30 November 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

We spent the week in Utah and Idaho, visiting family during the holiday.  Brandan's family had an early Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday night.  All of his siblings and their children came, as well as Grandpa Dan and Grandma Linda.  This is a photo of all the cousins except for Niko who wandered away.  Back row: Madison, Jaxson, Parker, Logan, Sofi and Gibson.  On the couch: Salem, Emma, Sutton, Kaylee, Helen, Sasha, Abe and Zoey.  In front: Dallin and Xander.

It snowed in Park City and our kids loved playing in the snow with Sutton, Xander and Salem.

They also loved playing foosball.  This is a photo of Helen and Sutton.  They were playing against Abe and Salem.

Abe and Salem played a couple of games of chess.  One of the king pieces was broken off so we called it "Lord Farquaad" after the height challenged ruler in the movie Shrek.

We ate lunch one day at Millie's Burgers in Salt Lake with some of Brandan's family.  Millie's Burgers was a favorite spot for Brandan's family to eat when he was growing up.  This was the first time for the rest of us to eat there.  Jon and Zoey are looking through the door and making us laugh.

We also walked around City Creek mall in downtown Salt Lake.  The mall was decorated with Christmas lights.

We drove up to Carey, Idaho on Wednesday.  Becky's brother-in-law, Joe, is a machinist at Rocky Mountain Hardware.  He took Brandan, Sofi, Abe and Gibson to see where he works.  In the photo, Sofi, Gibson and Abe are standing next to one of the machines that Joe uses.  He programs the computer and then the fully automated machine makes the cuts and drills the holes to shape the hardware or create molds.

Abe, Sofi and Gibson are holding doorstops that are in various stages of being shaped.  The hardware is solid bronze.  All the shavings and scraps from the finishing process are collected and reforged to make more hardware.  The buckets of shavings were Sofi's favorite part of the tour.

Sarah and Joe hosted a housefull for Thanksgiving day.  Barbara and her fiancé Timothy colored pictures with Abe, Gibson, Zina and Helen while waiting for dinner.

Here's Sofi with a plate full of goodness.

 Zina, Helen, Gage and Hayden ate dinner together.  Keri is holding baby Kolter who was born in October.

Becky's brother, Joe, brought pellet guns, BB guns and targets and set up a shooting range for the kids.  He gave a gun safety talk to them first.  On the top step: Hayden, Sofi, Gage, Zina, Helen and Gibson.  On the bottom step: Abe, Sawyer and Sy.

Here's Sofi.

And Abe.

Helen wasn't going to shoot the guns, but Sofi took a turn and it looked pretty fun so she changed her mind.

 Gibson was eager for a turn.

 This is Gibson celebrating after he hit one of the targets on his first try.

The neighbor's cat wandered over and Hayden, Helen and Gage played with it.

 This is Kolter sleeping.

 Keri brought bags of jewelry with her and let Sofi, Helen and Zina divide it up.  The girls were delighted!

 We drove up to Hailey on Friday and took a short walk to the heart tree.  People have placed heart shaped rocks of all sizes on and around the tree.

 Our kids found their own heart shaped rocks along the Wood River.  Once you start looking for them, heart shaped rocks are surprisingly easy to find.

This is a photo of Gibson putting his rock on the tree, which makes a good stopping spot for this post.  We had a lovely trip, leaving part of our heart with our family and bringing lots of good memories home.

23 November 2014

Gibson and Helen's school had spirit week this week.  Monday was superhero day.  Gib wore a swimsuit and a beach towel and called himself Swimmer Man.  Or Beach Boy.  Or Surfer Dude.  He changed his name a lot.  Helen wore a black cape and a crown and called herself The Black Princess.

 Every day this week had a different theme: superhero day, crazy hair day, pajama day and college day.  Helen and Gibson had a great time dressing up, but we only have photos from the first day.   

 Helen finished her pajama bottoms.  They look great!

 Behind Helen's head in the photo above is our thankful tree.  All month we have been writing blessings on leaves and taping them to the tree.

16 November 2014

Helen, Addi and Gibson have been playing outside in the leaves all week.  They didn't think we had enough leaves in our yard so they scooped up a good amount of leaves from Addi's house and brought them back to our house.  Here they are getting ready to throw some leaves in the air.

 Ane here they are getting rained on by leaves.

 Emily gave us some ears of Indian corn, the kind common to see in harvest decorations, along with a note that had directions for how to pop the corn in the microwave. We burned 2 ears of corn, but the third and fourth ears popped pretty well.  

