30 March 2008

This week we celebrated an important milestone-- Gibson's first birthday! Here's a photo of Gibson at 5 days old and weighing 9 pounds. We could already tell that he was a cuddler and so good natured.


And here he is at 366 days! Can you believe it? Now he weighs 27 1/2 pounds and has 8 teeth (he cut his first molar on his birthday). He'll never have another year when he triples his weight. He doesn't have much more hair than when he was born, just some adorable blond curls in the back.


At 1 year old, Gibson can sit in a forward facing car seat. He seems to like the switch. This will be his seat for the next 7 years since our state mandates car seats until kids are 8 years old.


Sarah sent us a Bundt pan that cooks car-shaped cakes. We used it for Gibson's birthday and it worked great. The cars are all classic designs.

Gibson really wanted to grab the candle on his cake. He didn't eat much of his cake, but he liked the m&ms we were decorating the cars with. Some of Gibson's favorite foods are sweet potatoes, kidney beans and Pad Thai.

Helen picked a Jeep to decorate. Helen likes frosting better than cake and her gold dragees best of all.

Sophie decorated a cute convertible. Becky baked a pound cake recipe and a wheat-, egg-, milk-free chocolate cake. Both cakes turned out deliciously.

Abe also picked a convertible. He just looked for the biggest cake. His car is full of m&m people. We were glad Gibson had a birthday so we could have such a fun cake decorating party.

Helen gave her first talk in Primary today. Well, actually, Becky gave it while Helen held the picture. At the end Helen said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." Given her and Abe's recent stagefright, we're going to practice giving talks as part of Family Night for a while.

23 March 2008

Happy Easter! We've had a lovely day together. The highlights were listening to the ward choir's beautiful program (Sophie and Brandan sing in the choir) and having our friends, Greg and Pam, for dinner.


Brandan has built two new bookshelves in our library over the past few weeks. One stands on either side of the doorway. If you compliment Brandan on one of his projects, he says, "All it takes is the right tools." Uh huh, and how many high quality wood projects do you see Becky making with those same tools, hmmm? The kids helped move the picture books to the shelves on Monday. Now they're all together and easy for the kids to reach.


Maybe they're too easy for the kids to reach. The space between the bookshelf and the couch is now a favorite cozy spot for Helen and she likes to take the books off the shelves and pile them around her as she reads.


Sophie represented her class in the school spelling bee. She was nervous about spelling out loud in front of the 4th and 5th graders, but she did a great job. She made it to the 3rd round, misspelling "ballistic". Only 2 students made it past the 3rd round and they had a spell off for several more rounds.

Helen was sick Friday and Saturday. She was miserable- runny nose and fever- but she was awfully sweet, too. We feel fortunate that with all the nasty bugs this winter, this is the worst we've had.

16 March 2008

All the photos here are from Saturday. It was an unusually busy day for us and here are some of the things we did. In the morning, we walked over to the church for a Primary party. Our friends, Grant (in the jogger with Gibson), Seth and Brenna walked home with us and stayed to play for a few hours. Whenever we cross this creek, we have to stop for the kids to throw rocks into the water.


While everyone else was at the party, Brandan rented a thatcher and dethatched our grass. We're going to go organic on our lawn this year. We're a little nervous because we love the nice green lawn we've enjoyed the past few years with chemical fertilizers. On the other hand, all those chemicals are like soda pop for our lawn and the grass and soil are not very healthy. We'll let you know how it goes and if we get any nasty notes from the neighborhood association (unlikely since Brandan is on the board).


In the afternoon, Sophie went to a Young Composers Recital. The participants each played an original composition and then everyone had a chance to comment on the piece. This is the third year Sophie has participated and she looks forward to it every year. This year her piece was called "Frogs" and one teacher commented that she liked that Sophie expressed the movement of the frogs through modulation. It's official -- Sophie knows more about music than Brandan or Becky.


After dinner, Brandan helped the kids fill a box with Plexiglass sides with dirt and sand for worms to live in. They call it "The Wormery."

9 March 2008

Brandan and Becky went snowmobiling Saturday to celebrate their anniversary (13 years on the 17th). The weather was perfect- warm and clear, no wind. The scenery was amazing, although Becky was too nervous to open her eyes the first few minutes. Brandan likes to go fast- the snowmobile's top speed was about 50 mph and Brandan went top speed whenever possible. We rented our snowmobile at Diamond Lake where there are over 300 miles of groomed snowmobile trails. Great fun!


Our trip took us from Diamond Lake to the rim of Crater Lake. Wow, wow, wow. We've been to Crater Lake in the summertime, but it's even more beautiful in the wintertime. The park had nearly 9 feet of snow, covering many of the trees and all of the underbrush. We can't wait to go back to this viewpoint in the summer to see where we were. The tallest mountain in the background is Mount Scott.

We recently had a missionary from Louisiana for dinner. We do not eat spicy food. No 4 alarm chili around here- maybe a feeble squawk. We searched our cupboards for something the elder could spice up his dinner with and found a bottle of red pepper flakes left over from Becky and Ruth's apartment. We're not sure how much spice is left in 14 or 15 year old flakes, but the missionary seemed satisfied. The red pepper flakes are now Sophie's condiment of choice.

Brandan is building some more bookshelves in our library and Gibson found a hammer he was using to countersink brads. Gibson has an unerring instinct to locate the most dangerous item in a room. He loved swinging the hammer around, but we traded it for a toy hammer that's less likely to crush body parts.

At the advice of our pediatrician, we had Helen tested for allergies recently. The allergist tested her for wheat, milk, eggs, peanuts, bananas and kiwi (Immunocap score of IgE antibodies for you medical types). She tested positive for all and the allergist says she has the worst food allergies he's seen. He's Abe's doctor, too, and we always assumed Abe's allergies were worse. Now we feel blessed we had Abe first to clear the way for Helen.

2 March 2008

Here's Sophie with her completed Fort Clatsop. She took it to school Monday morning and brought it home Monday afternoon. Becky wanted more fanfare after the hours it took to build the fort. Sophie's class is now finished with their Lewis and Clark unit and are now learning about the Oregon trail. All last week at school Sophie wore the sunbonnet Sarah made her and the apron Wade and Steph gave her. She is the only 4th grader dressing like a pioneer, but that's our Sophie.


Here is a picture of the actual fort.


Helen cleaned her and Sophie's room all by herself and without being asked. This involved putting everything from the floor onto her bed. She was very pleased with herself. It's a good thing she told Becky, "I cleaned my room," because Becky otherwise would have mistaken her activities for making a mess.


For Family Night this week, we asked the grandmas and grandpas for their favorite colors, foods, activities, songs and scripture stories and then played a matching game. The kids were quite good at matching. Except for favorite color, they got all the matches right. It was great fun and we enjoyed it so much, we're going to think of more ways to involve you in long distance family nights. Can you guess who is who? (Please excuse the poor drawings- the idea was to help the non-readers play the game.)