26 December 2010

Merry Christmas! We've had a lovely holiday weekend. Christmas on Saturday is just about perfect-- we've had plenty of time for stories, games, walks, puzzles and visiting friends. Brandan canceled all his meetings for the entire week and we enjoyed the extra family time very much.

We spent an evening earlier in the week decorating sugar cookies. 

The finished cookies were very colorful. Brandan's Australian cousins sent us some cookie cutters so we had some kangaroo and kookaburra cookies mixed in with the more typical reindeer and snowman shapes.

Helen was so happy to be reunited with her doggie this week. She left him in Utah last month, but he made it safely back home in a package mailed by Maggie. 

Our Christmas celebration kicked off with dinner on Christmas Eve. We felt like the Whos as we feast, feast, feast, FEAST!

After dinner we acted out the Nativity story. This year Sophie was Mary, Abe was Joseph (his beard was drawn on with yellow face paint), Helen was the angel, Gibson was a wise man. Brandan narrated the story and Brandan and Becky were innkeepers, shepherds and wise men. We all sang. 

We added a musical portion to our evening this year. Helen and Abe both started music lessons this year so they played music on the violin and the ukelele. Sophie and Brandan played songs on the piano. Not to be left out, Gibson played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on drums. We ended the evening by getting ready for bed and piling up pillows and blankets so we could all sleep next to the Christmas tree. 

Brandan surprised Becky with a walnut footstool. Brandan inlaid the stool with hundreds of precisely shaped ingots which completely cover 5 sides of the stool. Hopefully, the photo gives you some idea of the design. The footstool has wonderful texture and heft. 

Abe finished his 3-D soccer ball puzzle before breakfast on Christmas morning. We thought it would take a little longer than that.

Once again Sophie asked for, and received, a wedge of blue cheese for Christmas. Here she is spreading blue cheese on her waffles Christmas morning. She says it's a delicious combination. 

Packaging is still a great toy. The kids spent hours cutting up boxes and wrappings to make mazes for their tiny robotic bugs to navigate.

For our final photo, we can't resist posting a picture of Sophie and Helen in their delightfully old-fashioned nightgowns. Matching, too.

19 December 2010

Another reason Sophie is our favorite babysitter: creative play. Becky came home Saturday to find 4 giggly kids playing Star Wars with light sabers made out of legos. They took turns being Yoda, Obi-Wan, Annikin and Darth Maul. Some of their giggling came from pretending to be Darth Christmas.

As fun as the lego light sabers were, the kids found out pretty quickly that you can't actually duel with one. Conveniently, they found some empty wrapping paper tubes to color and play with.

Brandan took the kids home teaching with him tonight. He visits some wonderful people. Brandan and the kids came home with twice the goodies they left with, including these flashing reindeer antlers. In the photo Helen is also showing off her double light saber.

12 December 2010

Our week has been filled with beautiful Christmas music, both recorded and live. Abe's guitar teacher invited Abe to play a duet with him at the December meeting of the Guitar Society. They played "Angels We Have Heard on High." Christmas carols sound wonderful on a guitar-- such a warm, intimate sound.

More Christmas music -- this time Sophie playing "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" at the mall. 

On Wednesday, Abe got bumped in the face with a tether ball at recess and his very loose front tooth flew out of his mouth. Abe went to the school office to clean up the blood. His buddy, Ashton, found the tooth on the playground and Abe brought it home in a special tooth pouch. The principal said that she's seen a lot of teeth lost (and swallowed) at school, but this is the first one she can remember being found. 

Gibson went to the dentist this week and came home with a new toothbrush. We're pretty sure the dentist didn't give him the toothbrush so he could detail his Jeep, but that's exactly what Gibson used it for. He used his own spit so you can be sure the Jeep is clean.

5 December 2010

We started out the week decorating for Christmas. Our kids are old enough now that their help is real help and they have fun ideas of how to decorate.

Gibson likes playing with the nativity. He pretends the angel is Buzz Lightyear. 

Helen made a paper chain at school with 25 paper loops. Each day in December she is supposed to pull off a loop to keep track of the days until Christmas. Most days she has forgotten to do it. However, she never, ever forgets to eat a chocolate every day out of our Christmas advent calendar. 

Friday was College Bound Day at school. This year our kids supported the University of Utah. We asked Abe how it felt to be the only one at school (besides Helen) wearing red. Not bad, he said, he could be friends with the Ducks and the Beavers. 

We'd been lucky for many years not to have the light in our stairwell burn out. We certainly don't have a ladder tall enough to reach it. The lightbulb finally expired -- maybe leaving it on the entire time we were on vacation had something to do with it. Brandan perched our ladder on top of the ottoman and was able to change the lightbulb. He cleaned the window and dusted while he was up there. Hopefully it will be several more years before he climbs up again. 

28 November 2010

We got our fill of snow this week as we traveled to Utah and Idaho for Thanksgiving. When it wasn't snowing, it was freezing, with temperatures as low as 14 below. Helen was the only one of us to actually play in the snow.

