September 2013

We had a lot to be happy about in September.  Here’s a look:

Bryce and I started the month with a trip to Park City for the weekend while the kids had fun at home with their cousin Brandon Buttars and his wife, Nicole, who came to play parents for a couple of days.  Devin admitted when we came home that he probably could have handled everything at home on his own, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. :)  We had a great time in Park City and are glad our kids had just as much fun at home.

On Sept 14, Bryce, Devin, Seth and I joined my sister Becki and her oldest daughter, Bella, at Soldier Hollow to run the Dirty Dash 10k, which was a total blast!!  We had a great time running through muddy fields, climbing over muddy hills, swimming through mud puddles and doing other obstacles, like climbing and jumping over walls, bales of hay and going down a giant slip and slide.  We were definitely filthy at the end, but it was so fun!

Autumn participated in her school’s annual Hawk Walk to earn money for the school and won 5th place in the school’s crazy hair day contest.

Autumn’s big news for the month, though, is that after years of hard work in ballet and months of doing feet and toe strengthening exercises, her ballet director decided she was ready for her first pair of pointe shoes!  I don’t think I have ever seen her quite so happy.  Little did I realize that pointe shoes do not come assembled, so after watching several Youtube tutorials, I got to spend 2 hours hand sewing the elastics and ribbons on her new shoes, all while Autumn watched over my shoulder and told me over and over again how much she loves and appreciates me. :)  She loves practicing a little on pointe each day in ballet class and loves to show us all what she is learning.

We enjoyed a visit from my sister, Kim and her missionary-bound daughter, Bethani, for a few days before Beth went into the MTC headed for the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Spanish speaking mission.  The earth is definitely being flooded with missionaries!  We currently have 26 missionaries out from our ward – the plaques have outgrown the case at our ward building!  So exciting!

We also had a visit from Grandpa Finch when he came to town for Seth’s Eagle Court of Honor at the end of the month.  It was a really great night and Seth is so excited to officially be an Eagle Scout!  His next goal is to earn more Eagle palms than Devin.  Seth has always loved a good goal. :)

Bryce celebrated yet another birthday.  Seth made him this “Happy Birthday to You” banner using a different art medium for each letter from crayons and colored pencils to popsicle sticks and pom poms – it’s pretty awesome!  Bryce has also been having lots of fun building programmable robots with his new Lego Mindstorms set.  So far, he and Devin have just got the base computer thingy up and running and now will start building robots attached to it.  Sasha doesn’t like it much, probably because Bryce has way too much fun chasing her around the house with it.

Devin went to his school’s Homecoming dance with a good friend of his, Madison Ellis.  They had a great time together, and we had fun making and serving dinner to them and their double dates, Jed and Sarah.  Autumn LOVED being the waitress and did a fabulous job! 

The Monday after the dance, Elders Legolas and Gimli showed up on our front porch with an invitation for Devin to go to the Sadies Hawkins dance with another one of his friends, Kristyanne – that will take place later this month and Devin is really looking forward to it.

Our own little missionary continues to learn and grow and teach and bless the lives of those she meets down in Houston.  We love her!!

That’s about it for September – see you all next month!

August 2013

August marked the end of another summer for us :(, but we managed to have a little fun before another school year started.

Autumn had a very intensive month of dance in August!  The first 2 weeks were her studio’s in house convention and she danced for several hours every day with guest dance instructors in all genres of dance.  She loved most of her guest teachers and learned a lot from all of them, even the ones she didn’t love. :)  The last 2 weeks of August were her choreography weeks, which means that she worked long hours learning all of the choreography for the dances they will compete this next year.  She learned new jazz, musical theater, hip hop and ballet competition pieces and loves them all.  Here’s to another great season of dance! This picture is of her Youth Ballet Company.

Bryce and Seth went on a boating campout with Seth’s scout troop and really enjoyed a weekend on the lake, especially since they didn’t have to backpack in.  It was a nice “reward” campout for all of their hard work this summer in scouting!

Devin went on his first date with a good friend of his and has decided that dating is quite a lot of fun. :)  Megan wrote him a nice, long letter from Houston giving him all of her dating advice from a girl’s perspective since she can’t be here in person. It’s good for him to have that older sister advice, for sure.

The kids all started back to school on August 20th.  Devin is a Junior this year and is loving all of his classes so far, except for maybe computer programming because they still don’t have a regular teacher 2 weeks into the school year, so here’s hoping that gets resolved soon.  He loves being able to drive himself to school!

Seth is an 8th grader and couldn’t think of a single thing to be excited about when he was going back to school.  He likes most of his classes and teachers and has decided that his favorites are PE, Foods, Choir and Theater.  He says Math and English and Science are okay, but he definitely prefers having hands on classes.  After having auditions for his Theater class’s Fall semester production of “The Hobbit”, Seth was pretty excited to find out that he has been cast to play “Bilbo”, the lead character.

