The 'Wize' Men

Brielle was in charge of lesson for our Family Home Evening today.  She wrote this play for us to act out, and then made copies for everyone.  After the work she put into it, she was very disappointed by how little time it took us to actually perform.  We even had a large stuffed tiger that was acting as our camel. The tiger then turned into the bed for 'Jesus' (played by Preston). No pictures, just the mental images for our memories. Loved it.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Photo Credits-Ashley Mae Photography

Finlay Family 2014

Happy Holidays!  As the year comes to a close we love this opportunity to reflect about how blessed we are to have such wonderful family and friends in our lives. 

Here is a short summary of our lives this year:

James-Is in his last year of his Ph.D./Residency program at City of Hope in Laboratory Animal Medicine. Very soon it will be time to job hunt.  He is the Elder’s Quorum President for our Church. He also continues to put thousands of miles on his road bike commuting to and from work each day, going for longer rides on the weekend when he gets a chance.

Megan-Volunteers at the elementary school and as secretary for the Relief Society, our church women's organization. She still enjoys running, and completed a half marathon last month.

Brielle-(7) Enjoys life as a 2nd grader.  She broke her arm roughhousing with her brother.  She is in piano and volleyball also has her nose stuck in a book at any opportunity and always has a good story to share.

Ethan-(5) Started kindergarten this year and loves it.  He has a lot of energy and a smile to brighten everyone's day. He loves life and creating accidental messes and mischief of all kinds.

Preston-(1) Learned to crawl, walk, run, climb and talk, so he has had a very productive year. J He loves to be the center of attention and is happiest when he gets plenty of sleep.

We did get a few chances to travel with a few local trips this year to Morro Bay, Newport Beach and San Diego (multiple times with season passes to SeaWorld) and out of state visits to Utah, Massachusetts and Texas.

In Utah we got together with Megan's family (all of her 10 siblings with spouses and kids) before her parents and youngest sister left to serve a mission for our church for 3 years in Quito, Ecuador.

During the summer we went to Cape Cod with all of the extended Finlay side.  We couldn't get enough beach time and searching for clams.  The time passed by much too quickly.

A work conference for James brought us to Texas and the chance to explore San Antonio in December.

We hope you have had a good year as well, and love to hear from you.  Good wishes in the year to come!

2014 Reflections Program

The PTA at our elementary school participates in the Reflection's program. A contest that encourages kids to be involved in the arts.  This year's theme was: The World Would Be a Better Place If.....

Brielle and Ethan both decided to enter in the photography and literature categories. A lot of kids enter in the visual arts category at our school, because they provide materials and time for everyone to do a project after school a couple of days.  There is very low participation in any of the other categories though.  Brielle and Ethan are both in the same division (K-2).  Brielle ended up winning 1st place in both of these categories.  She got two prizes, and then gave one to Ethan since he didn't win.  I loved Ethan's description of his picture.

Brielle's Short Story

How Plants Grew

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Abby.  She was the only girl that cared about plants.  So, Abby decided to ask her mom if she could go to the store and buy a couple of seeds.  Her Mom let her do that, so Abby went to the store and bought lots of seeds and she planted them all over the city.  The store owner said that these seeds are magical, so once you plant them, they will be done the next day.  So, the next day when everybody was awake, she woke up, and she was the last one to wake up too.  She woke up and looked outside.  It looked so beautiful. Everybody looked out and they said ‘it looks so much more beautiful with all of this.” Then every single person went to the store and got seeds. They planted them all over the city.

Brielle's Photo

These are melanoma cells.  Green shows the shape of the cells, the blue color is the nucleus of the cancer cells.  The pink dots are a kind of drug my dad is helping to make that will keep the cancer cells from spreading.  I helped grow the cells and I took the picture with a microscope that uses lasers.

Many people get cancer; they get really sick and some people die.  I don’t want people to have cancer.  If we can find a cure, no one would ever have cancer again and the world would be a better place.

 Ethan's Short Story

All About Friends

A long time ago there lived a turtle and a lot of more sheep.  They lived in a town called Sheep Town.  The sheep came to visit his friend turtle named Singy  The sheep was named Paul. Singy lived in a hotel and there was a pool.  He wanted to go in the pool to swim.  It was a pond, but they called it a pool because that was the only water back then. Paul came to the hotel and he wanted to watch movies, but Singy wanted to swim.  Singy was very nice, so he said they could watch movies with Paul.  They watched a bad movie so Paul started to say bad things to his friends, but he was still Singy’s friend.  The other sheep stopped being his friend.  One of the sheep still wanted to be his friend.  He went over to Paul’s house and asked him.  “Can you please not say bad things to us, because it makes a feel sad.”  Paul thought that he should stop saying bad things, and he did.  He still wanted to talk to his friends, because they were still his friends.  He thought to do something nice. He wanted to make a book full of nice things to say.  He made a book and then gave it to his three friends.  Then, his other friends started to be his friend again because he did something nice.  The world would be a better place if people would say nice things to other people.

Ethan's Photo

I found this frog in our backyard. Frogs live everywhere in the world, except they don't live in Santa Claus’ house and Antarctica.  Frogs can live in ponds and lakes.  I really like this frog because it was green and brown with polka dots on it.  If we have more frogs, it can be cooler to see their designs. The nature goes away when people kill things. Then kids like me don’t get to discover nature.  The world would be a better place if people were more kind to the nature around us.

18 Month Stats

I thought I had posted the other kids stats at 18 months, since it seems that  I did every major doctor's visit, but I don't see them.  So here we have all 3 kids at 18 months.

Preston

Height: 35" (100%)

Weight: 26lbs 11oz (81%)

HC: 19.29" (89%)

Ethan

Height: 33" (72%)

Weight: 29lbs (95%)

HC: 19.29" (89%)

Brielle

Height: 34.5" (98%)

Weight: 23lbs 11oz (60%)

HC: 18.5" (67%)

18 Months

One and a HALF...feels like a major milestone.  There is still a lot of changes that happen in these little people month to month.

At 18 months:

Talking and signing quite a bit.  Just starting to put 2 words together.

Favorite Food: Hummus and grapes (not together)

Still hasn't needed a hair cut (other than the 1 single piece that grew almost 2 inches long).

Favorite Book: Farm Animals

Most used word: Pleeeeeeeese!

Likes Trains, Trucks, Airplanes, Helicopters, Dogs, Climbing, Rocks...all the stereotypical 'boy' stuff

Nethercutt Christmas Organ Concert

December 5th, James and I had the chance to go to a Christmas concert at the Nethercutt with his Parents and Grandpa Bob.

The Nethercutt Collection is pretty fascinating.  Hundreds of old cars, interesting musical instruments and antiques.

Before the concert they turned on the different orchestrions.  I loved this one that played the violins and piano at the same time.  There was also a huge one that had self-playing drums, xylophone, accordion, organ, bells...(I couldn't see what else was behind the cupboards, but it sounded amazing).

We will need to go back some time to go on the full tour of the museum.  We had time to go through and see some of the classic cars.  The theatre organ concert was amazing.