WooHoo another baby!

Melanie and Trevor had their baby! He came a little early, and he's a tiny little thing, but really cute! He weighed 5 pounds 12 ounces and they are naming him Mason Trevor Palmer. Nice of him to come early and spare Melanie that last month! All these babies and ... nope, not baby hungry =) I sure get excited to hold them though!

Happy Birthday Malia!

Today is Malia's birthday and she turned 12! She had a fun day... well all except for a visit to the dentist (the shots hurt....). I took her picture after the dentist because it was kind of funny that she couldn't smile... and she was a little swollen on one side:


(She asked for a hat for her birthday)

At least we went out for lunch before she had to go to the dentist (her favorite place to eat fast food is Subway... so that's where we went).

One of her friends has a birthday today as well, and she had her party after school today. She took all the friends to a beauty collage and they got awesome up-dos and nails done. Malia LOVED this! Here's some pictures of her hair:





Notice that now she can use he lips and smile! Nice! We had her favorite dinner tonight: homemade calzones and caesar salad. She just wanted ice cream tonight. We're having a birthday party for her next week (worked out better with most of her friends), so I'll make a cake for that. Malia got the Wii Fit for her birthday... and so far it's a huge hit! I think I might play around on it tomorrow... while everyone is at school, so I don't have an audience....

Tomorrow is the last day of school! I am soooooo excited (except that I'm spending more time at the dentist again... sigh... apparently it is my job to make sure that our dentist gets an awesome vacation this year....)

McKay and Anaya have been playing Star Wars a ton these days.... they play Lego Star Wars on the Wii, have Star Wars guys to play with, and have sword fights all the time (McKay says he has "the force"). This morning Anaya told me that her favorite guy is "RB2B-Do." Made me smile this morning (which was nice.... cause before that she had a huge fit because I took her shirt off the hanger and she wanted to do it... I wasn't smiling then....)

Malia wants her hair to stay all pretty through the night... so I'm going to spray til it doesn't move, put it in a hair net, and have her sleep on a silky pillow case... hopefully it stays, because I don't think I could fix it if I had to....

Awesome long weekend

Here's Anaya practicing "attachment parenting" (see Moana's blog for attachment parenting info.) Notice how the teddy bear is upside down... that's a foot poking out the top...not sure what to call that kind of knot/carrying position!)

This has been the nicest weekend! Friday night after McKay's preschool graduation we did a little shopping for Malia's birthday. Saturday morning Rik ran 20 miles (oh good grief, I would probably die!) It took him 3 hours and 14 minutes. He got up at 4:30 in the morning to get that run in (yuck!) While he was running I tracked down one last thing on Malia's birthday list, and then started mowing lawns with Kayden. We were mowing as fast as we could because it looked like we were going to get rained on. For some reason I'm the only one that can run our trimmer... I don't know if Rik has rigged it that way or what, but no one else can get it to work, so I have to go on all of Kayden's jobs and trim while he mows. It worked out good on Saturday though, because we were hurrying so fast to beat the weather. When we got home from mowing Kayden's two jobs, Rik had started mowing our lawn (he was hobbling along pretty good after his run). I jumped on the ride-on mower while Rik used the push mower. We only had to mow in the rain for about half of the yard.... I was glad we got it done though... because it rained, hailed, and thundered the rest of the day.

After mowing the lawn, apparently a regular shower was not going to be good enough to clean all the stink off of Rik (3 hours of running + mowing the lawn = ewww), so he took all the kids to the club to go swimming. Nothing like chlorine to disinfect you!

Saturday night Rik and I went out to eat and to see Indiana Jones. I sure do like him (Rik, not Indiana Jones...)!

Sunday went pretty good, for Malia and me anyway. I have an awesome presidency, and they make Sundays enjoyable! Rik was conducting though, and the high councilman didn't show up, so Rik had to fill in. He did a great job, but half way through his talk, Kayden leaned over and said, "This is the forth time I've heard this talk!" (We just talked about it for FHE a few weeks ago...) I told him he was more than welcome to get up and speak instead then. McKay gave the scripture and prayer for the first time in primary. He had been asked before, but worried himself right out of doing it. Anaya gave it a couple weeks ago, and that seemed to be enough to comfort McKay into standing up there. Nothing like a little competition for encouragement! As for Malia, the young women decided they were done waiting for Malia, and came and got her a week early. She was over the moon. Singing time wasn't the same without her though...

