25 September 2011

Brandan took Abe and Gibson to our ward's father/son campout this weekend. It was about 13 hours of pure boy heaven. Gibson shows off some sticks he found to play with.

Abe climbed higher than he's ever climbed in a tree before. His orange sweatshirt makes him easy to spot in the photo below. He climbed even higher before he had to hurry home for his soccer game Saturday morning.

 

Becky, Sofi and Helen had a fun girls' night at home. Our big event Friday evening was taking Helen to get her ears pierced. Helen loves her sparkly blue earrings and planning what she'll wear when she can change her earrings. 

Sofi is playing soccer for the first time this fall. She decided she wanted to play Sunday night, her first practice was Monday afternoon and her first game was Saturday morning. The league has a shortage of girls her age so they let her on a team even though the season had started. The photo show Sofi in her first soccer game.

 

18 September 2011

Our stake welfare project is a pear farm. A small group of people take care of the farm year round, but when harvest time comes, it takes thousands of volunteer hours to get all the pears picked. We picked pears for a family night activity last week.

We've had the warmest weather of the year this September. Helen got some water balloons from her teacher and the kids have enjoyed playing with them all week. They can't tie off the ends so they just fill the balloons with water and squirt each other with them. 

We continue to learn how to garden. After a couple of our bushes died, we looked around at the most neglected yards we could find to see which plants thrived. Old fashioned bushes like lilacs and snowball bushes seem especially hardy. We planted a snowball bush in an empty corner of our yard and are expecting great things of it. 

11 September 2011

Tuesday was a big day here-- the first day of school! We have all 4 kids in school at 3 different schools.

We walked Abe and Helen to their classes on the first day. Abe is in third grade. He likes that the kids in his class are good sports.

 

Helen is in first grade. She is delighted to have 3 recesses this year. She only had 1 recess in kindergarten.

 

Gibson goes to preschool 2 days a week. He likes playing and the snack.

 

Nearby forest fires have meant especially colorful sunrises and sunsets this week. Brandan took this photo Saturday morning.

 

A TV show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, is building a home in Southern Oregon this week. If you aren't familiar with the show (we weren't), they build a home for a needy family in a week. They pre-build some things ahead of time, but mostly work like crazy to get it done in time. We suppose it makes for a more exciting TV show than building slowly would. As you might imagine, it takes thousands of volunteers to do this. Our friend, Sue, is a seamstress working with one of the celebrity designers on decorating bedrooms for 3 boys. Sofi and Becky went over to Sue's to help with some decorative pillows. In this photo, Sofi is cutting out fabric to make tire shaped pillows for a race car themed bedroom.

 

Here is Sofi stuffing rock shaped pillows for a volcano themed bedroom (very TV decorator style). Sue had about 10 people of all ages helping her out. We had a great feeling of camaraderie and fun as we worked. No matter what the rooms will look like, we could imagine the forts the boys could build with the giant pillows or see them in a pillow fight. The house will be done on Tuesday, but the show won't be on TV until November. 

We're headed this evening to a memorial concert in honor of 9/11. The nicest part of this weekend has been remembering America at its best. As we've listened to and read tributes to different ordinary Americans, we've realized with gratitude that we live with that same kind of people all around us: people who look out for their neighbors, who think of others first, who give generously. It feels extraordinary to live in such a caring community.

4 September 2011

We picked some blackberries this week. Abe, Helen and Gibson pretty much ate every blackberry they picked on the spot. The rest of us picked enough for a delicious blackberry cobbler with some leftovers for snacking.

Gibson thought the red, unripe berries were raspberries until he tried eating them. Unripe blackberries are very, very tart.

 

We had a burst of creativity this week. Helen and Gibson made some colorful crayons by melting broken pieces of crayon in a muffin tin.

 

Helen also looked through some fabric Sarah sent and picked out pieces to make into a bag for her violin music. She helped sew it together by pushing the sewing machine pedal while Becky steered the fabric.

 

Abe went a little crazy drawing Chibi guys. Chibi is a cute Japanese cartoon style where the figures have huge heads and tiny bodies. Here's a photo of some of the pictures Abe drew.

 

Sofi had a couple of friends over for smores and a backyard movie Saturday night. The rest of us invited ourselves to the party. Gibson likes roasting marshmallows better than he likes eating them. He likes letting them catch fire, blowing them out and then throwing them in the firepit.