Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

To say that Jake is a die-hard BYU fan is the understatement of the century. He is constantly listening to sports radio or scouring BYU-related news. It all started when he was a kid, there was actually a point in his life where he had an identity crisis and thought he was a BYU basketball player named Marty Haws. Jake was 4-years-old at the time and I guess they were family friends with the Haws family. Anyway he would always go around the house imitating the BYU basketball players and would refer to himself as Marty. Jake's dad (Todd) was a little worried that Jake was getting to be delusional so he sat him down one day and had the following discussion:

Todd: Jake we need to talk
Jake : Ok
Todd then explained to him how he was Jake and that Marty was Marty. Somewhere in his explanation he says something about Marty's Dad's name is Ralph and I'm your Dad and my name is Todd...
Then at the end of the explanation Todd says: Ok, we good?
Jake: Yes we are, Ralph.


And now Marty has a son--Tyler--who will be coming back from a mission to play at BYU next year when Carder will be 4 and Jake is hoping Carder might have the same identity crisis with Marty Haws' boy!


Well, a few weeks ago we were doing errands around town and one of Jake's sports radio stations was giving away tickets to the BYU/St. Marys game. Jake was calling/texting all morning and afternoon and even had me doing it for him. He got lucky and got through in the afternoon as he was getting the oil changed in our car and of course new the answer to the trivia questions being asked (seriously the man is a walking sports almanac, but I guess in this case it paid off for him), so he scored two tickets to the game that evening. He and Carder went together and seemed to have quite a good time. Carder came home with one a game program that has pictures of all the players and tells you about them and I often catch him in his room reading it to himself. Between that and his drawings from sacrament meeting where he draws big Y's and U's that he crosses a big X through it...I think Jake has him well on his way to being as Cougar Crazy as he is!

(Carder was devastated when Jimmer graduated and moved onto the NBA (also sad about Jackson Emery leaving)) but now his favorite players are Charles Abouo, Brandon Davis, Noah Hartsock and Steven Rogers (him mostly just because he shares the same name as Captain American and Carder thinks that's awesome). These players often find their way into our family/mealtime prayers as well as Carder's art projects. He draws all the time but most of them are just a single color drawing but when he draws Charles Abouo or Brandon Davis he insists on coloring them their right colors (Dark brown for Charles Abouo and light brown for Brandon Davis...its hilarious!)

Carder & Jake

After our BYU v Baylor experience where I had to hold my hands over Carder's ears for the entire half that we were there, Jake got smart and brought along some ear plugs for the little guy. I am told the experience was a lot more enjoyable for all.