We stopped at the Miller Bird Refuge in Salt Lake. Brandan proposed to Becky while standing on this stone bridge 16 years ago.

We stopped by the University of Utah. The large juvenile literature section in the library definitely interests Sophie.

We stopped by Temple Square. The decorations were the best we've seen.  We like how easy it is to approach the temple.

We spent the first half of the week in Utah visiting with Brandan's family. Helen, Abe and Sophie draw dragons with Logan and Kaylee.

Sophie enjoyed palling around with her sweet cousins, Salem and Sutton. 

On Wednesday we drove to Idaho-- through the snow, of course. We spent Thanksgiving at Keri and Joe's house with Becky's family. Sophie and Zina liked playing with Gage and Hayden. Having twin cousins meant they could each hold a baby.

Here Grandma attracted a crowd by feeding both of the babies at the same time. 

Here Grandpa swordfights Sy. 

More swordfighting-- this time Abe and Sy with light sabers. 

Here's a photo of Brandan putting chains on the car the 3rd or 4th time. He got very efficient at the chore, not a skill he was hoping to develop.

The snow was a pain, but the time spent with the family we dearly love was well worth it. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we give gratitude for the many, many snowplows we saw on highways all along our way. They worked day and night, holidays and weekends. Without their work, our trip would have been impossible. We'll never meet the operators of those plows, but we are very, very thankful for them. 

21 November 2010

Gibson fell asleep on the stairs earlier this week. He seemed pretty comfortable, but Brandan moved him to his bed after taking this photo.

 

Here's a photo of Gibson awake. He's caught a bit of the Harry Potter bug and likes to look at the illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. The picture of a dragon in book 1 is one of his favorites. 

Helen and Gibson were playing with legos Friday morning. Becky couldn't figure out the game they were playing so she asked for them to explain. They were playing fireworks-- they set up legos to represent fountains and mortars and then took turns lighting the fireworks and imagining what the fireworks looked like.

14 November 2010

We cleaned out our vegetable garden this week. Somehow it's not as much fun to scoop out the rotted remains of plants as it is to plant the fresh green vegetable starts. Abe was a champ and stuck with the job until the last moldy tomato was disposed of.

Sophie sang with her school choir at a Veteran's Day concert. Here's a photo of Sophie before the concert with her friends Rylee and Kristin.

The kids had 2 days off of school for Veteran's day. They will only attend 13 days of school in the entire month of November. Becky made sure to give them extra schoolwork and chores for the days off. The weather was clear and they also enjoyed playing outside. Sophie liked crunching through leaves on her bike.

Helen, Abe and Sophie spent some of their free time working on a fort. They came home every afternoon excited about the progress they had made. Becky went to see their fort on Saturday and they showed her all the features they had described. Here they are sitting on the fort's front porch. 

In all their descriptions they failed to mention that their fort was on top of a very large gravel pile. Brandan thinks the fort is perfectly safe. Becky sees a lot of potential energy waiting to slide down.     ~     No photos, but Sophie gave her first talk in Sacrament Meeting as a Young Woman. This was not her first talk in Sacrament Meeting, however. She spoke as a 3 year old as part of a Mother's Day program. She was just as poised and relaxed today as she was back then. Sophie has natural ease and grace in front of an audience-- a talent we are in awe of.

7 November 2010

It's finally looking like fall! It's been unusually warm and dry this year. Brandan took Abe, Helen and Gibson to a park on Saturday and their favorite part was playing in the thick blanket of leaves covering the grass.

The kids piled leaves on the bottom of the slide and took turns plowing through the leaves. 

They scraped more leaves together to make a pile to jump in.

31 October 2010

Welcome to our special super-sized Halloween edition of holus-bolus. With Halloween falling on a weekend, the kids have had plenty of opportunities to dress up in their costumes. Here's Buzz Lightyear.

And here's Jessie.

Here's Voldemort. Between Buzz Lightyear's laser and Voldemort's curses, we've been shot at a lot the past few days. 

The Mad Hatter.

Here are all the kids ready for trunk or treat fun. We thought Abe was brave to dress as Voldemort on a night so many Harry Potters would be running around, but they just shared their favorite spells with each other. 

We have lots to share from the rest of the week before Halloween, too. Helen started taking violin lessons this week. She's been fascinated with the violin for about a year and is excited to learn how to play. After her first lesson she can pluck out the first half of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. 

Her cute violin is 1/10 size. We took a photo of it next to Brandan's full size violin for comparison. 

Becky and Gibson went with Helen's kindergarten class on a field trip to a pumpkin patch. We discovered another benefit of afternoon kindergarten-- a freezing, moist morning turned into a pleasant afternoon and we enjoyed finding pumpkins and playing outside at the farm. 

Sophie's friend found a frog in his yard and gave it to her for her birthday. Sophie spent a good chunk of babysitting money to arrange a comfortable aquarium for the frog. She named the frog Adagio Molto. This is the first pet she has ever had (Becky is not a friend to animals) and she is taking excellent care of him.

Abe's last soccer game was Saturday. His team celebrated the end of the season with breakfast at the park and medals for all the players.