26 February 2012

Helen was in charge of the treat for Family Night this week.  She invented her own recipe by layering Cool Whip, raspberry jam, M&Ms and gummy worms in glasses.

 

Abe and Helen's school held their annual jog-a-thon this week.  This is our favorite fundraiser because all the money goes to the school.  The kids get 20 minutes to run as many laps as they can.  They have paper tags pinned to their backs and parent volunteers make a mark on the paper for each lap they finish.  Abe ran 16 laps and Helen ran 9 laps.

  

Helen isn't the only inventive cook around here.  Brandan has been making us a delicious drink of cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods and whole cloves steeped in rice milk.  

  

Our popcorn popper broke which means the kids could take it apart.  Popcorn is a staple snack around here -- reasonably nutritious, cheap and allergy friendly.

  

Abe made a bird feeder this week for a school project from items in our pantry.  The red mesh bag used to hold potatoes.   ~   Abe also received his Wolf badge and a stack of other awards at the Blue and Gold banquet this week.  

19 February 2012

Here's a photo of the drawing Helen made to keep herself busy during Sacrament Meeting.  It's a little hard to read the captions.  The top says, "No peace in the land!!!"  Helen drew a picture of Darth Vader and a stick figure Lamanite in the middle.  The bottom says, "Darth Vader joined the Lamanites!!!"  You can tell Darth Vader is up to no good and maybe the Lamanite is wishing he joined some other group instead. 

  

The kids didn't have school on Friday-- another budget holiday-- so we rode our bikes to the park for a picnic.

12 February 2012

 

Here's a photo of Gibson with his sweet new ride.  His bike attaches to Becky's and they've been cruising around the neighborhood all week.  The trail-gator bar makes pedaling optional for Gibson.  They both love riding bikes.

Abe got a trophy at the school assembly on Friday for having 750 Accelerated Reader points.  The award came with a gift card to Barnes and Noble so Abe can buy more books (or at least 1/2 of one paperback).  Abe actually has 897.5 AR points.  His goal is to reach 1000 points by the end of the school year.

 

At the same assembly Abe and Helen got awards from the running club.  Helen got a certificate for running 50 laps (many of them in her pink cowgirl boots) and Abe got a keychain for running 250 laps.  One lap is equal to 1/8 mile.  Running 250 laps is more than 30 miles.  Abe was also chosen to have lunch with his principal next week-- it was a fairly exciting assembly.

 

One last hip, hip-- Sofi's math team won first place at the regional Mathcounts competition on Saturday.  They now advance to the state competition in March.  Sofi came in 6th place in the individual competition.  About 70 kids from 7 middle schools competed.  Fringe benefits of math team include hanging out with some cute boys and scoring a sweet T-shirt. 

5 February 2012

On Saturday Becky, Sofi and Gibson went to a Chinese New Year celebration.  The activities began with a parade.  The temperature was in the 60s, very pleasant.  Gibson got to try his first fortune cookie at the parade.  He was not impressed.

There are not a lot of Chinese people in Southern Oregon, so coming up with a whole parade's worth of culturally accurate entries was a stretch.  Some of the odder participants were bagpipers wearing Scottish kilts, a group of junior cheerleaders, a man in lederhosen playing the accordion and some Victorian Christmas carolers.  Our favorite group was the Loong Mah Ladies Dragon Team from San Francisco.  They had a super long dragon and could twist it into wonderfully complicated designs.

Gibson got a dragon painted on his cheek.  This is the year of the dragon, an especially lucky year.

We tried on some Chinese clothes and got our photo taken.  Becky is wearing a traditional Chinese wedding outfit.  It was fun to try on the clothes and the embroidery was gorgeous.

While half of us were celebrating Chinese New Year, the other half were playing at the Cub Scout Snowcapades.  Abe and Helen got to try a variety of winter activities and Brandan went along to supervise.  Here's a photo of Abe on a zip line.

There were lots of sled runs.

The kids practiced building fires and then roasted marshmallows on their fires.

 Here's a photo of Abe eating his marshmallow.

 

The kids also got to try out snowshoeing.  The snowcapaders left home before 7 am and didn't return until after 5 pm.  They were pretty exhausted from a fun day.