30 December 2007

It started snowing here Christmas night and we woke up on December 26 to a dusting of snow. The kids couldn't wait to get outside and play in it. They all ate far more snow than can possibly be healthy.


Saturday we drove up into the mountains to find some real snow for sledding. Abe hasn't been sledding since he was 10 months old. He chortled with delight as he slid, spun and crashed down the hillside. Sophie and Abe were fearless heading down the sled runs.


Gibson had the same content expression during the entire field trip. He took a turn down the hill once with Brandan and once with Becky and got pulled around a little in the sled. The photo hints a little at the beautiful setting. We were in a small bowl surrounded on three sides with tall snow-covered trees.


Saturday was also Helen's third birthday. In the photo, she's blowing out her candles by saying "Fffffffffff." Helen enjoyed her birthday very much and beamed whenever we sang Happy Birthday to her.

Merry Christmas

It's been a magical Christmas and, of course, we are thinking of you, so we're publishing a special Christmas edition of our blog. This year we put the kids in charge of the Nativity story on Christmas Eve and they looked so cute dressed up in their costumes. Gibson was not interested in participating, so Becky picked him up after Brandan took this photo. We all sleep together in front of the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, a tradition we all look forward to. The kids love making a cozy bed and talking and reading together late into the night and so far, we've never woken up before 7am on Christmas morning.


This is Helen on Christmas morning, but you can't see her because her eyes are covered up.


We've eaten lots of wonderful food the past two days. Here is Gibson with chocolate chip pancake on his face. Our refrigerator and freezer are full of delicious leftovers.


Brandan built the kids a climbing wall for Christmas. It's built on an 8-foot by 3-foot piece of birch plywood with holes drilled in a 6-inch grid across the board. The holes have t-nuts in them which the climbing holds bolt to, so the holds can be moved around. Brandan put the wall all together earlier so it only took about 15 minutes to bolt to the wall after opening presents. The kids love it! It takes Sophie less than 10 seconds to climb to the top and down again.

The kids played on the climbing wall all day. Our home is probably the only home with a climbing wall that matches the cabinetry. Leave it to Brandan to make an attractive climbing wall. Abe is only a few seconds slower than Sophie when climbing.

Helen needs a boost up to the bottom hold, but by the end of the day, she could climb to the top, too. Brandan and Becky have climbed the wall, too, but it's pretty tame for adults. Brandan will just have to add more panels.

Our friends, Pam and Greg, invited us for Christmas dinner along with other friends. In the photo are Pam, Helen, Brandan, June and John. June and John live in the gorgeous white Victorian house at the edge of our neighborhood. Not in the photo and at dinner were Greg, a vice president at a local hospital; Tracy; Tracy's teenage daughters, Susannah and Alden; and her exchange student from Kyrgyzstan, Asel. Tracy's husband Virgil is a pilot and was working on Christmas. It was a wonderful afternoon/evening. We ate and talked for about 5 hours while the kids played hide and seek in Pam's closets with Abe's walkie-talkies. Pam is a talented quilter and showed us some of the projects she is working on. Greg likes to turn wood on a lathe into bowls and we saw some of his work in mahogany, myrtle and paduk.

We walked home from dinner while it snowed lightly. Snow is pretty rare on the valley floor where we live and especially rare on Christmas. The kids talked Brandan into lighting a fire in the fire bowl Becky made (with help) for Brandan for Christmas. Roasting marshmallows in the backyard while it snowed was a wonderful end to a wonderful day.

23 December 2007

We had lots of Christmas fun, and Christmas craziness, this week, starting with decorating Christmas cookies. Our friend who owns the plant nursery is allergic to wheat and gave us a terrific recipe for sugar cookies that uses rice flour. They taste like shortbread (some other wheat-free foods taste funky). Helen's favorite shape to decorate is an angel.


A couple of nights later, Sophie, Abe and Helen transformed Lindt chocolate bars into reindeer for their school and church teachers. Abe was a real trooper getting his gifts done since he has 4 teachers at school.


Later in the week we went to Sophie's Christmas piano recital. This is a photo of Sophie after the recital with her teacher, Amy. Amy tried something new this year and held the recital at an assisted living center so the elderly residents could attend. One couple in the audience were in their 90s and had been married for 72 years. Sophie did a great job at the recital-- she has excellent composure. We also went to her school choir concert this week.


