Yesterday at church was apparently a contest of wills between Isaac and me. He was acting up and causing a disturbance in sacrament meeting and I took him outside. Eventually he won his way back in only to have Laura take him out a few minutes later after renewed disturbance. Laura came back in a few minutes later sans Isaac and informed me that Isaac only wanted me. I went outside to where he was sitting and talked to him. He wanted to go home and take a nap. As we talked I explained to him that he was tired because he had been struggling with me in a struggle that he could not win. I told him that I did not want to take him home but that I would be happy to let him take a nap in my arms. Due to his continued sobbing I finally asked if he would be willing to take a short nap at home and come back in time for the last hour of church. He agreed to that and I collected Enoch (so that Laura would not have to take care of the baby while teaching her Sunday School class) and left as sacrament meeting was drawing to a close.
As soon as we got home and closed the garage door Isaac announced that: “I won the contest.” I asked him what contest he was talking about and he told me he won the contest with me about us going home.
Not to be outdone I decided to turn the tables on Isaac. (Yes, that’s dad, competing with his three year old in mind games.) I asked Isaac if the whole idea was to win the contest. He said that it was and so I asked if we could go back to church now that he had won the contest. He agreed. I quickly took the opportunity to put in my contacts (that I had forgotten before church) and then we went back to church before the chapel had even cleared from the meeting.
As we parked Isaac said that he wanted to go home and take a nap. I reminded him that he had already won the contest and had agreed to come back because of that so he went in and I took him to primary. I was feeling pretty proud of myself – I figured that I had won the contest after all – although I would not say such a thing to Isaac. Later I saw Laura in the hall between meetings and I explained how we had been able to come back to church so quickly because of Isaac winning the contest. After we got home from church Isaac announced to Laura that: “Dad won the contest.”
Apparently he recognized that he had been outmaneuvered even without me rubbing it in.
I noticed after publishing my Split Championship post that the Mountain West Conference managed to get the perfect football season that they fell short of last year with perfect order top to bottom in the conference.
The only blemish being their 4-1 record in bowl games this year and the glitch that Colorado State appears to have played an easier non-conference schedule than UNLV, San Diego State, and New Mexico.
With Cincinnati falling hard to Florida we can rest assured that there will be two and only two undefeated FBS football teams this year. Last year Utah failed to convince the AP voters that as the only undefeated team in the FBS they deserved at least a split of the title, despite the fact that they beat Alabama more convincingly than Florida had in the SEC Championship game. Of course that turned out to be a great excuse for Barack Obama, Orrin Hatch, and Mark Shurtleff (among others) to complain to Congress and the media about the BCS.
This year I have already heard some people who argue out of spite that the winner of the Alabama – Texas game should not be considered the National Champion. Personally I think that’s foolish. Whatever team wins that game will have gone undefeated having played against an undefeated team in their bowl game. What more could we ask of them? The same criteria will apply to the winner of the TCU – Boise State game and thus I argue that while the coaches are obligated to vote for the winner of Alabama-Texas the AP voters should create a split championship by voting for the winner of the TCU-Boise State game (unless Texas-Alabama is compelling while TCU-Boise State turns out to be a really sloppy game on both sides). In fact, Obama should follow his sportsman’s heart by inviting both teams to the White House and honoring them as is traditional for the National Champion. (If he really wants a playoff the President could invite them on the same day and watch them play a friendly scrimmage. 
)
I just had to get this out before the Fiesta Bowl began today so that I could be fair to both teams – especially considering I have a favorite in this contest. While I like both TCU and Boise State better than either Texas or Alabama I would definitely prefer to see TCU win.
On Christmas day there was one gift under the tree that neither Laura nor I knew about. Savannah had made a wonderful calendar for our family for 2010. I just had to share each of the months – it really warmed our hearts to see the work that she had put into this.
In case you can’t tell, that shell of the egg opens and closes to reveal the picture.
Things she is thankful for: Mom and Dad, Alyssa, Mariah, Isaac, and Bell (not sure of the reference there)
For those who don’t know, Mariah is all girl in every way. It shows up in everything she does from dancing to dressing to interacting with babies. We got another taste of it last night when she had to put her laundry away.
I was tasked with helping her get the job done. We started off very slowly as Mariah and I worked through a philosophical difference. I was trying to convince her to put shirts in one basket and pants in another etc. She wanted to put one outfit in one basket and another outfit in another basket etc. The final compromise was that she could place things together as outfits, but each basket would not be limited to a single outfit (not enough baskets). By the way, an outfit consisted of shirt, pants, socks, a jacket, underwear, and pajamas. Eventually she got bored of assembling the whole set so outfits became shirt and pants (the way I would have defined them).
As we got closer to finished Mariah discovered what I had been trying to tell her before, that she did not have the same number of shirts as pants. She discovered it when she had three shirts left and five pairs of pants to match them with. I was not sure how this situation would play out but Mariah had a great solution – she went to the buckets and pulled out two of the shirts and added them to the remaining shirts so that she had 5 shirts and 5 pairs of pants to form 5 more outfits.
After we got finished I told Laura the story and she insisted that I had to record this adventure with out little fashionista.
