chelicerae in the female's genital pore.

http://www.camelspiders.net/solifugae.htm

Baby Smiles!

McKay seemed to be unusually happy for about three days this week. We snapped a few pictures of his "ahhh-inducing" grins. Its a good thing we did, because by the weekend, his was back to his old screaming self. Except now that he has learned to smile, he'll scream until you think you can't take any more, than give you a few little smiles to reset the frustration factor... and then its back to screaming!

Oh, well. He is such a blessing in our home and are very happy to have him!

Background info

I changed our blog background to this because, well that what our life is now. School, studying, exams, lunch breaks, and friends (well not so much yet) and will be for the next 4 years! Michael is starting his 3rd week in the morning!

Snake Bread

I would say today has been a pretty good day, other then the fact I've been sick all day.


Anyway, to make a short story long (or a long story short) -- We heard about a family in our ward giving away free bakery bread. Apparently this family goes and collects bread older bread from a bakery. Michael was nice enough to drive me to their house, because if I was looking for the address I would still be looking.


When we found the house, we were walking up to the front door and notice a rather large snake on their front porch. One of the kids answer the door we make sure we are at the right house ant then mention: "Hey you have a snake on your front porch" and starting making our way through the door, not thinking much about it. (I guess we have lived in Blanding too long.) The kid looks out the door yells for his mom, she looks at the snake and screams for her husband.


In the mean time, the snake went into the garage and that's when it became a problem. It was sort of funny because the whole funny started freaking out, "We have never seen a snake around here." I went inside to look at the different kinds of bread and Michael went outside to see how he could help.


It turned into quite an ordeal. The snake crawled up under some shelves were there was plenty of items, including an old couch and some folding tables, in storage. They tried to shoo the snake back out of the garage, but it seemed to keep moving deeper into the garage. Finally, Michael started pulling the stuff out a little at a time. Nearly 40 minutes later, they finally had the snake headed out. Of course, by this time the snake was quite agitated. It would strike at everything that came near it, raising the adrenaline level past rational levels. After pushing the snake back and forth several more times, Michael actually caught a hold of it with a garden rake, and pulled it toward the garage door. It escaped again, and headed back into the garage. In desperation he pinned it down with a flat-nosed shovel. The man of the house came to assist and promptly removed the poor thing's head with another shovel.


Since nobody was sure if it was poisonous and there were kids running all over the place, it seemed like the best thing to do. It turns out it wasn't poisonous, and may have been a Red Coachwhip that are common in this area, but rational thoughts slipped out sometime after the snake starting fighting back. Turns out the poor little guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.


We went back into the house and collected our bread and headed home. Turns out it was quite an eventful trip... maybe even better than fighting traffic to get to the grocery store!

Red Coachwhip

The doctor is in

This has nothing to do with Michael's Medical skills, but mine. Ok I guess both, so we have been practicing on Bella. Ok so that’s really not true. If you have been following us the last few days you would know that Bella our dog has hurt herself yet again, ok so it has been awhile but this time she has really done it. She ripped her dew claw well she more like cut it anyways. After spending $150 the first time another $40 for her follow up and they wanted us to come back yet another follow up. We said enough is enough. And all they did at the follow up was unwrap her leg and rewrap it. And charge us lots of money. So we came up with a better plan.
I found the same kind of bandage stuff they use, but in pink for a whole roll for $2.50 and I used a gift card. Thanks Melissa! Came home and looked around the house for some padding like gauze or something better yet, a breast pad.

Their Clinic Vs. My Clinic (I basically could be vet)
They charged us $16.85 for Extra physical restraint( because our 27 lb mean dog Bella, ok so Bella can put up a good fight.) Anyways I charged: Free = Michael holding her down
They charged us $16.73 for bandage extremity. My cost: breast pad .10 cents, some pink wrap .75 cents.
They charged us $5.75 medical waste disposal fee. All for a speck of blood. At my office: Free
Total cost at my clinic less than a $1.00

We have decided that what their motto really means: Treating your pet like family. Well you would spend this much on your kid, so why not the dog too. We do love you Bella, but this is getting out of hand!!

Baby McKay