Hey, Finn! Hey, Finn! It's your birthday! We gonna partay!

Fabulous Finn turned FOUR!!!!  I can't believe it.  Except yes, I can, because he seems older.  He is tall, he is soooo smart and such a daredevil!  Hence the large black cast on his arm for his 4th birthday party.  We had a big carnival party for Finn with his little friends and cousins.  It was so much fun!

Finn and Griffin Norris.

Darius & Cruz Salazar, and Jade Mohr (the neighborhood buddies), Logan (Jake's buddy, whom Finn adores), Griffin, and Jake.  Also, nice face, Jake.  

Ruby was working the ring-toss booth.

Here's Cruz trying again and again and again to bounce a ping pong ball into the jars of water.  He did eventually get it, and he was so proud!

Griffin gets his tickets ready with Finn and Owen.

Finn scores!

Carnies.

Dart balloons!

More carnies!

Fish Pong is so much harder than it looks...

Finn throwing darts with his left hand = DANGER!

Darius and Jade.

Bennett yelling, "Step right up to the rock monster!"

Fish pond!

Here, fishy fishy!

Harper and her little buddy, Lexi.

The face painters!

Tyler has some skills I was not aware of!

One ticket bought you a hot dog.  Another ticket bought you some chips.

The rock monster was the biggest hit of the party, especially when Uncle Tyler was operating it.  You put a regular old rock in the monster's mouth, and it would spit out a beautiful, shiny, polished rock for you! (He was very loud and a little scary!)

The kids were completely amazed/ scared/ enthralled by the rock monster.

Tonya and Tia.

Owen applied his own face paint.

Natalie and Cooper!

Presents!

Bennett, you missed a spot.

Tonya, Jaime and Tyler... cheers!

Cheetah boy Jack.

Linoln!

Lincoln and the spill the beans station.

Birthday lion.

Jack!

Bennett!

Harper refused to hold the mask the right way.  Which makes sense....

My, what big teeth you have, Jake!

Grrrrrrr!

Finn struck a dapper pose for this one.  Ha ha!  Love it!

Trying to get Harper in the picture...

Bennett holds Harper with his legs.  She's not having it.

SISTERS!

Finn and his good buddy, Blue.

What can you say about a kid who had 5 broken arms before the age of 4?  He's tough, that's for sure.  He is also so sweet, and so caring.  He loves and hugs and kisses and cuddles, and is SO CUTE.  I really want to freeze time with this kid.  He is growing up on me.  Love you, Finners McGinigans.

First Dam

Dos!

Happy birthday, Harper!

Because this girl hates crowds, we decided not to have  a party with lots of people.  But we did have a scrumptious cake, and she did enjoy the company of Aunt Cami, Brookes and Jesse.  And why do I not have pictures of them?  Sheesh.  But the hoodie Harper is wearing is from Aunt Cami!

And her BFF, Ruby Rose.

Happy birthday, little munchkin.  What will the next 2 years bring???  We love you so much!

Cache Stake Women's Conference

This project took a chunk of time! But it turned out so pretty... Totally worth it.  Our theme was "Strengthening Ties That Bind," and we tried to turn the gym into an old-fashioned quilting bee.  I had the most amazing committee.  2 girls were event planners, and had access to lots of great props.  Hello, gazillion blue Mason jars!

We photocopied family photos from women in the stake to hang on the walls.  It was such a fun idea to tie the whole stake together through the decor.

Each ward created a quilt to donate, and each quilt was given a blue ribbon.

Beautiful antiques from Grandma Bessie graced our entry-ways...

Cheetah boy.

You cannot catch him.  He is fast like lightning.  

Weekend with the High-Lambs

We were so excited to get to stay at the Lamberts' to celebrate Elizabeth's baptism!  Gramma Linda was also there, and we had a wonderful time together!

I spent a lot of time in the foyer with noisy, sleep-deprived Harper...

Alex and Gramma at Sweet Tomatoes for lunch afterwards.

Tia, Elizabeth, Gabrielle, and Bennett.

We spent the afternoon at Thanksgiving Point.  Our first stop was the tulip gardens.  Beautiful!

It was rainy, rainy, rainy!  We loved it!

Gramma and Finn!

Checking out the jumbo Koi... Yikes!

Secret garden!  So pretty.

Finn and Owen.

Soaked!

We finished with a tour of the Thanksgiving Point Natural History Museum with the cousins.  So fun!

Owen's first recital!

Warming up on the Steinway... 

Duet with Miss Ashley.

Owen and his awesome teacher, Ashley Miles.

Owen was pretty nervous for this recital.  Especially because we were told it would be a very small group of students, and it ended up being 1 1/2 hours long, and had some very advanced students!  But Owen was 100% happy with his performance, and I was very proud of him.  Yay, Owen!