28 April 2013

Our much loved elementary school principal is retiring at the end of the year.  The PTO plans to crown her something like "Queen for the Day" at a special assembly in June.  They asked Becky to make some royal robes for the occasion.  Helen happily modeled the finished cloak before Becky dropped it off to the PTO.

 The Pinewood Derby race was Friday.  Abe won the "Sweet Ride" design award for his car.

 Helen repeated her successful design from last year (a painted block of wood) and came in 3rd place in the family division.  She painted her car to look like a spy car.

 Here's a photo of Gibson with his car.

 Gib got the hang of balancing on his own on Friday and now he loves riding his bike.  He rode his bike to church and then home again today.

21 April 2013

It's Pinewood Derby time!  Brandan helped Gibson cut out his car.

Gib filed and sanded his car himself.

Abe was able to cut out his own car (with supervision).

Helen came home from a birthday party with a butterfly painted on her face.

 Brandan and Helen had a wonderful time at the "Me and My Guy" dance at Helen's school.  They won a raffle for movie tickets so there is another daddy/daughter date in their future!

Our ward holds an auction every year to raise money for Girls' Camp and Scout Camp.  On Saturday, our family fulfilled half of our donated services by doing yard work for a neighbor for 2 hours.  Our kids seem to find chores at another family's house much more interesting.  

Sofi wanted to make Seuss themed cookies for the closing night of the school play.  She had Abe, Helen and Gibson shape multi-colored dough into cookies while they watched Dr. Who.

 The play, Seussical the Musical, ended last night.  Sofi was in another version of this play 3 years ago. This is a photo of Helen and Gibson with Thing 1 and Thing 2.

 Sofi played the part of Mrs. Mayor in the show.  Mrs. Mayor is one of the Who's saved by Horton the Elephant.

Here's a photo of Sofi with her counterpart, Mr. Mayor.  Sofi did a wonderful job singing, acting and dancing in the show.  Becky complimented Sofi on her performance during a sad part of the show-- it can be hard for Sofi to hide her natural cheerfulness.  "I just thought about the play being over," she said, "and that made it easy to be sad."

14 April 2013

 

Helen received a medal at the school assembly this week for having 250 Accelerated Reader points. 

Abe got to dissect a frog this week.

He wanted to bring the frog home, but Becky made him settle for a photo of it.  This should be the last photo of a dissected animal this year.

 Becky ran the 10 mile Pear Blossom Run this year and set a personal record of 1:31:16.  After some experience, she has learned to grab an extra water bottle at the end of a race.  The first thing the kids usually ask when they see her is "Can I have a drink of your water?"

Spring soccer started a couple of weeks ago.  Abe moved up to a U-12 team to help even out teams with players and coaches.  Brandan is the assistant coach of his team.  Abe is great fun to watch.  He hustles the entire game, plays forward or back equally cheerfully (and skillfully) and stays relaxed while playing hard.  Most of the time he's playing, he has a huge grin.  Watching Abe reminds you that soccer is "the beautiful game."

7 April 2013

Conference Weekend passed by quicker than ever.  Hooray for the busy people at lds.org who have already made all the video available so we can pick up on the parts we missed and repeat our favorites. Brandan had many favorites, including Elder Cardon's talk on forgiveness.  For pure joy, Becky loved Elder Falabella's talk-- he described home life at it's best, a bit of heaven on earth.  Elder Christofferson's retelling of the priest's redemption of Jean Valjean from Les Miserables made Sofi squeal with delight.  Abe liked the story President Monson told about starting a grass fire as a young boy.  Helen like Elder Anderson's talk about missionaries the best; she took a page of notes while he was speaking.  Gibson liked the concession stand the best.

Abe proudly brought home the worm he dissected at school on Tuesday.  The worm was neatly slit open and pinned to a styrofoam tray with all its body parts labeled.  We could see a lump of dirt that was passing through the worm's digestive system before it expired.  

Abe turned 10 on Wednesday!  We love our Abe.  He's hard-working, a self-starter, a talented athlete and musician.  Abe bounds out of bed in the morning and has a good attitude all day long.  Abe sets high goals for himself and regularly exceeds his goals.

 We celebrated conference weekend this week.  Helen's Activity Days group made conference journals a few weeks ago to prepare for conference.  Gib was inspired to make his own conference notebook and kept careful notes in it.

 Abe practiced riding his Ripstick while he listened to conference.  A Ripstick is like a skateboard with 2 wheels.  Abe got one for his birthday and is already quite good at maneuvering around the house and neighborhood on it.  We've all tried riding it and it is much more difficult to balance on than Abe makes it look.

 Brandan recaulked the kitchen sink during the Saturday afternoon session.

Sofi worked on freezer paper stencils for T-shirts during the Sunday afternoon session.  Our ward is holding an auction soon to raise money for summer camps.  Sofi is donating 3 T-shirts to be sold at the auction.

 

Helen read about a Conference Concession Stand in the Friend magazine and asked if we could try it this time.  It was a huge success for encouraging our kids to listen and participate during conference.  Here's how it worked-- Becky bought an assortment of snacks, treats and mini craft projects.  The kids set the prices for each of the items and arranged the items like a concession stand.  During each morning session, Becky would pass out "conference coins" every 5 minutes to each child who was paying attention to conference.  The concession stand would open during the afternoon sessions and the kids could spend the money they earned during the morning session.  The kids took turns being the store manager.  Then they ate their snacks or worked quietly on their new craft projects.  Genius!  Each of the kids tried to earn the maximum amount of coins so they would have plenty of money to spend.