Cute Pictures of Ryan

Ryan and Grace got their flu shots today, they both did really well. Grace said she needed to be brave so that Ryan wouldn't be scared. What a good big sister!

Ryan is getting a lot closer to walking. He has stood quite a few times, probably for 3-5 seconds and then either sits down or dives. He does walk along the side of the table in our front room and takes one big step and kind of dives against the couch, but stays standing.

Grace and Ryan play so cute together, at our Family Home Evening a few weeks ago at Derek's parents house she said the thing she was grateful for was Ryan.
Life is good and we hope you all have a terrific Thanksgiving! Love you all!

Is Football Season Over Yet?

For anyone that was cheering for BYU in that game...OUCH!

I figured if either team could be +2 in turnover differential they would most likely win. Well, BYU had 6 turnovers and Utah had 0. It was a very ugly game for the Cougs and the Utes doubled them 48-24. Max Hall threw 5 interceptions and accounted for the other turnover, too, which was a fumble he lost.

Congrats to my uncle, Dave Clark, who won the prediction contest. He picked Utah 45 BYU 28, the actual score was 48-24. Here is how it stacked up, I automatically disqualified anyone that picked BYU, so here is how the 12 did that picked Utah:

1st Place Dave Clark (6 points differential off of actual score)
2nd Place Damien Stepick (10 points differential off of actual score)
3rd Place Alma Smith (12 points differential off of actual score)
4th Place Ryan Mounteer (16 points differential off of actual score)
5th Place Eric Marsing (18 points differential off of actual score)
T-6th Place Greg Ballard (21 points differential off of actual score)
T-6th Place Doug Daniels (21 points differential off of actual score)
T-8th Place Scott Sessions (27 points differential off of actual score)
T-8th Place Lisa Olsen (27 points differential off of actual score)
10th Place Tyler Watkins (28 points differential off of actual score)
11th Place Jared Tippets (31 points differential off of actual score)
12th Place Jeff Clark (45 points differential off of actual score)
13th Place and below...anyone who picked BYU :(

Well, I am glad that the BYU basketball team is off to a good start and we can at least have a good chuckle that the Ute basketball team lost their home opener to Southwest Baptist University from Division II. Time to move on to basketball!

Thanks all for playing, hopefully BYU can turn things around next year with lots of players coming back.

The Big Game

Throughout the season I have done my prediction for each one of the BYU games, but I thought we needed to do something big and hopefully fun for the big game this year. I have received predictions from 28 various friends and family for the BYU-Utah game and after the game I will rank them based on how close they were on their guess. The winner gets...bragging rights!

The first criteria is that the correct team is picked, then we go into the tiebreaker on the closest score differential.

There were 16 that picked BYU and 12 that picked Utah
Here are those guesses, it is amazing that there weren't any duplicate scores:

• BYU 38 Utah 28 -- Shauna Hill
  
• BYU 38 Utah 34 -- Kathy Cullimore
  
• BYU 35 Utah 17 -- Dennis Cullimore
  
• BYU 35 Utah 31 -- Derek Cullimore
  
• BYU 35 Utah 22 -- Gary Norman
  
• BYU 35 Utah 27 -- Sam Pead
  
• BYU 34 Utah 31 -- Fred Lee
  
• BYU 34 Utah 27 -- Scott Hansen
• BYU 31 Utah 27 -- Bart Olsen
• BYU 28 Utah 21 -- Scott Francom
• BYU 28 Utah 27 -- Jana Norman
  
• BYU 27 Utah 14 -- Kurt Francom
• BYU 27 Utah 20 -- Dan Hill
• BYU 26 Utah 23 -- Alanna Francom
  
• BYU 25 Utah 24 -- Melinda Cullimore
• BYU 24 Utah 17 -- Brennan Bushman
• Utah 56 BYU 43 -- Scott Sessions
• Utah 45 BYU 28 -- Dave Clark
• Utah 43 BYU 31 -- Alma Smith
• Utah 38 BYU 24 -- Damien Stepick
• Utah 37 BYU 31 -- Eric Marsing
• Utah 36 BYU 28 -- Ryan Mounteer
• Utah 34 BYU 31 -- Greg Ballard
  
• Utah 28 BYU 13 -- Jared Tippets
• Utah 28 BYU 25 -- Doug Daniels
• Utah 24 BYU 20 -- Tyler Watkins
• Utah 24 BYU 21 -- Lisa Olsen
• Utah 17 BYU 10 -- Jeff Clark

For the most part I tried to categorize them by the scores closest to yours. I will rank them after the game and let everyone know how they stacked up.

It is interesting that all of these scores added up gave us the following result:

BYU 805 Utah 800

Which gave us the following averages from everyone's predictions:

BYU 28.75 Utah 28.57

The largest blowout on each side were predicted by the following:
On the BYU Side:
Dennis Cullimore BYU 35 - Utah 17

On the Utah Side:
Dave Clark Utah 45 - BYU 28

I think this may be another one of the classic battles between these two rivals. The last time both teams were ranked when they faced off was 14 years ago back in 1994 when BYU was ranked 20th and Utah was ranked 21st. Now they are facing off as top 15 teams with Utah at #7 and BYU at #14.

Lots at stake, let the fun begin!

BYU Wins!

BYU beats Air Force in Colorado Springs today by the final score of 38-24!

My prediction was BYU 35 Air Force 31

Great game...now on to that one team...GO COUGS!!!

