29 March 2009

Spring in Utah can be schizophrenic.  The week before we arrived in Utah was sunny and warm.  The week we were there we saw more snow then we've seen in the 8 years we've lived in the Northwest, put together.  The photo shows Drue snowblowing his driveway.  We spent most of our visit indoors. 

Abe loves reading about dinosaurs so we stopped by the Museum of Natural History on the University of Utah campus to look at fossils.  While there we learned about the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point, which houses some of the world's largest dinosaur skeletons.  We plan to stop by on our next visit to Utah.  Abe is standing in front of an Allosaurus skeleton, Utah's state fossil.

There are so many fossils in Utah, paleontologists have trouble looking at the things they have.  They bring back too many fossils from the field to examine them all.  Volunteers are working on the backlog, slowly scraping the rock away from the fossils so the scientists can identify the dinosaurs.  We saw an unnamed dinosaur skull they are working on, a previously unknown relative of Triceratops. 

We all enjoyed playing Rock Band on the Playstation at Drue and Maggie's house.  Helen and Abe liked guitar best, Sophie liked singing vocals and Brandan was pretty good on the drums.  Sounds like we have enough people for a real band.

Betsy, a woman Wade met while on his mission in Chile, was staying with Wade and Steph.  She showed us how to make completas, or Chilean hot dogs, for lunch one day.  Pretty good stuff-- a hot dog covered with chopped tomatoes, sauerkraut, mayonnaise and guacamole.

Gibson celebrated his 2nd birthday while we were in Utah and had a birthday party with lots of family.  Gibson rolls through life pretty easily.  We love his belly laughs and his rapidly expanding vocabulary.  His mouth is covered with chocolate in the photo from Easter candy he found in the early Easter egg hunt Grandma Linda and Grandpa Dan held for the grandkids.

Here's a small part of what makes 5 days in freezing weather great fun: Logan, Abe, Helen, Sasha, Sutton, Salem, Sophie, Gibson, Parker and Dallin with Kaylee on top.

One last photo for the week-- while on our trip, our family heard a lot about the 11 week fitness challenge we've been participating in as we drank water copiously, avoided sweets, gobbled whole grains and grumbled about our food diaries.  Saturday marked the end of the challenge with our final weigh-in and stats collection.  Below is a photo of Autumn, personal trainer extraordinaire and mastermind of the challenge.  We didn't win, but Autumn very generously gave us a consolation prize.

If you would like something to replace TV or to listen to while driving, check out Teach12.com.  These folks create lecture series on many topics by the top university professors in the country.  Our neighbor loaned us her 96-lecture series on an introduction to Astronomy by Alex Filippenko, which we are enjoying very much.  The courses are university prices, but they have periodic sales, and each spring they put their top series on sale for hundreds less.  The ones about How the Earth Works or 200 years of Unforgettable Short Stories whet Brandan's appetite.

21 March 2009

We're posting a day early as we near the end of the Idaho leg of our vacation. We spent the first night of our trip with Rob and Amy's family and sadly forgot to take any photos. Thanks for your wonderful hospitality!

We spent Friday in Twin Falls, picnicking along the Snake River. Zina, Abe and Sophie are posing in front of the Perrine Bridge which is a popular site for BASE jumping.


The basalt bluffs were perfect for scrambling.


Saturday we went ice skating at Sun Valley Village. Helen loved ice skating, although in her case it looked like she was just being dragged around the rink.


Sophie was pretty independent on the ice.

Abe could let go of the edge by the time we left. He still stayed close to something to hold on to.

The best part of our trip has been the company. Sophie and Zina are inseparable. Someone in Sun Valley delighted them by calling them sisters. (Sophie is wearing her sporty new glasses.)

Sawyer and Gibson are visual opposites, but have the same easy-going personalities. They enjoyed playing together and we enjoyed laughing at their antics.

All the cousins together: Sy, Gibson, Abe, Sophie, Sawyer, Helen and Zina. Thanks, Joe and Sarah for making our visit so fun! Thanks, Joe and Keri, for the long drive to see us! We already miss you all!

