30 May 2010

Sophie's school hosted an awards night this week and Sophie got an award for academic honors. In other words, her GPA is not too shabby. Sophie has had a great year in 6th grade, but her biggest achievements aren't easily measured. So here are the unofficial academic awards we would give her if we were in charge of honors night: a big hip, hip hooray for the B+ she worked her tail off to earn in Keyboarding, a high five for navigating the gold AND green sides of school after switching to 7th grade pre-algebra half-way through the year, an out-of-sight award for tackling a test on her first day in pre-algebra and muscling her way through the test (we're still in awe at the amount of algebra she understands intuitively), and three cheers for the essay she's writing to call for enforcing the school dress code. We're so proud of Sophie and can't wait to see what she'll do next.

Earlier this Spring, Becky bought Sophie and Helen matching skirts. Because of their age difference, she's always tickled when she finds the same thing in both their sizes. When she picked Helen up from school on Friday, she noticed something funny and checked Helen's waistband. Yup, wrong skirt. And Helen had worn it all day at school.

Here's Helen wearing her own skirt. We're a bit rushed around here in the mornings, but Becky can't believe she missed this one.

Saturday we went out to the coast to play. The weather was beautiful, although the water was freezing as usual. Sophie, Abe and Helen enjoyed sliding down a bank of sand into the water. 

Gibson didn't want to get wet, but he enjoyed digging in the sand, throwing rocks in the waterfall and eating Jelly Bellies with Becky. We tried making a fire and cooking lunch on the beach, which was trickier than we imagined. Despite the wind, Brandan got a great fire going. So great in fact that it cooked our dutch oven potatoes in about 20 minutes. Well, they were probably done after 15 minutes, but we checked them at 20 and enjoyed blackened potatoes with plenty of ketchup and sand. Next time we'll eat at a picnic area and save the beach for sand castles and kite flying. 

23 May 2010

Sophie's friend, Zach, brought a baby bird he found to our house to show us. He took it to the same animal rescue center that Sophie took her eggs to and learned that the bird is a killdeer, the same species as the eggs Sophie found. It also turns out that Helen is pretty allergic to killdeers-- the swollen eyes, welts on her face, hard to breathe kind of allergic-- so if anyone else finds a baby bird, please leave it where you find it. Or at least don't stop by our house with it.

Becky celebrated her 36th birthday this week with frozen mango mousse on a macadamia crust.  Very yummy.

Becky made some strawberry freezer jam this week. What a treat! The kids were eating a jar of jam a day, so we have a new jam policy. We have to alternate a jar of store bought jam with each jar of freezer jam. Otherwise our jam will last about 2 weeks.

Abe and a couple of friends tried setting up a domino course using every domino in the box. His friends had to go home before they could reach their goal. Abe stayed up after they left and got all the dominoes arranged. He wanted his picture taken with them before knocking them down on purpose.

16 May 2010

Although Mother's Day was last week, we're posting photos of the sweet gifts the kids made for Becky this week. Sophie made a necklace with jasper beads and a fuchsite ruby pendant. Gibson also made a necklace. His is the popular pasta and yarn combination (thank you to his darling nursery leaders who helped him.)

Abe potted a marigold and decorated the can that holds it. Helen made a plaque from homemade paper. Handmade presents are the best. Each of these presents represents the givers' best efforts-- lots of love in each.

We bring home lots of great ideas from Helen's school. A new favorite is making swords by rolling a section of newspaper diagonally so that it makes a long tube. The kids can whack freely without too much damage to people or property.

Helen colors a princess picture nearly every day. This week she hung her favorite pictures on the fridge for a mini art exhibit. We took a photo because we knew the pictures would stay up for about 15 minutes before Gibson took all the magnets down. We especially like the pictures Helen embellishes with her own words and drawing.

While Brandan was in residency, we lived near his cousins, Dave and Christine, and enjoyed spending time with them and their 4 kids. Six years later, Dave and Christine have moved close to us with their now 7 kids. We reconnected with them this weekend and their daughter, Brynlee, stayed the night. Brynlee is a sweetheart and she and Sophie have lots in common -- favorite music, favorite books, playing the piano, jewelry making. They had a great time dressing up, taking photos of each other, adding effects, and combining the photos into slide shows. 

9 May 2010

Gibson took a big spill on the sidewalk and it took two band-aids to cover the scrape on his knee. He chose one Transformer band-aid and one Little Mermaid band-aid.

Helen helped Brandan spray off the window screens. Helen likes to pretend she's Cinderella while she works.

Abe's school had a science fair this week. For his experiment, Abe put some microwave popcorn in the fridge and freezer and measured how well it popped compared to popcorn at room temperature. He picked this experiment because he likes to eat microwave popcorn-- good thing since he popped 10 bags over 3 days for his experiment. His result: "Never, ever store microwave popcorn in the freezer." Or at least let it warm up before you pop it.

Brandan took Helen and Sophie hiking on Saturday.

Brandan also took Abe to a BMX dirt track. It was Abe's first time to ride on the track and he had a blast. Riding over the bumps was his favorite part. He crashed once, but only needed one band-aid (Spiderman for this guy).

Our family experienced a big change this week when Becky was called to be the Relief Society president for our ward. The house is a mess, with papers and binders stacked everywhere. Becky feels like she's back in school and it's finals week as she tries to cram enormous amounts of information into her brain. Hooray for 4 wonderful kids! They've been terrific about going above and beyond their normal responsibilities and very patient with their distracted mom. 

2 May 2010

It's been a couple of months since we've gone on a Monday school field trip. We remedied that this week with a trip to an operating grain mill. Built in 1872, the mill still uses the same millstones that were imported from France when the mill first opened. Our guide told us that this is the only water-powered mill in operation west of the Mississippi.

The millstones are powered by a turbine instead of the older style water wheel. This was state of the art technology in the 1800s and is still impressive engineering today. The kids are standing in the basement of the mill, underneath the millstones, next to the machinery that transfers the potential energy of 14 feet of water into kinetic energy to grind grain. We've decided not to do any special projects this trimester for our Monday school. We'll just go on field trips and finish up our history book-- we have the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to cover along with detours through China and India. 

Abe's regular class has been working on animal reports and Abe chose to study jaguars. He gave an oral report in class on Tuesday. We learned that jaguars have the strongest jaws of all cats and can kill their prey by biting the animals through the skull. 

Abe also built a diorama showing a jaguar in its natural habitat for his report. In it you'll see a capybara nibbling on a giant leaf, oblivious to the jaguar stealthily creeping from the dark jungle, ready to pounce.

Helen sat on the porch, playing Gibson's ukulele while we waited for Abe's guitar teacher to come. We may be getting 3 lessons for the price of one -- Helen and Gibson like to sit in on Abe's lessons. 

Here are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, also known as Sophie and Ireland. After months of rehearsal, the girls' hard work paid off with 4 really great performances. They got some of the biggest laughs of the show. Sophie's favorite part of the play was meeting the other amazing cast members (mostly 7th and 8th graders.)     ~    On a separate note, Sophie and Ireland got a postcard this week to let them know that their killdeer eggs never hatched. They were very hopeful that the eggs would hatch and eventually the birds would be released to the wild, so the news was disappointing to them.