26 June 2011

Abe spent the week at Cub Scout Day Camp. Just a bit of 8 year old heaven-- BB guns, archery, water games, carpentry, leather stamping-- Abe loved it all. Becky went along as an assistant den leader for part of the week.

Abe and his buddy were given a box of craft supplies like popsicle sticks, Q-tips, pipe cleaners, feathers and tape and told to build something. They made a survival kit, which was appropriate since the theme for the week was "Survivor."

 

We're snacking on strawberries, peas and raspberries from our garden. Few of the berries make it inside-- you'd have to pick the strawberries with your teeth to eat more locally than Gibson.

 

We've tried for a few years to grow bamboo in barrels along are fence. Our vision is a lush green screen. Supposedly bamboo is quick growing and wildly invasive, but that has not been our experience. We finally have some new shoots growing. Abe took a photo of Gibson's koala sitting in the bamboo. He may have koalas confused with pandas. 

We're working hard to get ready for our pioneer trek next month. Each family picks a name and decorates a flag to attach to their handcart. Helen is holding up our flag. If you think you've seen the logo before, you're right. We picked our family name, Southern Oregon Survivors (SOS-- very clever) months ago, but hadn't made our flag. The logo on the cub day camp T-shirts was perfect for our theme, so Becky shamelessly copied it.

 

19 June 2011

Sophie brought home a delicious treat from her trip-- biscuits dipped in Cadbury hot chocolate. "Biscuit" is the British word for cookie. We love that these biscuits are labeled "digestives." It makes them sound very nutritious.

Sophie got her Herbst appliance taken out of her mouth this week. She's worn it for about 9 months. She still has her braces, but significantly less metal in her mouth. The orthodontic tech offered to let Sophie keep the appliance, but we settled for a photo of it.

 

We took a walk along the river on Wednesday afternoon.

 

The kids enjoyed wading in the river and skipping rocks.

 

On Friday we took a guided tour of a nearby arboretum. It was fascinating to learn about the different trees. The guide spent a long time teaching us the differences between pines, firs, spruces and cedars. And (big surprise) the Douglas Fir is none of the above. It's a separate species-- Pseudotsuga-- or false hemlock. Just the sort of almost useful trivia that Becky is crazy about. Helen was delighted with a grassy field dotted with daisies and buttercups.

 

12 June 2011

Abe, Helen and Gibson started swim lessons this week. Abe and Helen are making good progress. Gibson loves being in the water-- such a switch from last year when he didn't even get his swimsuit wet.

Thursday was the last day of school. The weather warmed up to make it really feel like summer. Time for otter pops, bikes in the alley, kids everywhere. 

The kids love to play on a big sandpile near our house.

 

Here's a photo of Abe jumping off the top.

 

Abe tried some Sriracha chili sauce with his dinner tonight. At first he tried playing it cool. Then the heat kicked in and he pulled some pretty funny faces. Of course, he tasted it 4 or 5 times after that.

 

UK trip week 2

On Saturday, we went to a discovery museum in Belfast called W5 (who, what, when, where, why). At the exhibit in the picture, Brandan and Sofi made motor-powered cars that they then got to race on a special track nearby. The other exhibits included Flight, Motion, Senses, and Animals.

Paul drove us around to see places our family had lived hundreds of years earlier. We appreciated his gift, as gas is over $7 a gallon.

After a relaxing Sunday, we caught a ferry to Scotland, then spent the day visiting towns where our ancestors lived, looking for family names in old church cemeteries, and making our way to the city of Edinburgh.

Tuesday, we spent at Edinburgh's records office called the Scotlands People Centre. We got a lot of research done. On Wednesday, we went on this underground tour. During the 1700's, they decided to rebuild parts of Edinburgh. Instead of knocking down the old buildings, they just leveled them off, and used them as foundations. This left a whole bunch of underground passageways and rooms. In between the buildings are narrow outdoor hallways called closes. The name of the tour is called Mary King's Close. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures, so here is a picture of a normal, aboveground close.

 On Wednesday, we went on a tour of Mary King's Close, narrow corridors under the old city.

 

There was a beautiful park right next to the Royal Mile. 

Later on Wednesday, we went to this place called The Camera Obscura. A camera obscura is a giant periscope on the top of a building, that projects down onto a white table in a dark room. By turning the periscope, you can get a 360˚ view of the city in live motion. There were a lot of other exhibits dealing with illusions and tricks too. This here is Brandan standing in a tunnel of lights. It's two mirrors facing each other, reflecting lights back and forth endlessly.

Here's a picture of Sofi being headless in another exhibit in the camera obscura.

 

On Thursday, we visited Edinburgh Castle. Inside, we saw places like the Chapel (built in the 12th century), the Dungeons, and the Great Hall.

 

Friday, we headed back to Belfast, and stayed with Kathleen again before catching our plane on Saturday. Here we are with Paul and Kathleen. We were grateful for the wonderful hospitality our distant cousins provided us, both in Belfast and in Dungiven.

As we were landing in LA on the way home, we were descending through the clouds, and hit a place where we were above one layer, and below another. Just a beautiful view. Our trip was amazing, but coming home was even better. We love our family!

