Happy 2nd Birthday Riley Finn!

Today is Riley's 2nd birthday. We celebrated with a small family party last Saturday though, so today is kind of casual.

About Riley at 2:

- Loves trains and makes "choo choo" noises all the time
- Always has a car or train in his hands
- Loves chocolate milk
- Not talking very much, but can say words like "Mama", "Dada", "Nuk" (means milk), and a bunch of other one syllable words.  However, he mumbles ALL the time in full sentences, but I have no idea what he is saying. Will, on the other hand, can always translate and understand him.
- He is still such a happy and sweet boy.  Usually always in a good mood.
- Gets very jealous if his brothers are taking a bath and he isn't participating.
- Does not like short-sleeved shirts or shorts and thinks there is something wrong with the clothes if they don't cover him. HATES to be naked.  In fact when I got him dressed in his birthday outfit today (pictured above), he threw a fit and cried.
- Wears size 6 diapers but they are a little big.
- Can feed himself with utensils.
- Watches everyone very closely and then copies.
- Will give hugs and kisses on demand. :)
- Loves to snuggle mama.
- Calls Preston "Dashee" which makes absolutely no sense to me.
- Airplanes are also Dashee, which kind of makes more sense if he thinks every airplane is "Dusty" from the Disney movie "Planes".
- Loves to get his hair styled.
- LOVES, loves, loves being outside.  Would be there ALL day every day if he could, no matter what the weather.
- Is a danger-boy, always getting into things. He will put chairs up on the fireplace and climb up to the DVD player.
- Laughs a lot.

All in all, just an absolute joy in our family! :)

More pics from today....all taken from my smart phone, I apologize. Will had our nice camera at the other house. It was kind of hard to get him in focus with my 'selective focus' feature with him being so wiggly! haha....

Christmas Day - 2015

Today is Christmas day of '15, and it has been 7 months since I last blogged.  I figured today would be a great day to catch up :)

Wow, I am not even sure where to start. So why don't we just start with the fact that the front door you see above is a different front door from our last blog.

Yes, we moved.  We finally bought our dream home in our dream town and have been loving it.

And since today is Christmas...we have a couple of elves who were up at 6am ready to find out what Santa brought them...

The other little elf slept for a couple more hours, but then woke up...

We enjoyed having G&G Southworth here on Christmas Eve and here to open presents this morning, and then they took off to Oregon to see Grandma Lindsay.

Our lives have been incredibly busy these past few months because I released a new album, and I can honestly say it has been THE busiest I've ever been.  There have been many nights working until the early hours of the morning not because it was the only time I could get things done, but because even after working ALL day during the day I still had so much to get done I continued to work through the night.

And I don't want to bore you with all the details, because one might ask what could I possibly be THAT busy with when it comes to music?  And I can't even tell you everything now. It all seems like a blur.  But I know it had a lot to do with deadlines, writing music for a commercial where the producer was super picky, finishing transcriptions for live orchestra, working on video editing, promotions, writing, composing, editing, photo and artwork editing, etc.

But, it is finished at last.

Since today is Christmas, it is officially the last day I can technically mention my album until next Christmas season.  And while it seems weird to have just gone through an immense amount of labor to produce an album that I only got to promote for a short 6 weeks, it is also a huge relief to know that I have a break.

It is surreal to think it was just a little over a year ago when Will decided to quite Microsoft and help support me in my music career. Just him letting me do that and us working together has allowed me to blossom and flourish.  And it feels like for the first time ever that my music has a higher purpose other than satisfying my own desire to create music. I've started to see how it touches other peoples' lives for the better and that is the best reward ever.

Will and I also took a trip to Europe in August!  It was and 2 and 1/2 weeks long and SOOOO needed! We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary while we were there, and had a really romantic time.

We started off in Sweden to visit our friends Glen and Sofia, and were there for 5 days. And then we went to Paris, France.  Then drove from Paris down to Monte Carlo, then on to Lake Como, and onto Venice.  Then to Milano, and then onto Switzerland for Will's 100 mile race that was in Chaminoux, France.

We finished the year with a concert tour. I played Carnegie Hall...

And also had concerts in Park City, UT, Salt Lake City, UT, Houston, TX, and Seattle, WA.

The big finish was two shows at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, which you can watch here:

We also produced two music videos to accompany my new album this year, and plan to do some more music videos next year.

Carol of the Bells:


 and "Alleluia"



Hopefully it won't take me as long to blog next time, but I can promise it won't be until next year ;)

Happy New Year!