30 January 2011

Helen showed us her versatile musical skills by playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on Gibson's ukulele, violin style.

Gibson makes lots of visits with Becky while the other kids are at school. He is getting used to being pretty spoiled with snacks and treats from the ladies we visit. This week he was even given a little stuffed dog. Hopefully he grows up to find ministering visits as delightful as he does now. 

Brandan makes fruit smoothies for our family almost every Saturday morning. This week he threw the leftovers of a spinach/grapefruit salad into the blender along with berries and juice. It was delicious. We couldn't taste or see the spinach. Well, Helen says that she could see and taste the spinach and she still thought it was delicious.

 

Jewelry making is one of Sophie's favorite hobbies. She gives some away as gifts, but mostly she makes things for herself. She has jewelry spilling out of many boxes, baskets and drawers in her bedroom and the bathroom. Brandan helped her put some hooks on a board in her closet to help organize her many, many bracelets, necklaces and earrings. The photo shows the board and some of her jewelry as she started to tidy up.

 

This week Sophie made beautiful matching necklaces for Becky, Helen and herself with peridot pendants and sterling silver fittings. We all wore our necklaces to church today. 

23 January 2011

Earlier in the week Becky ran errands with Gibson and Helen in our little car. The novelty was a big treat for them-- they almost always ride in the van.

On Saturday the temperature was in the 50s so we took a short hike through some nearby hills. 

Southern Oregon was the site of a gold rush in the 1850s. The early gold miners cleaned out all the easy gold on the surface and moved on to the next gold rush. Later, during the Depression, people dug down deeper to find the gold missed earlier. No one got rich in the 1930s, but they did find enough gold for groceries or a tank of gasoline. Our hike meandered between the "glory holes" left behind by the miners. 

We try to practice "leave no trace" hiking-- take only photographs, leave only footprints. Kids are natural collectors, so it's sometimes hard for them to not fill their pockets with treasures found on the trail. Here are the rocks Helen and Abe would have taken home if they could.

Sunday evening was pretty mellow here. We were listening to quiet music, working on a puzzle and having a bedtime snack when Brandan called about 7:15. He was at a missionary fireside where he had about 6 dozen cookies to serve 250 people. He asked if we could make something else to bring over for refreshments before the meeting ended. After determining that Brandan was seriously asking, Becky surveyed the kitchen. Our assets: 1 stick of butter, 2 eggs, Sophie, lots of chocolate chips and a convection oven. With Sophie and Becky working at top speed, we whipped up 10 dozen chocolate chip cookies and delivered them just as the closing song ended. Now, a fireside certainly does not require refreshments and all 16 dozen treats disappeared in about 10 minutes, but this evening has been a night of loaves and fishes.

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16 January 2011

Sophie has started walking our neighbor's German Shepherd, Lily, a couple of times a week. Lily isn't used to being on a leash, but Sophie still enjoys taking her out.

Brandan took Sophie, Abe and Gibson to visit friends who raise prize winning llamas. The kids were enchanted with the llamas, especially the very social baby llamas. Brandan took a photo of this handsome fellow. We don't know his name, but Bob Marley would be a good choice. 

We watched the new Karate Kid movie this weekend. Gibson watched the scary parts by peeking out between Brandan's fingers.

 

In the movie, the young hero learns Kung Fu. One of his challenges is to kick a bell that hangs above his head. We have a bell that hangs by our back door so the kids wanted to try to make it ring by kicking it. 

Woot for Sophie! Sign her up-- she's ready for a Kung Fu tournament now.

Brandan's Birthday Math Problem

(okay, really more of a logic problem)

Brandan, Bret, Bridget, Brittney and Bruce are five doctors. They were 50, 47, 45, 42 and 39 years old. On January 4, they got together and compared their day. They had seen 250, 235, 220, 205 and 190 patients. They had prescribed 500, 480, 470, 460 and 420 medicines. They had removed 85, 83, 78, 71 and 64 moles. They had answered 240, 235, 230, 220 and 215 emails. Based on the clues, how old is Brandan?

[Believe it or not, Becky frosted this paragraph on Brandan's cake. She gave him a paper with the rest so he could solve it.]