 

UK trip week 1

Here are some highlights of Brandan and Sofi's 2-week trip, written by Sofi. We arrived in Belfast, Northern Ireland on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We were met there by Paul Hull, and his mother, Kathleen Hull. On the way to Kathleen's house, they showed us this beautiful overlook out onto the city. 

On Monday, we picked up our rental car, and made our way across the country to Dungiven, a drive of about an hour and a half, to some other relatives, Janet and Wilf. After dinner, Wilf took us out to Janet's dad David Hynds' house. He has a huge collection -- a museum, really -- of antique farm equipment, along with a large selection of old pots, pans, jars, and other old every day items. He is shown here demonstrating a peat cutting tool. (Peat is the dead plant material found in bogs that Northern Irelanders used to cut into logs, and burn for heat and light.)

On Tuesday, we went out to the Giant's Causeway, a beautiful rock formation composed of thousands of hexagonal columns. Sofi and Brandan both had a good time climbing around on the different formations.

The columns were made of a basalt lava flow that hardened, and cracked into hexagonal columns. Over time, the columns have broken into the varying heights that exist now.

We went to the city of Londonderry on Wednesday. We visited this church, Saint Columb's Cathedral, which is a place that our ancestors attended 300 years ago.

Londonderry is one of the few cities left that is completely walled. Our ancestor, Peter Benson, was the chief contractor for the wall in the 1600s. You can walk around on the wall, and look down at the city around it. We visited the museum and learned about the history of conflicts in Northern Ireland.

On Thursday, before leaving Janet and Wilf, we went to our ancestors' farm, Hillfoot farm at the base of the hill Benbradagh (pronounced benbrahdah, accent on the second syllable). It was a very neat experience, to be on the same ground that some of our ancestors had lived all their life.

When we got back to Belfast, we visited Belfast Castle, a beautiful, young castle. We had a lot of fun exploring the garden, in which they had hidden 9 cats in various forms -- topiary, mosaics, statues.

We found out that C. S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, was actually born in Belfast. They have a statue of him to remind people. Very exciting, to be in the same place that C. S. Lewis once was.

On Friday, we spent the day at PRONI, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. During a break for lunch, we went to a local market to go gift shopping, and grab some lunch. Sofi had made a goal to find and try some Stilton, a type of blue cheese made only in Europe, and was delighted to find some at the market. Here she is with her Stilton, and a Belfast Bat -- a common type of bread.

 

PRONI is located right next to the shipyard that built the Titanic. The two giant cranes, nicknamed Samson and Goliath, are still standing.

 

5 June 2011

On Monday we went to a wildlife refuge and the kids got to pet a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are not native to Oregon, but this little fellow was rescued from an illegal breeder.

Abe received an award this week for having 500 Accelerated Reader points. The Accelerated Reader Program encourages kids to read books, then take a test to check their comprehension. Each book is worth a certain amount of points based on its length and difficulty. For example, the Magic Treehouse books are worth 1 point each, the Percy Jackson books are around 15 points each, Harry Potter books are all worth more than 25 points each. Abe's strategy has been to read a lot of books at all point levels. Some of his favorites are Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Magnificent 12, and other high action adventure series.

 

Abe's soccer team celebrated the end of their season this week with a party at a local pizza parlor. Becky called ahead to see what they had on the menu that Abe could eat. Nothing. They offered a gluten free crust, but it had eggs in it. Even the chicken wings were breaded. The manager was pretty flexible, though, and told us "You bring a crust he can eat and we'll build a pizza on it." We had a big misstep when the workers put cheese on the pizza (they scraped everything off the crust and started over), but all in all it was a great tasting pizza. Abe's teammates marveled at all the vegetables he had on his pizza-- that was more remarkable to them than a wheat and cheese free pizza.   ~   [to the right] Abe planted a beefsteak tomato, a red pepper, leeks, beets, carrots, basil, broccoli and pole beans. Gibson planted corn, a yellow Roma tomato, a cherry tomato, rutabagas, bush beans and pole beans. Helen planted an Early Girl tomato, peppers, carrots, turnips and red onions. 

 

It's rained most of the week, but we took advantage of a break in the weather to plant our vegetable garden. Abe planted a beefsteak tomato plant,a red pepper plant, leeks, beets, carrots, basil, broccoli and pole beans. Gibson planted corn, a yellow Roma tomato plant, a cherry tomato plant, rutabagas, bush beans and pole beans. Helen planted an Early Girl tomato, lots of pepper plants, carrots, turnips and red onions. Becky snuck some edamame in with the peas that are already growing (using the untested theory that when the peas are finished with the bamboo supports, the edamame vines will be ready for them-- we'll see.) 

 

Sophie and Brandan have been missing the past two posts as they've been on a 15-day trip to the UK. We'll let them catch up on their amazing adventure in a post of their own. We loved Skyping with them while they were gone-- their enthusiasm for their experiences was infectious. Brandan also left us a bunch of tiny notes, written on origami paper and tucked all over the house for us to find.

 

The travelers made it home last night, after a grueling 27 hour day. We're glad they had a great trip, but we're super happy to have them home again.