Monday morning we got the kids up and had a nice big breakfast, then rode our bikes to the park to play tennis.... only then the clouds came in and it poured on us. By the time we rode home we were soaked all the way through (the kids thought this was great....me, not so much.) After that we decided Wii tennis was a better option. McKay and Rik were playing Wii bowling against each other (McKay won both games scoring 195 on one game and 189 on the other). He had the funniest comments: "Dad, you play bowling like Anaya, and she's not very good...." We watched movies, and then had family home evening. Except for riding bikes in the rain, a really nice relaxing day.

I just have to make it through a few more busy school days, and then adjust to having everyone home. I sure did need this long weekend!

Preschool Graduation

Last night was McKay's preschool graduation. He was pretty excited (understatement). He kept telling me that his teacher said he was supposed to look handsome, so he wanted his hair cut, his nails trimmed, and he wanted to wear his favorite church outfit. For starting the year out kind of rocky (understatement), he ended up doing really good and loved going. He loved his class and loved his teacher. Kindergarten is next for him! I only have one more year of preschool to pay for then Anaya will be in kindergarten too!

Ana and Dave's baby girl

Ana and Dave had their baby this morning in Logan. They are naming her Shiloah Sacred Torgesen. She weighed in at 9 pounds 7 ounces.... I think mostly in hair! So cute! Glad she's here! They have more pictures of her here.

Ooops

Rik said the results for the 10k run were wrong, so he actually got 5th place (he got 9th if he was running the 5K, but he signed up for the 10K so when they moved him to the 10K, he got 5th):

10K Men's Results
5 Finlayson, Rik
Time: 49:03

Here's the link:
http://www.pb-performance.com/pb/CCFRresults.htm

Run Rik Run!

We had a nice weekend (thanks mostly to the awesome weather!) Kayden went camping at Green Canyon with the scouts, we got the basketball hoop completely done, got some yard work done, the girls and I went to Soda for Ana's baby shower, Rik, Kayden and Quinn went to Ironman (they said it was sooo good!) and we had a pretty successful Sunday (which means I got a nap). Saturday morning Rik ran in a 10k run. He got 9th out of 88 runners. I don't know if I can stress how much weight he is losing from all this running. He says when he started running nothing came off, but now everytime he turns around he is tightening his belt one more notch. His pants are just hanging on him, and his belt may keep his pants on, but makes his pants all pleated and tucked funny. In the picture, Rik is on the left-hand side, kind of in the back in the dark grey (he thinks he looks dorky in the picture...)

Just a "proud brag about my kid moment...." But on my Bebo page (link on the top right-hand side of my blog) I have a video of me playing a song on the piano. Malia has that song learned now (and plays it everytime she walks by the piano.) She says it is one of the funnest songs she has ever played. She's turning into an awesome piano player.

I've got peas up in the garden, and the potatoes are cracking through as well. A couple more weeks and I can get the tomatoes and cucumbers in...yum!

Bump, Set, Smash!

Tonight was Rik's volleyball team party. He loves volleyball, and really enjoyed coaching Malia's team again this year. Malia is #10.

I finished reading "The Host" last night at 1:15am (Yikes.... but better than the 2:30 in the morning the night before reading....) I thought it was a good read! I really like the characters in her books. Now what to read until August? Kayden will have the third Fablehaven finished this weekend (maybe.... Rik got the basketball hoop up tonight, so we'll see if Kayden gets his book finished....) He has whipped through the Fablehaven series and can barely put them down. He's trying to get me to read them too. Maybe I'll start them Sunday afternoon.

Rik was having a lucky day.... won free gas from the local radio station ($25 worth... so what's that, like almost half a tank?! Sheesh, expensive gas!) This is the third time we won free gas from the radio station! So cool!

McKay has "Zoo Day" tomorrow at preschool. He can hardly wait!

We're counting down.... school is almost over! YIPPEE!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

McKay was feeling especially cute on Sunday, so he wanted his picture taken.... he also went right into primary and told his teacher how cute he was....


