Valentine's Day 2010 (Yes... I know it's April)

I'm going to try to do a little bit of "blog catch-up." So many fun things happened during February and March. I kind of wish they were spread out over about a 6 month period, instead of two months! I don't know if we were just lucky or what, but in the past, activities and appointments just worked out and sequenced one with another. This year was the first time that things were on top of things. And nothing worked well together! I would have to have one kid to 3 different places at the same time... or 3 kids to 3 different places at the same time. Basketball was on top of gymnastics on top of play practice. Or piano festival was at the same time as the play performance, and Malia should have been on the road to a volleyball tournament all at the same time. The last two months really put my "mom superhero powers" to the test (and sometimes may have failed me, as I nearly came unraveled a few times...)

For Valentine's Day we had a family "Red, Pink and Heart" dinner.


Here's a picture of Taisha's Valentine's box:

(It's holding a card that says, "I'm not LION! I love Valentine's Day!")

McKay played Basketball all through February and through the first part of March. This was the first time he had played basketball. He was pretty nervous at first, but got better and better through the season. He got pretty good at rebounding (and that was his favorite part.)



The 4 older kids and Rik snowboarded every chance they got. Kayden still goes back and forth on whether he's happy winter is coming to an end.


Anaya and I usually did something that involved going out to eat and having Anaya's nails done while everyone else was gone snowboarding. Speaking of Anaya, she has been learning the primary song "He Sent His Son" in church, and she was singing it the other day.... "How could the Father tell the world of Nintendo DS..." I tried to tell her that the words were "How could the Father tell the world of love and tenderness," but she told me I didn't know what I was talking about....

On February 25th my sister Melanie and her husband had a baby! They named him Ethan Thomas Palmer. Cute little guy!

Happy 40th!!

Last week we celebrated Rik's 40th birthday. As part of the celebrations we filled his car with 40 balloons. Just so you know, you about pass out when you try to blow 40 balloons up... It was a busy day, but we still had some of Rik's favorite foods for dinner: shrimp, veggie bars, asparagus, Caesar salad, and blueberry pretzel salad. Friday night he and the kids went snowboarding (except for Anaya... she and I stayed home and did nails). This was McKay's second time snowboarding, and he loved it! Turning 40 is a pretty big deal, so I thought I would do a quick list of 40 things that make Rik Rik (unless I can't think of 40 things...)


1. Rik comes up with the most unique nick names... then morphs them a few times until they are really, really strange. For example, Malia's nick name is "Moogie," and Anaya's is "Shnoogalish."

2. Rik has at least 4 times more clothes and shoes than I do.

3. Rik can play the piano, ukulele, and guitar.

4. He is left-handed, except for sports, which he plays right-handed.

5. Rik can fall asleep ANYWHERE... like the floor, the counter top, the computer chair, tanning beds, on the phone talking to his mom, or on the couch reading with McKay.

6. Rik likes super smart games... word games are his specialty.

7. He likes to watch UFC.

8. He will eat anything... and I mean ANYTHING. Macaroni and cheese is probably his least favorite though.

9. Rik loves volleyball and racquetball. He's been coaching Malia's team the last several years, and really enjoys it. Here's some pictures from their tournament in Utah a couple weeks ago:



10. In 16 years of marriage he has never taken a sick day. He just doesn't get sick.

11. He knows how to disc golf.

12. He always looks put together.... whether it's midnight at Walmart, or shoveling snow, he always looks perfect.

13. People are always shocked when they find out how old he is and how old his kids are.... it totally makes his day!

14. Rik likes to shop.

15. He can still do a standing back hand spring... and if you get him on the trampoline, he can do all sorts of flips.

16. Back in the day he was in a break dancing group.

17. He has a hard time remembering to zip up his pants... so funny!

18. Someday he would like to restore full-sized arcade games.

19. He likes to read.

20. Rik has run a full marathon.

21. He has a really nice tenor voice... especially when he gets the words right. He sang in a men's quartet a few weeks ago in sacrament meeting.

22. He spontaneously does jazz hands when he's walking through the kitchen.

23. He had rheumatoid arthritis when he was little, and was told he would never walk again (they were wrong.)

24. He is a healthy eater and not too big on desserts.

25. He has broken his front tooth at least 3 times.

26. He likes to snowboard.

27. He's addicted to synthetic fiber sports shirts (I just counted 27 in the closet right now!!)

28. He can't grow a beard.

29. He lived in New Zealand for three years (his mom is Maori.)

30. He is an incredibly hard worker.

31. He is an excellent writer. I used to proof read his papers when he was in college. I always thought they were a little wordy.... teachers LOVED his stuff and always wanted to keep them as the "example paper!"

32. If he could do it all over again, he would go into graphic design.

33. Every now and again Rik tries to communicate by whistling... this generally doesn't go so good.

34. He has one leg that twitches every couple of minutes all night long.

35. He can play hymns on the harmonica with his nose. Anyone need to borrow our harmonica? ew.

36. He went on his mission to Sacramento.

37. Rik won a TV at a spelling bee when he was younger.

38. He loves the gospel, and gives everything he has to whatever calling he is serving in.

39. He is a really, really good dad.

40. He still makes my heart skip a beat when he walks into a room.

Phew... that was harder than I thought! Oh... here's a picture of Rik in his birthday suit (hmm that doesn't sound right!):

I love you!

Is it a little weird?

So do you think it is weird that Anaya got 12 new nail polishes for Christmas (because she LOVES having her nails polished at least twice a week), and she wants to wear all 12 colors at the same time? I have learned over time to not care what pattern or color scheme she wants on her nails, because that battle is just not worth it. Today though, she told me she wanted me to rainbow each nail. That seemed a little time consuming for right before school, so we settled on a different color on each nail.