 Here's a photo of the unpopped corn and a popped ear.  This is one of the burnt ears-- the burnt part is facing down.  The popcorn tasted much more like corn than regular popcorn.  It was a fun and tasty experiment.  We wonder how Native Americans popped popcorn without a microwave.

 Helen was chosen by her teacher as a Ramtastic student for the first trimester.  Each teacher chose 2 students.

 Her teacher sent us an email to invite us to the awards assembly.   In her email she wrote, "She is so high achieving and hard-working -- a wonderful addition to our class.  I love getting to know her more and more each day.  I'm very glad she is in my class this year!"

 Helen is learning how to sew.  Her first project is a pair of pajama bottoms.  She's using some cozy flannel plaid left over from Abe's Halloween kilt last year.  Most people don't match plaid for a beginning project, but Helen is patient and the pants are coming along very nicely.  We'll have a finished photo to post soon.

9 November 2014

Sofi is teaching Chinese 2 mornings a week at the elementary school.  She teaches in both Helen and Gibson's classes.  Sofi is the last upper level Chinese student left at the high school.  She and her teacher brainstormed ideas for how to best use her time and came up with this.  Sofi's Chinese teacher took this photo.  Gibson is the fuzzy-haired boy in the bottom left of the photo.

The elementary school held their jogathon fundraiser this week.  The kids get a bracelet for each lap they run.  Gibson ran 17 laps in 20 minutes-- over 2 miles!

The 4th graders wore capes for the jogathon.

Helen ran 18 laps-- 2 1/4 miles.  Her classmate, Kirsten, jumped into the photo.

Abe babysat for us Saturday night.  He texted Becky his woes while we were gone and she expected the worst when we returned.  It turns out they had a great time playing together.  Abe even made his famous pumpkin spice caramel corn and saved us some (that's the blur in the photo-- Helen was trying to eat it.)

Sofi went to Portland this weekend for a Time Out for Girls event with some of her friends.  She had a great time.  One of the highlights was meeting Elaine Dalton.  In the photo are Ireland, Emma, Aspen, Joey, Sister Dalton and Sofi.

2 November 2014

We carved pumpkins for our family night activity this week.

Abe picked a blue hubbard squash to carve instead of a pumpkin.

Gibson carved a paw print on his pumpkin to match his Halloween costume.

 Here are the finished pumpkins on our front porch.  

 Back in September, Helen, Gibson and Addi asked if they could plan a Halloween party and invite our neighbors to come.  Becky approved a small guest list and gave them a $10 budget.  They spent all month planning their party, making decorations and putting together activities.  The party was Tuesday after school.  This is a photo of their final plans.  

 They set up a buffet of creepy foods: blood (apple cider,) eyeballs (grapes,) poisoned apples (apple slices,) witches' warts (Hershey kisses,) worms (the gummy kind,) dried rat brains (popcorn,) and spider eggs (deviled eggs.)  They only spent $6.93.

 The party was a big success!  Becky just sat and visited with some moms while Helen, Gibson and Addi ran the party.  Everyone took turns and played nicely.  We think we'll turn all our future party planning over to these little experts.  Here's a funny photo of Helen with black frosting on her face.

 And finally, some photos from Halloween.  This is a photo of Helen in her school costume parade.  Helen went as Elsa from the movie "Frozen."  She is wearing underarmor under her costume because all the 4th and 5th graders in the district ran a 5K before the school Halloween parties.  Helen rocked the race.  She ran the whole way and came in 133rd out of over 600 kids.

 Here's a photo of Gibson in the school parade.  Gibson went as Martin Kratt from the PBS show "The Wild Kratts."  In the show, Martin and his brother, Chris, can take on the characteristics of any animal by putting a creature power disc into their creature power vest.  Becky and Gib made a variety of discs, but Gibson wore his dragon disc all day.  The Kratt brothers only change into real animals, but the nice thing about a Halloween costume is you can do what you want.

 This was the first year Abe went trick-or-treating with his friends instead of his family.  We took a photo of them as they passed down the street.  Abe and Brandan made Abe's Tron costume.  Abe is the one in the middle dressed in black with glow-in-the-dark duct tape.  Nacho Libre is on the right, wrapped up in his cape.

 Sofi, Joey and Emma planned a Halloween party for their friends this year.  The party was at Emma's house.  Sofi and Joey were in charge of the food and spent three nights this week at our house baking-- 2 kinds of cookies, cupcakes and truffles.  Sofi went to the party dressed as Princess Buttercup from "The Princess Bride."  Her date, Hunter, went as The Dread Pirate Roberts (Wesley.)  Some people thought Sofi was Elsa, which is an easy mistake to make since Elsa was hands down the most popular costume this year.