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. 

24 October 2010

Happy Birthday to Sophie who turned 13 on October 19! Sophie is delightful, sensible and whimsical. She is a blessing to our family. We squeezed in some birthday celebrations before school and after soccer practice on Tuesday.

Brandan and Becky attended the annual Halloween party. For the 80s theme we went dressed as Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Politics aside, the Reagans have a very sweet love story.  https://www.reaganfoundation.org/ronald-reagan/nancy-reagan/the-love-story/

On Saturday, Sophie celebrated her birthday with friends at a Mad Hatter Tea and Mystery Party. All of the guests came dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland. Sophie was the Mad Hatter. The evening ran on Mad Hatter rules which meant cake first.

Curiouser and curiouser... the cake was made of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The mushroom decorations were made of cherry tomatoes and string cheese. 

Later in the evening we served "sandwiches"-- slices of pound cake spread with Nutella and strawberry jam. 

Here's a photo of the guests at the end of the party. The kids dressed up to varying degrees. The very beautiful White Queen left before we took the photo. The Cheshire Cat deserves special mention. Her dad does auto body detail work for a living and he airbrushed her face using water-soluble paint. He also hot glued her costume together using a purple rug and a black turtleneck. The guests solved the mystery of the missing Alice and played croquet with flamingoes and hedgehogs, but their favorite party game was the old stand-by of statues.

17 October 2010

Helen especially loves riding the kindergarten bus to school. She gets to ride the bus with Annie, Marcus and Luke, all friends from church. Annie's mom took this cute photo.

Here's an updated photo of Abe working on his model airplane. This week he connected the wings together. The weather was so nice that he worked outside on the patio. 

Brandan is playing indoor soccer this fall. He feels pretty rusty after an 8 year lull from playing on a team, but also feels happy to be able to play again.

Abe gave a talk in Primary today. The topic of his talk was "The mission of the church is to invite all to come unto Christ." 

10 October 2010

Brandan harvested our sunflowers this week with Gibson's help. The sunflower heads are a good source for an all natural snack-- the kids love munching on the seeds. Some may call our garden neglected, but we prefer to call it "organic."

Brandan is always on the lookout for examples of the Fibonacci series in nature. Named for the Italian mathematician who discovered the series, the pattern is derived by starting with 1, adding 1+1 to get 2, then 1+2 to get 3, then 2+3 to get 5. The series continues by adding the 2 numbers just previous to get the next number of the series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. . .) The numbers in the Fibonacci series show up repeatedly in nature-- the number of sides on a banana or petals on a flower or spirals in a seashell or spirals on a head of cauliflower or spirals on a sunflower. The seeds on a sunflower head form spirals in two directions. Brandan counted the spirals on this head and found 34 spirals like the 2 green lines on the left and 55 spirals like the lines on the right-- both Fibonacci numbers. 

We made it to the cross country meet this week in plenty of time to enjoy a beautiful afternoon and a great race. Below is an actual photo of Sophie racing, not a phony staged photo like last week. Sophie thought she was going to pass out after the race, but she looked terrific as she approached the finish line. 

In our hurry to get to the meet on time, Abe grabbed only one tennis shoe. (Un?)Luckily for him, Helen had an extra pair of sparkly purple flip flops in the car. Here Abe is sitting on his feet while he watches the race.

3 October 2010

Sophie had her first cross-country meet Thursday. Her cheer squad got lost on the way to the meet and missed her run. It was very frustrating for us to drive around for 45 minutes looking for the right school, but Sophie didn't mind that we were late. She posed for a photo when we finally got there.

Helen's teacher posts good examples of handwriting on a "Name Hall of Fame." Helen has been practicing writing her name to be put on the wall. We like how she first draws her own lined paper, complete with a dashed line in the middle of the solid lines.

The first weekend in October means time for the fall plant sale at our favorite nursery. They opened the same year we started landscaping our yard and we're growing together. Except they have thousands of plants and know what they are doing. But other than that, we're practically the same. 

Helen is our little chef. This morning as Becky was making salsa, she asked, "Is there any mango left over from breakfast? It would taste good in this salsa." She was right-- it was delicious. 

Here we are eating the salsa with our lunch and playing General Conference bingo. The weekend has flown by in a rich blur of spirit and testimony. Becky's two favorite quotes: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" (President Uchtdorf Saturday morning), and "To live in gratitude is to touch heaven" (President Monson Sunday morning). Brandan was inspired by the many reminders to be more patient, gentle and consistent.