He's a Pirate! Part I

McKay has been REALLY into his pirate figurines, and he got this brilliant idea to have the whole family come together, learn the pirate song on different instruments, and record it, so he could have some background music when he's playing with his pirate guys. He thought Malia, Taisha, and I should learn it on the piano, Kristen and Christine should play it on the violin, Rik and McKay would be on ukuleles, Kayden would be on guitar, and McKay even found a drum ap for the iPod that Anaya could play. We've all been practicing for our pirate-paloosa, so it's been a bit piratey around here. Malia and Christine decided to do the pirate song for the talent show at EFY this week. They had a practice session the night before they left for Logan for their parents. The "arg!" in the middle is when Malia's fingers got a little tangled! Needless to say, McKay has been in HEAVEN! Speaking of McKay, he has decided he wants to be a stunt man when he grows up! Sounds about right. =)

I've received a couple texts from Malia saying that she is having the time of her life at EFY.

Summer!!!

To kick off summer, we decided to have many of the appliances and/or household items break, fall apart or die completely! The ride on lawn mower needed a bunch of work (hundreds of dollars of work.....), the air conditioning in the house and van both stopped working, the garbage disposal died a slow drippy death, the motor and/or pump went out on the dishwasher, Kayden did a back flip onto his cell phone that now doesn't work, and just today, the power supply on my upstairs computer started making an "I'm gonna die any day now" noise. *sigh*

In other news, Kayden and his friend Jake ran the Skiller 5K, and took 1st and 2nd place overall.

1st place: Jake Powell 18:13.31 and 2nd place: Kayden Finlayson 19:18.98

On Sunday we had stake conference, so as soon as we got home, we packed a picnic and headed to Balanced Rock, near Twin Falls. It was kind of out in the middle of nowhere, so we got to see lots of farm land, and dairy farms, before dropping into the rocky canyon. We stopped about a mile before Balanced Rock, at a picnic area and wandered around a bit. The kids were climbing on some rocks, but Anaya told me she didn't want to climb on the rocks because there was some kind of "weird mouse" on them:

It's one of those "hairless" kinds of mice I guess! Anaya wanted nothing to do with the lizard rocks!

McKay, Taisha and Anaya

Then we headed over to Balanced Rock. It's 48 ft. high, but balances on about 3 feet at the base.

Kayden was the first one up.


Then Taisha and McKay.

Anaya and I made it up next.


And finally Rik and Malia got up there (Malia is NOT a fan of heights!)



After we left Balanced Rock, we swung by Shoshone Falls, had our picnic, and headed home. The falls were awesome this year. SO much water pouring over them!