15 March 2015

There was no school on Monday and Sofi and friends wanted to go to the beach.  It's too far for any of the teenagers to drive themselves, so Joey's family came, too.  Becky drove a van full of little kids and Andrea (Joey's mom) drove with the teenagers.  The plan worked great.  Everyone had a friend along, except 14 year old Logan.

 We roasted hot dogs for lunch.  Logan started our fire.

 Gibson, Eddie, Abe, Camden, Helen and Logan built a sand castle.  Gibson and Eddie are in the photo.

 Here's a photo of the tide washing the sandcastle away.

 This is a photo of Josh, Joey, Sofi, AJ, Carson and Ireland.

Sofi brought home a stack of wood from her physics class on Thursday.  The class divided into groups to make trebuchets, medieval weapons similar to catapults.  The class was using hand tools to build the contraptions and Sofi's group was having a very hard time nailing the pieces together.  Sofi got permission to bring the project home and use a nail gun.  Brandan worked late Thursday night so Sofi figured out how to use the nail gun herself.

Well, almost by herself.  Abe joined her in the garage and helpfully read parts of the instruction manual to her while she worked.  There are more pages of safety warnings in the manual than there are pages of directions to use the nail gun.  Everyone in the garage wore safety goggles.  Sofi took her trebuchet back to school to finish it so we haven't seen the final product.

Our scout district hosted a merit badge clinic for 2 Saturdays in a row.  It's an annual event, but this was Abe's first time to participate.  All the boys sign up to work on 4 merit badges.  Abe signed up for Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the Nation, Cooking and Golf.  Being neophytes, we did not realize that each merit badge would take between 4 to 20 hours of homework away from the clinic in order to finish.  We suppose a lot of scouts get started on the merit badges at the clinic and then finish them at their leisure (or maybe they don't finish them at all.)  Our approach was all scouting all the time all week long.  Abe was a great sport and worked hard.  He probably even had fun.  Other parents and scouts joined us for field trips.  This is a photo of Abe cooking scrambled eggs for Gibson and Sofi for breakfast.

 One of the dads put together a father/son round of golf to help the boys pass off a requirement.  This was Abe's first time golfing and he enjoyed it a lot.

 Abe finished Citizenship in the Nation and Cooking.  He still needs to play another round of golf and do a bunch of requirements for Citizenship in the Community (that particular merit badge should come with a warning label.)  We're very thankful for the great group of friends Abe has in his scout troop.  After the clinic on Saturday, the scouts went hiking. Abe found a geocache under some rocks on accident.

Gib cooked his own breakfast on Saturday-- an omelet with fresh chives from our garden.

 Abe and Helen both played in the Oregon Music Teachers Baroque and Classical recital.  Abe played "Minuet in G" attributed to J.S. Bach.

 Helen played Fanfare Minuet by Duncombe.