Autumn is in 5th grade and was definitely the most excited to go back to school.  She loves her new teacher, loves seeing her friends each day and loves learning new things.  She has recently become very interested in learning how to cook and spends as much time in the kitchen helping to cook as she can.  She is an especially good buttermilk syrup maker!

Seth worked super hard and  accomplished his goal of having his Eagle project done by the end of summer!  He had lots of his friends and fellow scouts come help him scrape down and paint all of the fire hydrants at the Utah State Developmental Center (23 in all) and then he and Bryce also created a stencil out of plywood to paint a fireman’s cross with an “H” in the middle on the road in front of each hydrant to make them easier to find.  He has since completed all of his paperwork, gotten all of his letters of recommendation and last Thursday passed his Eagle Board of Review, so he is officially done!!  He was excited to find out after he was done that he is officially the youngest Eagle scout in our ward ever. If you know Seth, you know how much he loves to break records, so he is pretty happy. :)

Bryce and I celebrated 21 years of marriage and I celebrated yet another birthday.  The cake was made by 2 of my former Laurels and the 13th birthday thing is a long story, so…

Megan is still doing well in Houston and working hard as a missionary. You can follow her adventures on her blog. :)

Happy September everyone!

July 2013

So much has happened this month that it’s hard to remember the beginning of July, but we’ll give it a go. :)

On July 3, Megan was set apart as a missionary and became Sister Ririe for the next 18 months.  She was set apart in the MTC in the morning that day by our neighbor who is now the MTC president because our entire Stake Presidency was out of town.  It was fun because President Nally gave us all a tour of the MTC after Megan was set apart – it was nice for us to be able to see where she would be living for the next 2 weeks. After she was set apart, we all went out to lunch, drove back to BYU to pick up Devin from EFY, went to the Provo temple to take some last family pics and then went back to the MTC to drop Megan off.  She was so happy and excited and we were all happy and excited for her!  We definitely miss her presence in our home and look forward to her weekly emails.



We have since heard from her several times and she is loving her time in Houston as a missionary.  She is currently serving in Katy, Texas.  If you want to follow her adventures, you can link to her blog from ours or check it out on www.sisterririe.blogspot.com.  We will be adding her letters every Monday so be sure to stay tuned.  This is a picture of her and her first companion in Texas, Sister Wahlin, and one of her with the 34 missionaries who reported to the Houston mission with her on July 17.



The Monday after Megan went into the MTC, Seth and Bryce left for the week-long scout 50 mile backpacking trip.  It was a lot of hard work, but they both really loved the experience and all the awesome places they got to see high up in the mountains above Heber.  Seth became an expert fisherman and loved to fish!  They had to come home a day early (Friday night instead of Saturday morning) when a Thursday night rainstorm drowned a few of the boys’ tents, and while all of the other boys and adults cheered at the thought of being home in their own beds a night early, Seth was so sad that his adventure had to end early.  I’m sure Bryce was not quite as sad. :)



While they were roughing it in the mountains, Devin, Autumn and I drove to Truckee, California and enjoyed a week of luxury in a gorgeous cabin in the mountains above Lake Tahoe for our Finch Family Reunion.  We had a great time playing with cousins, swimming in Donner Lake, hiking, eating delicious food, and just being together.  It’s a gorgeous area and we really enjoyed ourselves!



Bryce thought he would have all of his vacation used up between Hawaii and the 50 miler and a few weekend trips we have taken, but when he discovered that he still had a few days left, we decided to take a short trip to Oregon at the end of the month.  We had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa, Jeff and his family and Tami and her family!  We played at the beach, hiked to 7 of the 10 waterfalls around Silver Creek, visited the Saturday market in downtown Portland, and just enjoyed hanging out with family.  We were sad it couldn’t be a longer trip, but were so happy we got to make it to Oregon this summer.



Seth has been busy getting started on his Eagle project.  He really hopes to have it done by the end of the summer, but we’ll see if we can get all the approvals and things done in time. 

Autumn’s commercial that she filmed last month has started airing on TV!  In case you don’t want to spend all day watching Disney channel or Nickelodeon in the chances of seeing it, you can check it out on www.flipeez.com.  She is also one of the kids modeling the hats on their website.

We ended the month with Devin’s 16th birthday!! He celebrated by going to the DMV that morning and getting his driver’s license.  I can’t believe he is already 16 years old! He loves driving and I love that he can get himself to fencing now.  He looks forward to his first date, but is currently trying to figure out how he is going to do that when he can’t drive anyone besides family for the next 6 months. :)  I guess he will have to find someone a little older than him to double date with.  He will also be having a barbeque and outdoor games party this Friday night with his friends to keep the celebration going.


Have a great August everyone!!