Here is Becky showing off again with another French dessert (getting to be a terrible habit). She made this croquembouche for a Christmas party--cream puffs filled with pecan pastry cream, dipped in caramel and topped with spun sugar.

Our neighbor's daughter's boyfriend decorates their house with 75,000 lights. Here are a few of them. You know it's too many lights when you can take a photo of the house at night with our very basic camera. We wonder how you can draw that much electrical current without starting a fire. Maybe the spinning electric meter creates a breeze to cool things down. Our kids really love this house.

16 December 2007

On Wednesday, we invited some friends over to decorate gingerbread houses. We forgot to take photos while decorating, but this is a photo of Helen nibbling candy off her house the next day. We've found it works best to let each person decorate their own house, otherwise the grown-ups won't leave the kids' decorations alone!


Here is Abe with all of our decorated houses. Abe told an elaborate story as he decorated his house. Part of it involved Santa dropping a snake on the roof followed by an avalanche. His house is at the far right of the photo. Our gingerbread village is now decorating and perfuming our family room. And Helen is still snitching candy off her house.


Gibson goes over, not around, obstacles. He was particularly delighted with himself after pulling himself onto this step stool. He delighted the rest of us by cutting his two top teeth, but he still can't say "Sister Susie sitting on a thistle."


Sophie woke up Friday morning with a great case of bedhead.

Sophie's piano teacher arranged for her students to play Christmas music at the mall on Saturday. Sophie, now looking more soignee, played Deck the Halls and her own arrangement of Silent Night. We think playing the piano amid the bustle and distractions at the mall just before Christmas is good practice for playing in Sacrament Meeting in a few years.

9 December 2007

It's the season for angels and so it's appropriate to include one on our blog. This is a photo of Suzanne, Brandan's medical assistant. She understands the demands of Brandan's work better than the rest of us, puts in equally long hours and is enormously kind. Suzanne loves Christmas and Christmas music and came with us to the First Presidency Christmas Broadcast and to our house for dessert afterwards.


December 6 is St. Nicholas Day and around here that means waking up to chocolate in your shoe. If you're Brandan, that means nearly 2 pounds of really delicious Swiss chocolate in your size 10 loafers. The kids get less, proportionate to the size of their feet.


Becky made a Buche de Noel, a traditional Christmas cake, for her book club this week. She cut off the end of the cake to leave for Brandan and then Abe frosted it for him. Stump de Noel, maybe?


The finished dessert-- rich chocolate cake filled with white chocolate mousse, covered in about a half inch of chocolate ganache and decorated with meringue mushrooms. The dessert was a big hit at book club -- perfect after our dinner of chicken salad and vegetables.

2 December 2007

Sophie made the scarab beetle that Drue and Maggie brought her from Egypt into a necklace. Scarab beetles are symbols of good luck, but in case the cosmos isn't paying attention, Sophie spelled out "Good Luck" with alphabet beads. She's worn it to school a few times.


Gibson can pull himself up now and is directing his energy at learning to climb stairs. Going up is the easy part, little buddy.


We set our Christmas tree up on Friday. The kids decorated themselves before they decorated the tree. December is the one month of the year Becky turns off NPR (mostly) and listens to music. We love listening to Christmas music at accuradio.com. They have 30 different holiday channels, from traditional to rock to the all Silent Night channel. Becky's favorite channel is the playlist from The Drive- a great modern mix with some sentimentality and occasional silliness.


Here are the kids ready for church. Yes, they are the cutest kids on the planet. Becky was supposed to take Gibson to Brandan after Sunday School and before Priesthood, but he was so charming, she kept him. Brandan can have him when he's fussy.

25 November 2007

We got back this afternoon from our week long road trip to Idaho and Utah. It's hard to get our kids and their cousins to stop for a photo so we're posting some photos from the road. This is fairly typical of our trip: Sophie is listening to music, Abe is drawing and Helen is eating chicken with poppy seed dressing. The chicken is just a useful utensil for eating large amounts of the dressing. We don't know if Gibson is asleep or not; he is quiet. The kids did great on the trip. Their biggest argument was over the book we brought along, Inkspell by Cornelia Funke. Sophie likes it, Abe and Brandan don't, Becky thinks it's disappointing after a terrific first book (Inkheart). The middle book in a trilogy is always a challenge-- usually disaster after disaster. Hopefully the muddle will get sorted out in the final book.


