30 November 2008

Happy Thanksgiving! We've enjoyed a wonderful week-- the kids home from school all week and Brandan home since Wednesday afternoon. Abe brought home a trio of turkeys he made at school.


Thursday morning Brandan enjoyed a game of touch football in the field near our house. It was a misty, moist morning, but they played for a couple of hours.


Our friends, Greg and Pam, invited us to dinner along with two other families. We brought sweet potatoes and pie. Who can stop at one pie? Abe and Helen eye the desserts we brought: pumpkin pie, chocolate pumpkin pie, sugar-free chocolate pie and chocolate brownie trifle. Pam had 4 other pies for dinner so there was plenty of dessert, just the way we like it.


Our kids were the youngest at dinner (the others were teenagers) and after dinner, Pam let the kids settle into her bedroom to watch cartoons while the adults visited. Helen and Abe each snuggled into a recliner. Dinner was at 1 pm and we stayed until after 9 pm, eating and talking.

Saturday we started decorating for Christmas. The best part of decorating is listening to the kids' excitement over the tree and lights. We put a small Christmas tree in each of our kids' bedrooms, and Gibson fell asleep last night pressed up to the side of his crib, as close to the lights as he could get.

23 November 2008

Gibson was very proud of this tower he built with some groceries.


On Tuesday we had our friend, Gideon, over to play. Gideon is 5 years old and has Down's Syndrome. Abe and Helen are confused by him (why is it okay for Gideon to hit but not for us?), but Gibson just treats Gideon like every other kid he knows and enjoys playing with him. Gideon's dad is a doctor and his mom is a vet, so he knows a stethoscope when he sees one.


This is a photo of our neighbors' cat, Tia. Becky hates Tia and curses "Drat that fat cat!" whenever she sees her in our yard. It doesn't help that she digs up our plants and uses our yard for a litter box. Gibson loves Tia and gets so excited whenever he sees her. We'll have to keep our eyes open-- he'd let her into the house if he could.


It was about 40 degrees on Thursday, but Abe insisted he wanted to wear shorts to school. Well, okay. Luckily, Abe is a smart boy and it only took walking outside to convince him to go put pants on.

Saturday we went downtown to see the entries in a gingerbread house competition. The photo is of the grand prize winner-- over 150 pounds of gingerbread, frosting and candy which it took 2 months to build. Our favorites included an extremely detailed model of WALL-E, Cinderella decorating her castle for Christmas, The Wizard of Oz and a Japanese house decorated with sheets of seaweed and rice crackers (maybe not tasty, but very creative).

An art gallery downtown sponsored gingerbread cookie decorating at the same time as the gingerbread house show. Abe can't eat the cookie, but he can eat the candy!

Helen got a tummy ache after decorating her cookie. Becky didn't even think to read the label on the frosting, which Helen ate some of. Even after 5 years of allergies and some pretty scary mishaps, we still get careless. Fortunately, her stomach ache went away quickly.

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Sophie and her cookie-- a dapper fellow.

Gibson caught on to frosting pretty quickly and enjoyed decorating his cookie. Wait a minute, 4 cookies decorated, 1 kid without food allergies-- who ate the other 3 cookies? (Hint-- ask Becky!)

16 November 2008

Becky has no interest in cars and Brandan has no time, so a good mechanic is essential for our family. Luckily, we have a GREAT mechanic named Bob. He's quick, knowlegeable, skilled and completely honest. On Monday, he outdid himself by dropping our van off at our front door after completing some maintenance. Good service like that is priceless!


The kids were out of school on Tuesday for Veteran's Day. We went to the dedication of a memorial to Oregon's fallen combat veterans from all wars. The memorial is beautiful and such a good reminder that we live a pretty posh life at the same time Americans are risking their lives in two wars. One speaker said every combat soldier takes a bullet to the heart-- emotionally if not physically. The rain and low clouds prevented a scheduled F-16 flyover (this is the carrot Becky dangled to get the kids out there in the rain), but we were so glad we went and honored all our veterans. Sophie's friend, Rylee, came with us.


Becky's grandpa and dad both served in the Army, in the 82nd Airborne division. These are the guys who jump out of airplanes. Her grandpa served in France during World War II. The photo below is of her dad in his uniform-- so brave, young and handsome.


