30 October 2011

Abe and Helen's school celebrated Halloween on Thursday with parties, a parade during school and a carnival after school. Brandan, Becky and Gibson went to watch the parade. Gibson wore his Superman costume.

Helen is dressing up as a bride this year. This may be her poofiest dress yet. She loves her costume and beamed a 1000 watt smile during the whole parade.

Abe dressed up as a pink hippo. 

Gibson fell asleep in the car on the way home. His muscles made a good pillow.

Sofi was one of about 40 kids who signed up to participate. They each made an outfit out of garbage. Sofi's lovely ensemble consisted of a vest made from plastic packaging, a skirt made out of newspaper and a matching headband. The trashion show made a fun assembly, but the top prize went to a teacher who wore a costume made by one of the judges. Really? 

The middle school doesn't celebrate Halloween, but they did end Red Ribbon week with a trashion show.

We had our first freeze this week. We're still enjoying warm weather during the day. Helen patiently clipped the bean vines from their supports as we cleaned out our vegetable garden for the year.

 

23 October 2011

Happy Birthday Sofi! Our sweet Sofi turned 14 on Wednesday. She's growing up and spreading her wings, but still plays hard, with lots of antics and capers.

Sofi wanted a tie-dye birthday cake with chocolate frosting.

 

Abe picked the one fig that grew on our fig tree this year. It was delicious. Although our fig harvest was nearly nonexistent, our neighbor has been giving us bags of figs every few days. Fresh figs may be the easiest fruit to eat. The entire fruit is edible, except for the short stem which makes a good handle while you eat the fig.

 

Brandan and Becky went to a Halloween party dressed as Beaker (Brandan) and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew (Becky) from the Muppet Show.

 

Here's a photo of our inspiration.

Our friends, Emily and Aaron, posted photos of a hike on their blog that looked so delightful, we had to go. With a name like Avenue of the Giant Boulders, it was impossible to resist. Besides 2 waterfalls, the trail passes around and through huge basalt boulders, perfect for scrambling over, doing a bit of rock climbing and sliding down. We had a fantastic afternoon exploring the area. The photo contains our favorite elements of the hike: the beautiful fall day, the Rogue River, some of the big rocks and deliriously happy kids.

16 October 2011

Here's the big news of our week-- Becky finished Gibson's Christmas stocking! You might think, "Terrific! It's still 2 months until Christmas," and you would be right if the year were 2007. Poor Gibson has been stockingless for 4 Christmases. No longer.

Helen painted an itsy-bitsy bird house and hung it in a tree. It's all ready for pygmy hummingbirds to move in. 

This is the time of year we spend more time at Joanns than Target. Sofi made her own costume for the Halloween-themed stake dance on Saturday. She went as the main character in her favorite book. If you've read the book (see last week's post,) this is the flame costume the character wears for the opening ceremonies. Sofi sewed strips of red, orange and yellow fabric to an orange cape. This was Sofi's first stake dance (she was 13 years and 361 days old) and she had a great time.

 

A more tailored outfit-- Sofi finished her first sewing project-- a skirt. It turned out lovely and Sofi wore it to church today. Sarah and Zina sent Sofi the fabric.

 

The print on Sofi's skirt is called "The Ghastlies" and shows demented old ladies knitting and having a dinner party.

9 October 2011

During General Conference, Sofi worked on stenciling a T-shirt with a quote from her favorite book. She wore her finished T-shirt to school this week.

Here's a photo of the back of her shirt. Can you guess the name of her favorite book?

 

More freezer paper stencil fun-- Becky saw some cute Halloween pillows on an etsy site and decided to make one. The kids wanted pillows, too. Becky got the stencils ready and the kids painted them.

 

Here are the finished pillows. Gibson painted the orange pillow. The black silhouette designs were too boring for him. He painted a pirate pumpkin head with a green eye patch and 2 red scars. By the way, this is the beginning and the end of Halloween decorating around here. Usually we don't decorate at all except for carving a jack-o-lantern on Halloween and throwing it away the next day.

 

Saturday was a glorious fall day, made even sweeter by knowing how few Saturdays of beautiful weather we have left in the year. Brandan took advantage of the good weather to divide some day lilies and replant them around our yard. Gibson helped him. 

2 October 2011

Abe volunteered to play goalie for his team this week. Unfortunately, his teammates kept the ball on the other side of the field the entire half, so Abe didn't get much practice as a goalie. He played forward in the 2nd half and scored a goal!

We already knew we had a wonderful home teacher, but this week he outdid himself. He took our van one morning this week and returned it a few hours later, clean inside and out. He also checked the fluids and tire pressure and left a note on the dashboard telling us what he did and where to get our bumper fixed. Such a fantastic act of service and well appreciated.

Sofi is taking sewing lessons from our good friend, Sue. Becky certainly knows how to use a sewing machine and could get Sofi started, but Sue is in another class entirely. She is a master craftsman when it comes to all things fabric. Sue also has endless energy and enthusiasm and is a born teacher. Sofi is eager to learn to sew. Sofi has a definite sense of style that doesn't often match up with current fashion trends and she wants to sew the clothes she imagines for herself.

 

We had enough raspberries this fall to make raspberry freezer jam with our own berries. This is the first time we've ever preserved fruit from our own garden. Usually, we eat the fruit as soon as it ripens.

 

One of the lovely things about conference weekend are the dedicated hours at home we can use for playing, working on projects and relaxing as a family. The boys built some elaborate marble runs during Sunday morning's session.

 

They built another marble run that stretched up the stairs. Yes, Abe (and Sofi) wore his pajamas all day.  We love conference weekend! It ends too quickly. Gibson thought we had too much healthy food and should have more candy next time (editor's note: we had PLENTY of candy.) Helen's favorite part of conference was the candy. Abe liked Elder Cook's story about the sinking of the Titanic. Sofi liked Sister Dalton's talk, the song "Consider the Lilies of the Field," and the M&Ms. Brandan liked President Monson's incredible story about trusting the promptings of the Spirit. Becky is looking forward to listening to Elder Christofferson's talk on repentance and President Eyring's talk on the Book of Mormon again. A quote from President Uchtdorf stuck out to her (paraphrased,) "All the wealth of the world won't buy a loaf of bread in heaven."