Is it weird that McKay has his first basketball game tonight, and his first practice tomorrow night? Should make for an entertaining game to watch!

Also, McKay is DESPERATE to start piano lessons. And he gets to try snowboarding with the big kids on Friday!

Is it weird that volleyball has already started up again (started before Christmas!)? Rik is coaching Malia's travel team, and when I pointed out that he doesn't actually have time in the evenings to coach, he decided to have practices at 6am Mondays and Wednesdays... and that will be the schedule until MAY!! It wouldn't be too bad, but Malia also has early morning piano lessons on Thursdays, and she and Kayden go to the temple every Tuesday morning at 6am to do baptisms (a couple of the cute temple workers have gotten to know them over the last few months, and actually invited them to their family Christmas party.) Malia absolutely loves having everything done and over in the morning though... is that weird for a teenager?

Is it odd that I love cleaning and organizing my house right now, and I think it is because I got a couple new pieces of furniture and some new curtains?

And speaking of furniture... Taisha loves rearranging furniture. She and I spent an evening rearranging her room and then redecorating it, and loves the way it turned out.

I did just a little bit of after Christmas shopping... primarily I was looking for men's Christmas socks. They are kind of hard to find. I guess there isn't a huge market for cheesy men's Christmas socks... I don't know, but in our family that is one of our Christmas traditions. So when I finally found some, I bought the 4 different ones that they had, and then on my way home figured out that I will be giving him the 4th pair when he is on his mission. That was a little weird!

I thought it was a little odd when I walked by a couple Walmart employees talking, and one said to the other, "Dude, I just don't like conversating with the other Walmart employees." Conversating? That's weird!

And not that I'm picking on Walmart... but last week I was at Walmart with my friend Brett picking up a birthday cake for her 4 year old daughter named Carma, and we both thought it was a little weird that her cake said:


Yep.... it says "Happy - Bad Carma." So weird! (And so is the story of how they FIXED the "bad" for that matter!)

Well... and this is just plain weird, unless you know him, and then it is perfectly normal!

December in Pictures

Mostly pictures because I'm on Christmas break now and thoroughly enjoying some down time! December was a whirlwind on dance recitals, 3 piano recitals, concerts, parties, family activities, Taisha's birthday, shopping, cooking, eating, and all the other things that make December December! Christmas was a huge success except for the whole "Santa got McKay and Taisha a DS, but somehow forgot to get one for Anaya... and that was a big mistake.... especially because she seemed to be suffering from holiday bipolar syndrome (that's when you are super hyper/happy OR on the floor have a tantrum.... no in between) and had her heart set on a DS, blah blah blah..."

(Christmas dance recital)

(Taisha turned 11!)

(McKay as "Joseph")

(Joseph and Mary, and yes, I am aware that baby Jesus was a roll of paper towels with a face drawn on.... we kind of forgot about a baby, and had to improvise!)

(Angels-they were playing "rock, paper, scissors" through the nativity story!)

(Copper pipe chimes on Christmas Eve)

(The pinata was a pink flamingo!)

(Malia broke it open this year!)

November 2009

Thanksgiving break was the perfect amount of:

food (perfect = LOTS), and family.....

shopping (here's the coolest Salvation Army bell ringers EVER.... at least according to Rik!)



and family projects...

(Try to guess where Rik's last business trip was to!)

And now we are all ready and excited for Christmas!!

(Notice that Anaya got her way after months of Naya-nagging, and now has bangs! And I love that the headband makes her ears stick out!)

Kayden's Eagle Court of Honor

So we finally got around to doing Kayden's Eagle Court of Honor. He's officially had his Eagle since July, and got his project done the summer before, so we decided maybe we should finish it off.


Do you see this nice picture of me? Thanks to everyone that came and helped!

The other day McKay came home from school and I asked him if he was good that day, and he was so excited and said yes, no one told on him all day!! Somehow I think we have different definitions of "good!" We've started the second quarter of school now, and the first went really well! I can't believe how fast the year is going!

Kawiti and Teryn had their baby!

Zedekiah Emmanuel Finlayson
November 9th at 2:30pm 7 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches

My Poor Disappearing Imagination!

Last weekend me and a few of my friends went to Salt Lake to see the So You Think You Can Dance Tour. It was so much fun! That is one of my two favorite shows, and that season had some outstanding dancers, interesting choreography, and fun personalities. Project Runway is my other favorite show to watch. I think I like these shows so much because of the creativity and imagination that is shown. I am awed by the beauty that can be created in such a short amount of time, and that just somehow came out of some one's imagination.

I think my imagination might be disappearing, or maybe I just need to work a little harder. I went to my kid's school for the book fair, and noticed that books 2 and 3 of the May Bird series were there. I hadn't read the first one, so I took a quick break from the Percy Jackson books (LOVE them by the way), to read the first May Bird book, so I could decide if I needed to buy the 2nd and 3rd books. I thought the book was pretty good, but as soon as it got to the part where May is in the Ever After, I just couldn't imagine what it looked like. My imagination struggled with the imagery. I did end up getting the other two books because Malia said she read the first one and she loved it... and she said she had no problems imagining the Ever After. *sigh*

McKay decided to sit down and write a story and wanted me to read it when he got it all done. I asked him what it was about (because this is child #4... I have learned to get a topic before trying to decipher phonetically written words that have no spaces between them...) He told me it was a story about how he likes camping. So I started sounding out the page, and a few minutes later he came back and asked me if I got to the part about the skeleton dogs. What?! Skeleton dogs? I'm pretty sure with my imagination, there would be no skeleton dogs in my story about camping. I think I read the first couple words ("my nem is dan") and the last line ("and I lic to camp")... not so sure where the skeleton dogs came in, but I love that he dated the bottom of the page.