15 March 2009

March 17 will be our 14 th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we went snowshoeing in Crater Lake National Park on Saturday. Crater Lake has 2 seasons, winter and August. The park gets over 500 inches of snow each winter and park rangers lead snowshoe hikes on weekends from November through April. The rugged terrain is gorgeous any time of the year. The snow made a beautiful backdrop for the hemlock and fir trees.


If you can walk, you can snowshoe. The only trick is to go forward. If you try to walk backwards, your snowshoes will catch and you will fall.


The weather was clear when we got to the park and we had a good view of the lake. Later on a storm blew in, obscuring our view. Crater Lake has the clearest water of any body of water in the world, with visibility to 140 feet. It's the 7th deepest lake in the world at 1943 feet deep. Ranger Don led our tour. Rule #2 of the hike: Don't throw snowballs at the ranger.


We stopped for huckleberry pie and hot chocolate on the way home and enjoyed watching the snow fall from inside the cozy restaurant.

Gibson broke Abe's piggy bank. Sophie said, "Don't throw it away. It would make really cute bowls." If this is The Great Depression Part II, we're glad to have Sophie along for her thrift and creativity. (Becky still threw the bank away.)

More Sophie creativity. She has the illustrator assignment this week for her reading group at school. We're pretty sure that means she could draw a picture for the book they're reading (Matilda, by Roald Dahl.) Sophie decided to make a chess set to illustrate the book with the characters of the book as the chess pieces. The photo shows her cutting the pieces out of clay. She painted scenes from the book on the chessboard.

If we don't post a follow up photo of Sophie's finished chessboard, it's because we missed it in the rush to get ready for our upcoming trip to Idaho and Utah. SO EXCITED to see cousins (and the cousins' parents and grandparents, too!)

8 March 2009

For family night this week we updated our 72 hour kits. It was a bit of an archaeological dig since it had been 3 years since we last looked in them. Which explains why Helen had diapers in her backpack.


Gibson's backpack is fresher than the rest (only 2 years since we made it), but it was still hopelessly out of date. We'd hate to try to squeeze him into these pajamas in an emergency.


Brandan showed the kids how to work the crank powered radio. Going through the backpacks felt like a treasure hunt.


Becky has a few relics in her backpack left from the 72 hour kit her parents put together when she was little, including this pocketknife and a small container of change (for a pay phone, of course!)

Brandan keeps a pair of old glasses in his backpack. Sophie asked, "Were those glasses ever in style or were they just really cheap?"

We would have been in sorry shape with this pile of food in an emergency. Three year old chocolate is not pretty (or edible.) Our applesauce and dried fruit had turned black. We weren't brave enough to try the canned soup. Cold cereal and crackers? What were we thinking? Stuff that survived the wait: instant oatmeal, jerky, candy. The all natural granola bars were gross, but the highly preservatized granola bars fared well.

After trips to Goodwill, Target and the grocery store, our backpacks are ready to put back on the shelf. Becky is superstitious enough to believe if we actually have 72 hour kits, we won't have to use them. We're adding "update 72 hour kits" to our spring cleaning list so we'll hopefully remember to clean them out before 2012.

1 March 2009

Sophie started rehearsing for "Annie" this week. The orphans learned 2 songs and the choreography for 1 song. Here's what has Becky doing handstands about play practice: it's WORK! Becky loves anything that makes Sophie work hard. Seven weeks to go until the show opens.


Gibson was promoted from his high chair to a booster seat a few months ago and has been eating on real dishes since then. This week, he wanted a napkin at dinnertime and was so pleased to have a napkin on his lap like the rest of us.


Helen wanted her photo taken, too. Wait a minute. Is that her napkin on the back of her chair? Fortunately, we have approximately 5,320 family dinners to practice manners before she heads off to college.


We've had Elder M. to dinner several times, but he surprised us Saturday night with his impressive piano skills. He's virtually a virtuoso. His companion says he shows off all the time, but this was our first time to hear his talent.