26 May 2013

 At Christmastime last year, Becky signed up for the cheese club at our local cheese shop.  It is free to sign up; they just ask for your email address.  Which they have never used.  The main perk of the cheese club is a free half pound of cheese on your birthday.  Becky stopped in on her birthday this week to see what she could get.  Anything in the store!  Including their reserve Rogue River blue cheese which they sell for $44 a pound.  

 Gib snacked on samples while Becky decided what to get.  The owner said the cheese club doesn't cost him very much money because nobody remembers to come on their birthday.  We will remember!

 Our strawberry plants are producing gobs of strawberries.  Becky picked a colander full on Wednesday and made some freezer jam.

 The kids have already eaten 2 containers of jam.  Here's a photo of Abe eating jam on a pancake.

Helen's class went hiking on Friday with her class and learned about our native plants.  Becky came along as a chaperone.

Here's a photo of her class at the top of her hike.

 Abe is playing in a soccer tournament this weekend.  He played 2 games on Saturday: 1 win and 1 loss.  His team played 2 more games today-- the club director is very gracious about excusing players who don't play on Sunday.  His team played well today and Abe will play with them tomorrow as they compete for 2nd place in the playoffs.

19 May 2013

Gib's class read the book, Flat Stanley, about a boy who gets smashed flat and goes on an adventure in the mail.  Each person in his class drew their own flat person.  Gib named his Flat Bob and sent him to visit Sarah, Joe and Zina.  Sarah took photos of Flat Bob and mailed him back.  Gib made a poster of Flat Bob's adventures.  Thanks, Sarah and Zina, for helping Gib with this fun assignment.

Helen got a Ramtastic award on Friday.  Each trimester, each teacher chooses two students who show consistent good behavior to recognize with this award.

We made a super quick trip to Idaho this week to attend the funeral for Brandan's Aunt Joyce.  Despite the last minute schedule changes, he felt it was important to support his mom and her siblings.

We attended memorial services in Heyburn then drove to the nearby Paul Cemetery.  We were impressed that all the other cars on the road pulled over as the funeral procession passed.

 Our kids were happy to see their cousins, Dallin and Emma.

 Sofi says her favorite landscape is sagebrush.  Becky think she only says that to be contrary.  Sofi certainly got to see plenty of sagebrush this week.

 We left home at 1:30 pm on Wednesday and returned at 12:30 am on Thursday, spending 24 of those hours in the car.  Luckily all of our kids are good travelers.  Give them a book (or a book on CD for Gib) and some snacks and they're happy.

12 May 2013

Happy Mothers' Day!  It's a good day to be thankful for these for beautiful children!

 And it's especially easy to feel thankful when they are being sweet to each other.

 Becky usually puts a small treat in the kids' lunches (unless they don't clean out their lunch boxes.)  Abe asked Becky not to put any treats in his lunch for 2 weeks, save the candy and then give it to him all on the same day.  His plan was to share with his friends, but he ended up eating most of it himself.

 Our stake challenged all the youth to read the Book of Mormon in 67 days.  Meeting the goal meant reading 8 pages a day.  The stake gave each youth a pocket size copy of the Book of Mormon to make it easy for the kids to carry their books with them.  They also asked them to underline Christ's names as they read.  Sofi started with a lot of enthusiasm, but lost steam as she moved into Alma and as the school play took up much of her time.  However, she persevered and finished the Book of Mormon on Tuesday, the day before the challenge ended.

 Three cheers for Helen who learned to ride a bike this week.  Helen was pretty sure she DID NOT want to learn to ride a bike.  After a lot of practice and a little bribe (bacon stuffed hamburgers for dinner if she could ride her bike around the block by herself), Helen is now cruising around the neighborhood with ease.  She discovered she LOVES riding a bike.

 On Saturday we went for our first ever family bike ride.  It was super fun.  Sofi looked very French on her 1 speed cruiser with a scarf in her hair.

5 May 2013

Helen performed in a violin recital on Monday.  She played several pieces as part of a small group and "Ashokan Farewell" as a solo.

 Helen invited our neighbors to a tea party on Tuesday.  As they have 3 boys and 1 girl in their family, this was their first tea party.  Abe and Gib have been to many, many tea parties, thanks to Helen.

 The elementary school held their biannual art fair this week.  Abe wasn't able to attend the art show, but here is a picture of his string art.

 Helen's class displayed 2 projects: colorful cats. . .

 . . . and colorful tulips.

 Gibson painted a frog.  He's pointing to his frog in the photo.  It's the one with the wide open mouth and long tongue.

Sofi memorized the prologue to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet for her English class this week.  The class requires a lot of memorization and recitation and the class periods where each student recites the assignment can be very tedious.  Sofi invited Abe to come play background music to provide some authentically Elizabethan atmosphere to her recitation.  They made a dynamic show.  To be honest, though, between Abe playing the guitar and Sofi's extra dramatic performance, no one was paying too close attention to whether the words were correct.

 Becky's brother, Joe, is staying in Nevada City, California for three weeks.  We visited him this weekend.  Gold was discovered in a creek near here in 1849.  The town quickly sprung up.  Today it is a delightful tourist destination.  Walking around the charming downtown area, it seemed we were nearly always going uphill.  Abe and Gibson liked watching the motorcycles drive by.  They counted over 20 motorcycles as we ate lunch on the balcony of Joe's hotel.

 Joe, who is a geologist for the BLM, is in California learning how to assess the quality of a mining claim.  He showed us part of the project his team has been working on.  

After sifting through 25 buckets of gravel, they found the few grains of gold shown in the photo below.  Clearly the site they are investigating would not be a profitable mine.  

 The geologists are staying in the National Hotel, one of the oldest continuously operating hotels in the west.  Although famous, the hotel has aged past quaint and is approaching ramshackle.  Helen was not impressed by this antique chair, pretty much unusable because of protruding springs.

Lots of old mining equipment has been relocated for display throughout the town.  The kids are sitting in a Pelton wheel which used water to generate electricity.

 We also visited Empire Mine State park.  The Empire Mine was one of the oldest, largest and richest gold mines in California.  It operated between 1850 and 1956.  Abe is trying to push one of the ore carts used in mining.  It would be much harder when it was loaded with one ton of ore.

 From 1870 on, most of the workforce were immigrants from Cornwall, England.  The buildings at the mine, constructed mostly from waste rock from the mine, looked like they would fit in an English village.

 Next to the mine was a gorgeous "cottage" set in the middle of acres of beautifully landscaped gardens-- the mine owner's house. 

 Becky thought it would have been an exceptionally noisy place to live.  Supposedly you could have heard the mine from 3 miles away.  Joe pointed out that to the mine owner, it would have been the sound of money.  It was a fun weekend-- hanging out with Joe is a mini geology class.