Thursday afternoon was beautiful and warm-- T-shirt weather-- so we went to the park. Gibson loves to go down the slide by himself, although he looks nervous in this photo as he lets go.

Saturday Brandan took the kids to the Clayfolk show, an artisan pottery exhibit. The kids had fun making their own projects out of clay. Brandan was inspired by the beautiful pieces they saw and wants to get his pottery wheel out and experiment on some plates and platters. Becky wouldn't mind-- her favorite dessert bowls are some Brandan made in college.

9 November 2008

Becky klept a great idea from Family Fun magazine to get the kids a piece of Election Night action. The kids nominated dinner choices for 4 catagories: main dish, side dish, drink and dessert. Becky made ballots with pictures so everyone could vote without help-- except for Gibson who was completely disenfranchised. Sophie is holding up her ballot in the photo below.


Here's a photo of Abe putting his ballot in the ballot box. We voted Monday night and ate our dinner Tuesday night as we watched the returns. The winners were chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes with gravy, smoothies and brownies with ice cream. It felt like a party to eat such a big dinner in the middle of the week. (It helped that our guy won.) The kids definitely want to do this again.


The kids love piling blankets and pillows at the bottom of the steps and jumping on them. They call this a "jumping case," so if you hear them say "Let's build a jumping case," this is what it means.


Sophie's turn to jump. It only took 18 tries to get a photo of someone in the air.

On Saturday, Sophie and Abe went to a pirate-themed birthday party. Becky asked them to scowl for the camera. Shiver me timbers! Them be fierce scalywags!

2 November 2008

Hip hip hooray for Brandan's medical practice! His group was voted "Favorite Medical Group" in our newspaper's annual Readers' Choice awards. The only prize is mention in last Sunday's newspaper. Brandan also received the highest rating for patient satisfaction this quarter. That award comes with a $50 gift certificate.


The firewood we ordered was delivered this week. We have no idea how much wood we'll use and we don't have a lot of room for storing it, so we started with one cord. Abe helped Becky stack the wood alongside our garage. He liked testing his limits and carrying the big pieces. The wood is madrone, a common hardwood in our area. The trees have red bark and wonderfully twisted trunks.


Halloween was our big event this week and it was our best Halloween ever. Four kids equals 4 times the fun. The rest of the photos are from Halloween, starting with Sophie in her costume. She dressed up as Night Rider (not to be confused with Knight Rider.) Night Rider is a villainous character made up by Sophie who commits all kinds of terror as she pursues her main objective, destroying Tom, the man who jilted her. Sophie has written short stories and a musical starring Night Rider. This whole thing took waaaayyy too long to explain, so Sophie would just say "Evil" when she was asked what she was.


No need to guess here-- Abe was Spiderman. He loved the padded muscles on his costume.

Helen changed her mind nearly hourly in the weeks up to Halloween about what she wanted to be. Luckily, we have lots of dress-ups and could stay flexible. She dressed as a princess for visiting Brandan's office (scored lots of candy there) and for watching the school parade. . .

. . . and as Pippi Longstocking for trick-or-treating. Helen thought if she said "Trick-or-treat" first, she could take candy from our bowl of trick-or-treat candy by the front door. Just wait, Helen-- when you're an adult, you don't even need to say "Trick-or-treat!"

Gibson was a monkey.

He went headless most of the time, but Sophie coaxed him into his hat for one photo.

We all went to school for the Halloween parade. A band of fifth graders, including Sophie, played salsa rhythms to accompany the parade. Sophie played the go go bells. The bells are 2 metal cones that she hit with a stick.

Here's a photo of the band- lots of percussion instruments.

Here's friendly neighborhood Spiderman in the school parade. Surprisingly, the werewolf behind Abe is named Ava. Abe says she has the best growl ever.

In the evening, we went to our ward trunk-or-treat and then trick-or-treating to a few neighbors. We were home by 7:30 pm. The kids poured their loot out on the table to gloat over. The 4th pile between Helen and Sophie is the contraband candy-- stuff Helen and Abe got that they are allergic to. Becky let them swap it out for candy they can eat in our trick-or-treat bowl. Not that they need more candy, but it makes a raw deal seem a little more fair.