Brandan drove all 34 hours of our trip. Yes, that's right, over 20% of our vacation was spent in the car. We're very lucky to have so many people to love and enjoyed visiting everyone. Also, the weather was ideal for a November road trip. However, Brandan will be glad to hop on his bike in the morning instead of getting back in a car.


We tried a new route home this time through Reno and spent Saturday night at an exuberantly tacky casino called the Atlantis. It was heavily decorated in a neon jungle theme layered over with traditional red and green Christmas ornaments. Our bathroom had 3 colors of simulated marble in it-- pink door, green counter, white floor. The Reno/Susanville route was more scenic than the Winnemucca/Lakeview route, but took us about 2 hours longer.



Here's Gibson, wearing Zina's cowboy hat and smiling because he isn't in the car.

18 November 2007

Brandan got his braces off this week! Just in time to enjoy some leftover Halloween caramel corn, Tootsie rolls and taffy.


We have been working on bolstering our food storage. We borrowed a can sealer from the cannery and sealed some beans and rice. Interestingly, food at the cannery is in short supply because of the recent disasters around the world.


We are excited for our upcoming trip to visit family in Idaho and Utah. Abe and Helen helped Brandan practice using the tire chains. It is always easier to work out the kinks in the comfort of your own living room rather than on the side of a snowy road.

11 November 2007

Kristine and Mallory, 2 ballet dancers on tour with BYU's Theater Ballet, stayed with us for a couple of nights. They were very sweet girls and our kids fell in love with them.


Here's a photo of Kristine after the performance. They danced Coppelia and we all went to the show. It was great fun to see "our dancers" on stage. Kristine danced professionally in Atlanta and Florida for 5 years before going on a mission to England.


HOORAY! Our library reopened after being closed for 6 months. Stacked on the table is the loot from our first visit back to the library. We highly recommend the Sloop John B, a piratical adventure.


Gibson really likes his tongue. His favorite noise to make is "La, la, la" which he makes with his tongue sticking out of his mouth. He also knows how to blow raspberries and did so loudly at Sophie's ensemble recital yesterday. It was in the middle of a very long, very boring piano duet and Becky wanted to blow raspberries, too, but she is too well mannered.


Sophie and Brandan got dressed up yesterday evening for our stake's Daddy-Daughter 50s Dance. Sophie loved the dance: "We had a great time. We ate, played games, and just danced."

4 November 2007

Happy Halloween! Here are our little goblins all dressed up. Helen was a zookeeper. Her shirt says "ZOO" on the back and has a picture of a pink elephant.


Abe was a skeleton. What's that red stuff around his mouth supposed to be? Blood! Abe felt like his costume needed some gore.


Sophie went as Cruella DeVille. It was a cozy costume, but the weather was so nice she could have trick or treated without the coat.


Here's Gibson dressed as a cow. He has no idea - NO IDEA - that he came home from the biggest candy grab of the year empty handed.

Our kids now have enough candy to last them until Christmas and are already thinking about what to dress as next year.

28 October 2007

Every year we go to our friends' couples Halloween party. It's a great tradition. Our favorite part is seeing our friends dressed up. Favorites this year were Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, Nacho Libre and his sidekick Steven, Warren Jeffs and 2 of his wives (the sister of a friend was visiting), and the white trash couple (a dentist and concert violinist in real life and completely unrecognizable). Brandan went as an Indian and Becky as a cowgirl.


The gorgeous fall weather is lingering and we're loving it--great weather for outdoor projects. Saturday Brandan took out the railroad ties that surrounded our raised vegetable beds. We decided the tar and creosote in the railroad ties probably didn't belong in our organic garden. Now the trick is trying to give away the railroad ties. Sure, we think they're poisonous, but go ahead and use them in your garden.


It's also time to cut back our perennials, including the lavender hedges that border our vegetable garden. We cut off a wheelbarrow full of brown lavender stems. They make the compost pile smell heavenly. Sophie saved a bucket of the flowers that were still pretty for projects. She's sitting on the edge of one of the new raised beds-- this time built out of 2x8 cedar boards.


A final look at our patio before winter. Yesterday we planted a few creeping thyme plants between the stones. We'll see how they grow over the winter before planting more. Of note in the photo is our brilliant October Glory maple tree on the left. It certainly lives up to its name.

Helen threw up spectacularly last night. We don't think the Wild River Pizza Company will welcome us back. Becky stayed home from church with Helen today and we had so much fun it might be hard to get us to go to church next week.