Speaking of primary, here's the coffee filter flowers that we had the kids make for their moms (super easy, cheap and cute):


(Coffee filter, markers, misting bottle of water and somthing for a stem like pipe cleaners)

This is a picture of McKay and I (I think it's a good likeness):


McKay got his kindergarten shots yesterday. I was sooooooo worried about taking him (I was pretty sure he was going to freak out....) About 75% of time McKay cries through some part of primary....a nice safe environment (he tends to worry a lot more than any 5 year old should), he also cries over his shoes, which bug him, shirts with collars, which bug him, all socks, tags, and pants with adjustable waists, but put him in a doctors office with 5 shots and the guy is happy as can be! He didn't even wimper! He's such an odd little thing sometimes! He's even taking his bandaged legs for show and tell at school today. Anaya keeps telling me that she doesn't want shots, she just wants to go to Arctic Circle and get an ice cream...no shots though. They have both been living outside all day long. Thank heavens for the warm weather!

Power Post

I'm feeling a little behind on my blog (alright, not just my blog...), so here is a "power post" so that I can feel caught up, at least on this....

-Our ward had their pinewood derby (I made little pinewood derby car-shaped Rice Krispie treats from a mold.... so cute)

-Kayden had a choir concert at Barnes & Noble in the mall (Woo hoo, a chance to wear his pretty lime green and pink choir shirt...which he wouldn't let me take his picture in...) When Rik was picking him up from the mall, some girls said "hi!" (To Kayden, not Rik). Kayden quickly averted his eyes, and pretended he didn't hear them, which prompted the "it's ok to say hi, you don't have to marry them" speech from Rik.

(Can you believe he has to wear this shirt?!)


-Taisha had a gymnastics recital. Anaya got jealous of all the attention Taisha was getting, so she wanted her picture taken doing the splits.


-Taisha had her last volleyball games (and after a really good season, they ended up losing all their games on Saturday.....).

(sorry for the bad pic)

-Rik ran 18 miles of the marathon path (and 6 minutes under his target time). All this running is making him lose all sorts of weight (I hate that....), really nice legs though (I won't post any pictures of his nice legs though, so you won't get jealous.)

(this picture has the weirdest finish...I don't know if I like how the photographers did it...)

-Final ballroom performance for Malia and Kayden was Saturday night. (I didn't even attempt to take pictures in the Kirkham building with my old camera... I knew they wouldn't turn out good). Here's the professional pictures though:



-Taisha caught a cold

-Kayden caught a cold

-I caught a cold

-While Taisha was home from church (with the cold), she decided to do a little eye brow shaping..... with a razor, which prompted the "never try to shave your eye brows" speech (who would have thought that I would have to give this speech a second time!) We now add a couple of minutes to the morning routine to color in her eyebrow.


-Kayden stayed home from school Monday (and totally missed the awesome weather sleeping and resting and complaining how many times the phone rings at our house.)

-We got the potatoes, carrots, and peas planted in the garden. While we worked ON the garden, McKay and Anaya worked IN the garden... they came in covered in dirt... and then transferred the dirt into the tub. I'm already counting down to yummy garden veggies (growing out in the garden, not the tub... but we could actually grow some there too right now!)


-We ("we" meaning Rik and the kids) dug the hole for the basketball hoop. We have the concrete, and we ("we" meaning Kayden) are hoping to get that part done Wednesday.

(Can you tell the wheel barrel has been covering the hole so no one falls in?!)

-I finally have a date for McKay's preschool graduation (for the longest time I would ask him when it was and he would say "it's when we get to the frog on the calendar.... " Not so helpful...) It's on Friday, May 23rd at Rocky Mountain Middle School at 6:30 and will be over by 7:00. (My kind of graduation!)

-Malia has been giving me ideas for her birthday (and I'm really starting to wonder about my kids...). First thing on her list is "Crest Teeth Whitening Strips." Ya, that's fun. She bore her testimony on Sunday, and she looked like a young woman, not a primary kid anymore (maybe it was because she didn't have all her ballroom make-up completely washed off....) She also wants me to come up with a really fun group scavenger hunt for her birthday party this year.

-I'm co-coaching Taisha's baseball team (it's coach pitch, so hopefully the girls survive a season of me throwing a ball at them....)

-Malia is also playing softball on a team with her friends, and just had her second practice.

Well, there you have it, and now I'm all caught up. If only I could get through my laundry that fast!