BYU Football Game 11 -- BYU takes on Falcons

Tough game today...scary game, actually.

Derek's prediction today: BYU 35 Air Force 31

Go Cougars!

Hogle Zoo Pictures -- Grace and the Boys!

Recently Grace went to the zoo with the Ballard family. Our really good friends, Ang and Greg, have 4 boys. Ang likes to borrow her 'adopted daughter' Grace sometimes to go do fun things. Just last night we were over hanging out with the Ballard's playing games and Ang broke out the nail polish and they painted Grace's toenails purple. Not something she gets to do with her 4 boys, at least we hope so! :)

Here are some pictures from the zoo. Grace had so much fun!

BYU Takes Out Aztecs -- 3 Straight Undefeated Home Seasons

Well, BYU took out the Aztecs as expected. BYU won 41-12. My prediction was that BYU would win 45-13. So, I was close.

This is now the 18th straight home victory and 3 straight seasons of being undefeated in Provo.

BYU played good on both sides of the ball on Senior Day at Lavell Edwards Stadium.
Next up will be a tough road game next week at Air Force.

Go COUGS!

BYU Football Game 10 -- BYU Finishes Home Schedule

This is BYU's last home game of the year. Barring a monumental upset, BYU should complete their 3rd straight undefeated home schedule. I predict a blowout. The last few games have been close for BYU, I would be shocked if this is even remotely close.
Derek's Prediction: BYU 45 SDSU 13

Halloween

Halloween lasted several days at our house.

Ryan was dressed as a Cheetah. He had the cutest tail that had wire in it. I thought that he would pull at the head, but he humored me and only did it once or twice. It was so cute when he crawled in his costume.




Grace dressed up as a Princess Fairy. Not a fairy, or princess or even a fairy princess. I am not really sure the difference, but there is one to Grace. She is sooo cute!!



Grace did not have school on Friday, it was a teacher comp day, so they celebrated Halloween a day early. They started with a parade and then a party in the classroom.




Grace's teacher dressed up as Cinderella. During the class party her teacher had to go do "something".




While she was gone a witch came in and made some witches brew. She had dry ice and added some goo from a ghost that she had squeezed (apple juice), frog eggs (grapes), spider webs (sugar) and a few other things. Only a handful of kids tried the witches brew. The witch left and her teacher came back. It was funny. I could not believe how fast her teacher changed from one costume to another. It was cute.




On Friday we went to a trunk-or-treat at the church. It was great. We hauled in a bunch of candy in no time!!! The weather was terrific. I brought coats for all of us and they stayed in the car. We saw a lot of ward friends. Kurt and Alanna Francom stayed with Derek and kept him company while he handed out candy. I walked the kids around the parking lot and set-up the photo shoot.




The Ballards were there and Clay was dressed as a Lion. It was so cute to see Ryan, the Cheetah, and Clay together.




Halloween is so much fun when your kids are older and can enjoy it. I loved it this year more than any other year.

Ryan v.s. Licorice

Recently we were playing games at Greg and Ang's house and the kids were getting kind of antsy toward the end. We just had a few more minutes that we wanted to play before we headed home to put the kids to bed.

Ryan saw a bag of licorice and wanted a piece and we thought it would be a good way to occupy him for a few minutes while we hurried to finish up our game.

We all started laughing when we looked up from our game, sometimes you just need to let your kids go for it!

Ryan v.s. Licorice:

We are still not sure if Ryan or the piece of licorice won, but he sure did have lots of fun!

He was such a sticky mess!

Thanks Ballard's for a fun evening...and for letting Ryan make a sticky mess of things!

BYU Wins Wild Shootout with Rams

BYU 45-CSU 42

Wow! What a wild game!

Okay, so I BYU didn't get that kickoff return for a TD that I predicted, but this game had a little bit of everything else...that is for sure.

Pitta caught 2 late touchdowns to help lift the Cougs over the Rams. The last score came with only 22 seconds left on the clock.

There were close to 1,000 total yards combined between the 2 teams. BYU has now scored 87 points combined in their last 2 games. That is great offense, but is also very necessary with the defense that is being thrown out there right now.

My prediction was BYU 38 CSU 21, so again...I am not heading to Vegas anytime soon.

Next week, BYU will roll the Aztecs...I think Timpview High School could roll the Aztecs right now.

BYU Football Game 9 -- BYU Travels to Fort Collins

BYU hopes to have a good road showing today. We shall see.

I think they will play well offensively and on special teams, but they will struggle just a bit on defense. BYU is as thin in the secondary as they have ever been, that is particularly a problem when it was a bad secondary to begin with.

Anyway, I will include my prediction at the end of the post as usual...but I am going out on a limb today and making a BOLD prediction about what will take place during the game. BYU will return either a punt or a kickoff for a TD today. One of these 2 are likely to make it happen:

Austin Collie

O'Neill Chambers

It has been 125 games and 10 years since BYU has returned a kick for a TD and they did return a punt for a TD in 2006, but that one was the first one in 113 games.

I think Collie and Chambers make the most fearsome combo on kick returns that BYU has had in a while. Collie came close last week to start the game.

Some other folks are a chance, too, on punt returns...but I think it will likely be one of these 2 to do it. That is my bold prediction, you heard it here first!

The Rams are improved, but BYU should win this one:

Derek's Prediction: BYU 38 CSU 21