26 August 2007

Our ward has a group called the Friendship Circle that meets once a week to work on Humanitarian projects. The local Salvation Army recently asked them for 45 quilts. To speed up the process, the Friendship Circle assembled bags of quilt squares and asked others to sew them together into quilt tops. The Friendship Circle then takes the finished tops, adds borders, batting and backing, and machine quilts them. Sophie picked up one of the kits to assemble and sewed it together herself. All of the materials for the quilts, as well as the labor, are donated.

Two years ago we planted an Asian pear tree. We're training it in an espalliere on the side of our garage. This week we had our first harvest- 8 pears. They are amazing -- crisp texture with a rich, sweet, butterscotchy flavor.


Update on the patio -- Brandan has finished placing the stones. It took 6000 pounds of slate. We discovered one problem: kids love digging out the sand between the stones. On Saturday, he and the kids built a sandbox to dig in instead of digging in the patio. The photo below shows the kids digging a hole to put the sandbox in.

19 August 2007

Gibson had his 4-month-old check-up this week and weighed in at 20 pounds 13 ounces. He is 26-1/2 inches long which means he is too big for his infant carseat. The limits of the carseat are under 20 pounds and 26 inches. Needless to say, Gibson is off the chart.


Our stake welfare project is a pear farm -- the only pear farm owned by the Church. The pears ripened 2 weeks ago, so the picking started. Three stakes in Southern Oregon came to help. In 12 days, we picked 1,547 bins, or 1,500,000 pounds of pears. We have about 300 bins of pears still on the trees. The pears are sent to Salt Lake and distributed throughout the world.


Gibson started rice cereal this week.


Our dentist's son has food allergies similar to our kids'. He has been encouraging us to buy a rice cooker. After 6 months of asking if we had a rice cooker he showed up at our door with one and a bag of rice. He said, "Where's the kitchen?" then came in, unpacked it and showed us how to use it.

12 August 2007

Wade, Stephanie, Parker, Logan and Kaylee visited us from Monday through Saturday. We had a super great time with them. The cousins played hard the entire week, but we persuaded them to sit still (sort of) for a group photo.


The kids talked Brandan and Wade into sleeping outside with them one night. In general, there was not much sleeping going on this week. The kids shared Pottermania, dare devil stunts at the playground and tree climbing.


We showed Wade and Steph some of our favorite spots, like the Redwood Forest and the beach and also went somewhere new for all of us-- the Wildlife Safari. The main attraction is a 4-mile drive through free roaming wild animals. All of the kids were excited to ride an elephant, but after they saw how big the elephants were, only Sophie and Parker wanted to get on. Steph rode with them.

5 August 2007

Como estas? Our friend, Magui, has started teaching our kids Spanish once a week and it's growing into a little class as other friends want to bring their kids. Magui is a natural teacher and the kids have a lot of fun. Becky listens in on the classes and is trying to learn, too. Que color es? Amarillo!


Brandan is raising the next generation of craftsmen (or craftspeople). Brandan built a great shelf with towel hooks for the kids bathroom and they helped paint it. Watch out Pottery Barn!


The jumble behind Sophie is our volunteer garden. We didn't plant anything this year since Gibson was a month old when it was time to plant. We had several volunteer tomato plants come up which we have pretty much ignored and now we are feasting on delicious tomatoes. Today Sophie picked a bowlful to take to our ward cookie social.