**Bonus** Match the doctors with their ages, patients seen, medicines prescribed, moles removed and emails answered.

The Clues:

1. Between the 3 of them, Bridget, Brittney and Brandan had the highest number in each of the 5 categories.

2. Bridget and Bruce never had the lowest number in any of the categories.

3. Multiply Brittney’s number of patients seen by 2 to discover her number of prescribed medicines and multiply Bruce’s number of patients seen by 2 to find his number of prescribed medicines.

4. Multiply Brandan’s number of emails answered by 2 to find his number of prescribed medicines and multiply Bridget’s number of emails answered by 2 to find her number of prescribed medicines.

5. Bruce prescribed exactly 10 more medicines than Bridget and Bret answered more emails than Brittney.

6. Multiply Bruce’s age by 5 to find the number of emails he answered.

7. Brandan and Bridget are not the oldest and Bret is not the youngest.

8. Brandan is exactly 3 years younger than Bret and Bridget saw exactly 15 fewer patients than Bret.

9. Brandan and Bret each removed more than 64 moles. Bruce removed exactly 7 more moles than Brittney and exactly 7 fewer moles than Brandan.

9 January 2011

Happy Birthday to Brandan! We can't say enough about how much we love this man, although since he edits this blog, he'd probably delete any extravagant compliments. We celebrated his birthday with a not-so-yucky gluten-free vegan carrot cake that we all could eat. Becky is still staving off Alzheimer's by making up a problem to disguise his age. His birthday math problem is pretty long this year, so we'll put it at the end of the post for any dedicated math fans. Don't bother counting the candles the kids put on his cake-- he's not 9 years old.

Another reason to celebrate-- we finished the 1000 piece puzzle. The puzzle was a photo of a junk drawer. Now we're all itchy to clean out our own drawers and cupboards.

It's time for a break from parties and time to get back to work. Brandan took the Christmas lights down from outside. Instead of spreading lights around the yard, he put 600 red LED lights on one maple tree. The results were beautiful, with all the main branches of the tree clearly outlined in red, however, it took meticulous effort both wrapping and unwrapping the lights around the branches. 

Between the 6 of us, we have 14 pairs of boots which are too tall for our shoe shelves. They have been kept in the mudroom, sometimes in neat rows, but mostly in an untidy pile. Brandan used a birthday gift certificate and created storage for our 14 pairs of boots in the small space to the side of the back door. Abe helped drill holes for the shelf supports.

 

Here are the finished shelves. It's very nice to have the boots up off the floor. 

2 January 2011

The party continues at the Hull house-- Helen turned 6 on December 29! Helen is strong and smart, loves beauty, creates constantly. She writes sweet love notes to all of us, often tied up with pretty ribbons. She intuitively understands the way things (and people) work.

Helen frosted her own birthday cake and put red sprinkles on it. 

Helen got a bird feeder and a field guide to birds for her birthday. The feeder has already attracted some fluffy black and gray juncos to our backyard.

We went sledding on New Year's Eve. It was cold in the mountains, but very beautiful, with lots of fresh snow. Here's a photo of Abe going down a hill. 

It's a good thing we took a photo of Gibson sledding with Brandan as this was the only time he got on a sled. After this, he refused to go. If you ask him if he had a good time sledding, he will give you an enthusiastic, "YES!" At least he has good memories.

Helen is a little polar bear, sliding down hills, giggling about getting dumped in the snow, making snow angels and a snow fort. We think she ate her own weight in snow. Here she is playing in a snow fort. 

Back home, we settled in for New Year's night. We burned our 2010 calendar, sending the old year out in a short lived blaze of glory.

This is the first year we let all the kids stay up playing games as late as they wanted. Gibson wasn't taking any chances and wore a bike helmet while we played Risk. Becky learned the hard way that it's best to stay out of the Middle East.

After Brandan achieved world domination (Abe gave him a good fight) we went to work on a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle our friends loaned us. We'll be working on this for a while longer. 

Sophie, our Scandinavian pacifist during Risk, flitted between the games and reading. Gibson fell asleep about 10 pm and Helen at 11 pm. We told Helen that she made it long enough to celebrate the New Year with Grandma and Grandpa in the Mountain Time Zone.

Becky found some leftover sparklers in the cupboard which we lit at midnight. 

Today marked the end of an era as Gibson left nursery for Sunbeams. We've had at least one child in nursery continuously since 2004. Gibson's cute nursery leader organized a graduation ceremony complete with hats and certificates. Gibson wasn't sure he would like Sunbeams. "I'm going to be very noisy," he told us, but so far, he loves his new teachers.