27 February 2011

It snowed Friday, the kind of Oregon snow we love-- a beautiful layer of white blanketed the trees, bushes and grass, but the streets and sidewalks were bare. Abe hurried out to play first thing in the morning because he knew it would all be gone by the time he got home from school. Here's a photo of the mini snowman he built.

Becky couldn't get Abe to wear a coat to school. He compromised by wearing a pair of gloves which he stuffed into his backpack as soon as he got on the bus.

 

Abe needed a challenge after school so Becky told him to build a freestanding structure out of magnets that was 12 inches high.

 

Gibson used Becky's eyeshadow and mascara to draw a beard and mustache on himself. He didn't do too badly considering he did it under his bed without a mirror. If you can't hear Gibson, it's a good signal to go find him.

 

20 February 2011

Happy Valentine's Day! We celebrated with a candlelight breakfast and homemade Manga valentines.

This week has been very quiet around the house as one person after another has succumbed to a nasty cold.

 

Helen said, "It's helpful to be sick because I don't feel like being naughty."

 

All of the kids missed a day or two of school. By Saturday they all had cabin fever and were very excited to have the missionaries for dinner. Adding more novelty, Elder K. brought his ukulele and played some music for us. Three of the missionaries in our area play the ukulele. Does this seem like a high percentage?

 

13 February 2011

Becky recently learned from a local magazine that we live 2 hours from the largest wintering ground for bald eagles in the United States. They come for the mild weather and the abundant food and water. The magazine article raved about the eagles, boasting of seeing 200-300 eagles in a day. This sounded too impressive to miss so we headed out Saturday for a day trip to find the bald eagles. After a couple of hours driving and trying to approach the refuge from a couple of directions, we learned something the article neglected to mention-- the refuge is closed to the public.

Although the eagles were off limits, we were right in the middle of the Pacific Flyway, a migratory zone that stretches from Alaska to Argentina. We took a few hours to look around. Hundreds of birds dotted the rivers, lakes and irrigation canals. All the white lumps behind Sophie and Helen in this photo are fat, fluffy swans. Becky looked unsuccessfully for eagles on every tree and telephone pole.

 

The kids' favorite spot was a boat dock on the edge of a lake. There weren't a lot of birds here, but lots of space to run around and plenty of rocks to throw into the lake.

 

Gibson carried the binoculars most of the day. He likes to look through them backwards so everything looks tiny. We headed back home as the sun started to set. We were settled into the car, listening to a story and eating dinner, when Brandan spotted a bald eagle flying east across the highway, the only one we saw all day. No doubt it was headed home to roost in its well protected refuge.

 

6 February 2011

Sophie did a jewelry experiment this week with something called Art Clay. It's easy to see why it's a favorite with jewelry makers. Art Clay is 99% silver, but it looks like clay and can be shaped and molded like clay. Sophie decided to make a ring for her first project. She rolled out a strip of clay, embossed it with rubber stamps and shaped it into a ring.

After letting the clay dry, she smoothed the rough edges with a nail file. Then she heated the ring, burning the clay away and leaving a nearly pure silver ring.

 

She burnished the silver using a wire brush and an agate burnisher. Sophie's mind is whirling with possibilities for future projects. The entire process was fascinating to watch-- alchemy come to life.

 

Pictionary is a favorite activity for family night. We think our kids play pictionary in reverse-- they try to stretch out their drawing time as long as possible by drawing as slowly as they can or leaving out details which might help someone guess their drawing earlier. Gibson really made it tough this week. His prompt was to draw "obey the commandments." He drew R2D2. 

Brandan and Sophie have started a new project together. They're building a harp. The first step was planing a big piece of walnut smooth. This project will take a long time to complete, probably a year or more, and we'll post more photos as the harp progresses. You can see an example of the kind of harp they are building here: https://www.thorharp.com/index.htm