26 April 2015

At the youth auction last month, we won a family home evening treat baked by one of the Young Women in our ward.  This Monday she delivered a box of brownies, still warm from the oven.

On Tuesday Sofi's school had a dress up day and encouraged students to dress like a friend.  Sofi dresses a lot like her humanities teacher and many people have commented that they look like each other.  They decided to dress up together for matching day.  Mrs. S. helped the effect by wearing glasses and carrying a large stack of books.  Sofi always has 4 or 5 books with her.

A teenager in our neighborhood is working hard to build a dirt track for bicycles.  We see him and his friends improving the track and riding on it in all kinds of weather.  We rode our bikes over this week to check it out.  Some of the track is fun to ride on.  Gibson, Brandan and Helen are standing on the edge of a bowl that is fun to look at and fun to watch the teenager ride through, but not to ride down ourselves.

Gibson went to his first pack meeting as a member of the wolf den this week.  He loves cub scouts and wearing his new uniform.

Abe entered an exclusive club in our family when he turned 12-- people who do their own laundry.  

Our local BYU Alumni chapter hosted a 5K fun run Saturday morning to raise money for their scholarship fund.  Becky, Sofi, Helen and Gibson participated.  The race circled around and through the church pear farm.  It was a beautiful morning and a fun way to start the day.

Helen received a key chain as a prize for coming in 2nd place in her category, girls under 16 years old.  

Abe got a Rubix cube a week ago and spent several hours learning how to solve it.  Now he likes to time himself to see how fast he can do it.  We don't let him take his Rubix cube to school, but Abe doesn't mind because other kids bring their cubes to school and ask him to solve them.

Our friend is selling tamales to earn money for his mission.  He and his family make the tamales.  He delivered a dozen Saturday night and we enjoyed them for Sunday dinner.  Delicious!

19 April 2015

Beginning when our kids are 5 years old, Brandan meets with each one every month to set goals, plan rewards and talk about whatever is important to them.  The weather was so nice last Sunday, they met outside.  Becky thought the scene was worth remembering and took a picture.

Gibson's class hiked Lower Table Rock on Thursday and Becky came along as a chaperone.  Spring is the best time to hike the Table Rocks because the wildflowers are in bloom.

 Here's a photo of Gib's class.  In the photo, you can see Upper Table Rock in the near distance.  Both Upper and Lower Table Rocks are the remains of a lava flow over 7 million years ago.

 Helen and Becky got to see Upper Table Rock up close when Helen's class hiked to the top on Friday.  This is a photo of Helen at the top, getting ready to eat her lunch.  The ranger put a yellow rope along the top to remind the kids to stay away from the edge.  We had beautiful weather and great views for both hikes.

 Brandan and Abe fixed some broken sprinklers on Saturday.  It's an annual Spring chore before we can turn the sprinklers on.  You can see the geyser in the photo from a broken drip line.  Abe is trying to drink from it.

 Sofi went for a walk Wednesday afternoon and found evidence of at least one beaver in our neighborhood.  We all walked over to the creek this evening to see what she found.  This tree has definitely been chomped on by a beaver.  A few nearby trees were felled.

Here's a photo of the beaver dam.  This beaver has been busy!  The water upstream is a couple of feet higher than the water downstream.  As we walked away from the dam, we watched a heron fly into this spot.  Maybe the beaver pond is a good place to fish? 

12 April 2015

With both Easter and General Conference occurring last Sunday, we waited until today to take a photo of our kids in front of the temple.  It was a little hard to get the kids to pose since they were looking straight into the sun.  Today was a big day -- Abe received the Aaronic Priesthood and was ordained to the office of a deacon.

One last Easter photo-- we did a different kind of countdown leading up to Easter this year and called it our Easter Walk.  Every night we added a new picture to the wall and talked about part of the Easter story.  We encouraged our kids to imagine they were witnesses to the events in the pictures and to add drawings to the wall to show what they imagined they would see, do or feel.

Abe gave a short talk at the monthly school board meeting on Tuesday.  He described the solar oven he built in science last fall.  He was one of a group of students who spoke showcasing the great things that are happening at his school.

 Abe ran in his first track meet this week.  This is a photo of him running the 1500 meter race-- that's 3 ¾ laps around the track.  Abe looks a little green in the photo and he threw up immediately following the race.  Apparently vomit is not a bad thing in track and his team cheered loudly.  Abe went on to run the 400 meter race and the 200 meter hurdles.

 Luckily Abe was feeling better by Saturday when he ran the 10 mile Pear Blossom race with Becky.  At least he ran the first half of the race with her.  He left her at the halfway point and sped ahead to an impressive finish of 1:27:56.  Running 10 miles would be enough for one day for most people, but Abe also played a soccer game on Saturday, running for almost another hour in the rain!

 Abe and Helen squeezed their piano syllabus adjudication in between the Pear race and soccer.  They have prepared for the last 8 months, learning a wide variety of music theory, sight reading and ear training.  Also, they each memorized 3 different piano pieces from 3 different time periods.  An independent piano teacher listened to each student play and judged them on their performance.  Helen successfully passed Level 3 and Abe successfully passed level 4.  In the photo Helen is practicing a B flat major scale.  She likes this scale because it is easy to play.

One last event from Saturday-- AJ asked Sofi to prom.  Josh asked Sofi for help getting Joey to the mall so Josh could ask Joey to the prom.  Their plan was Sofi and Joey would come down a particular escalator where Josh would be waiting with a big sign that would ask Joey.  Sofi shepherded Joey through the mall, texting Josh for directions and trying not to be too suspicious.  A fun surprise for Sofi was that she got asked to the prom as well.

5 April 2015

Happy Birthday to Abe who turned 12 on Friday!  We had a fun family movie night to celebrate, followed by a delicious birthday treat.   

 Sofi hid Easter eggs for the other kids to find on Saturday afternoon.  She put the biggest egg in plain view, but high in a tree.

Helen and Abe worked together to get the egg down.

 Helen could barely reach an egg in a smaller tree.

 Abe moved eggs from a stone basket planter to his Easter basket.

 Gibson found three chick shaped eggs in a green nest.

 Brandan and Abe went to the priesthood session of General Conference together for the first time.  Abe felt like the talks were the best of the entire conference because they were relevant to him.  Elder Ballard's talk was his favorite.

 We had crepes for a special Easter/ General Conference breakfast.  Gibson layered cool whip, cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar on this crepe.

With Abe's birthday and Easter the same weekend as General Conference, we felt we had plenty of candy without our usual assortment of conference treats.  We didn't have a concession stand or play the jelly bean game or do our usual gimmicks to encourage the kids to listen.  And the kids listened anyway.  Here's Helen taking notes Sunday morning. 

 We also built with legos.

 Gibson, Abe and Brandan built a lego dragon.

 Sofi worked on an elaborate doodle while she listened.  She filled about half a sheet of paper with intricate patterns during three sessions of conference.  Conference ended too soon.  We're already taking advantage of the videos on lds.org to revisit our favorites.