31 May 2015

We started our Memorial Day with a flag ceremony and memorial service at the war memorial.  It was a beautiful day.  

We went hiking for family night in nearby woodlands.  We saw lots of wildflowers.

 Everything is still green and lush, but the creek is very low for May.

 The 4th grade held a state fair on Tuesday.  There are three 4th grade classes and the teachers made groups of students with one person from each class in a group.  Helen was in a group with her friends Annie and Paige.  They researched the state of Hawaii.  Each girl wrote a report and gave a speech in her own class.  The girls worked together to make a poster to display at the state fair.  The students set up their displays in the cafeteria so parents and other grades could look at their posters, ask questions and learn interesting facts.  For example, the state fish of Hawaii is the humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

 We planted our vegetable garden this week.  Abe planted some tomatoes, cucumbers and basil in this bed.

 We planted green beans, carrots, beets and peppers in this bed.  We planted garlic along the edge of the bed last fall.  It won't be ready to harvest until this fall.

Abe and Gibson had their last soccer games for the season this week.  Here's a photo of Gibson keeping his eye on the ball.  Abe played soccer and did track for most of the season and it was a relief when track was over and he could just focus on soccer.

 Helen's piano teacher held her spring recital on Saturday.  Usually our music teachers rent churches for their recitals, but this time Marsha combined her recital with her friend, Mary, who is also a piano teacher.  Marsha and Mary get together often to play duets together on Mary's 2 Steinway pianos.  Marsha and Mary opened the recital with a duet by Debussy.  Helen played "Rainbows" by Roger Grove and "Bear Dance" by Robert Schumann.

 Mary -- in the purple blouse -- also celebrated her birthday at the recital.  Four people worked together quickly to light all 74 candles on her birthday cake.  Her grandchildren and piano students helped her blow them out.

 Helen decorated gluten-dairy-egg free cupcakes for the party.  Becky planned on helping her, but had to leave the job to Helen to do on her own.  The cupcakes turned out beautifully.  This is a photo of Helen enjoying a leftover cupcake on Sunday.

24 May 2015

The elders showed up to dinner this week in this truck.  We've never seen missionaries driving a brand new truck before and we think they're pretty lucky.  Human nature being human nature, our elders are jealous of another companionship in our area who get to drive a jeep!

Gibson missed 2 days of school last week because of a horrible cough and slight fever.  He tested positive for pertussis and his doctor started him on an antibiotic right away.  Gib has been immunized for pertussis, but sometimes the vaccine isn't strong enough.  We live in an area where lots of parents choose not to immunize and the doctor asked us to keep Gib home until he finished his antibiotic.  He missed all of school this week.  Luckily, Becky could easily arrange to stay home, too, and she had fun being with Gib.  However, Gib is bored with home and eager to go back to school.    

After the first day on an antibiotic, Gib felt much better.  He still had occasional bouts of coughing, but otherwise he seemed normal.  He helped with lots of yard work.  Here he is digging a hole so we can transplant a bush.

Abe and Helen helped him build a kite using instructions from his Wolf book.  The kite crashed on its first flight.

He practiced his golf swing every day.

Brandan took Abe and Gibson to play miniature golf when Gibson was feeling better.  His practice payed off-- Gibson beat Abe by one stroke.  We're thankful for a doctor dad who insisted Gib get tested when Gib's doctor wanted to wait 10 days (can you imagine!), vaccines, antibiotics and Gibson cheerfulness during his quarantine.

Our temple reserves Friday nights for families to use the baptistry.  Our friend, Tiffany, arranged for us to meet her family at the temple this Friday.  Abe, Malakai and Ashton are all 12 years old and went to the temple together for the first time.

Sofi did baptisms, too, and Brandan was able to baptize and confirm Sofi and Abe.  It was a rich and blessed experience.

17 May 2015

It's time for the end of the school year activities. We spent 4 nights this week at special presentations, awards nights and a recital.  We started Tuesday with an art show at the elementary school.  Gibson had 2 projects on display.  One was a model of a flower with all the flower parts labeled.

The other was an abstract design. Gib wanted to be sure we saw the yin yang sign he included.

The older grades did engineering exhibits instead of the art show.  Each class worked on a different project.  Helen's class engineered aid projects designed to drop in remote locations following a natural disaster.  Each group in her class built a container with the goal that it could be dropped from a ladder without breaking the bow-tie pasta inside the container.  Their project simulated what would happen if an airplane dropped a much bigger container, with the pasta representing the emergency supplies.  Helen's group filled their container with foam, wrapped it in foam and added a parachute with paper wings.  The pasta in their container did not break.

Wednesday night was Sofi's high school awards dinner.  Sofi made the Principal's List for her excellent GPA.  This is a photo of all the juniors attending the dinner with a GPA of 3.75 or higher.  We've noticed the list gets shorter every year.  By comparison, there were 24 freshmen who made the list this year.  Sofi has known most of these kids since grade school-- they're a super group.

Abe's awards night was Thursday.  Abe got a certificate and a pin for Academic Excellence.  He also received the "Solid as a Rock" trophy.  This award is given to 10 students in each grade who demonstrate respect, responsibility, accountability, integrity, honesty, self-esteem, patriotism, loyalty, work ethic, social responsibility, empathy, self-motivation and self-restraint (seriously, why did the committee limit itself to just 13 character traits?)  When we moved here, our middle school was struggling with low test scores and a poor reputation.  Thanks to a great principal, some fantastic teachers and involved families, they are now the top ranked middle school in our area.  Over a third of the students received at least one award.  They all looked as nice as Abe, too, with ties for the boys and dresses for the girls.

Sofi played in her Spring piano recital on Friday.  Becky stayed home with Gibson, who was sick, so Helen made notes about the songs she liked best to share with Becky after the recital.  Can you guess which was Sofi's? Traumerei by Robert Schumann (not William Schuman as listed on the program.)  Helen gave it 6 smiley faces and 9 exclamation points.  Sofi also played a duet with Joey, Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Johannes Brahams, a fast, fun piece full of fireworks.

Brandan installed a standing desk in his office this weekend.  The desk raises and lowers so he can sit and work if he prefers.  The big red ball under the desk is the exercise ball Brandan uses as a chair.

 Our stake held its Mormon Prom for teenagers on Saturday.  The kids are encouraged to dress formally.  Sofi thought the DJ at the Mormon Prom was much better than the DJ at the high school prom.  Better DJ = better dancing.  Sofi wore her skirt from prom with a Harry Potter t-shirt she made a while ago.

 Our friends, Emily and Aaron, invited us to their gender reveal party Saturday night.  Emily is expecting their 5th child.  They have 1 girl and 3 boys.  At her ultrasound appointment, Emily's technician wrote the baby's gender on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope.  Without looking, Emily gave the envelope to the band and asked them to choose an appropriate song to reveal the gender.  The band played great music all night.  Towards the end of the night, Emily gathered everyone together and we waited for the band to give us a clue.  After an extended musical fanfare, the band broke into Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl."  We're excited for Emily and Aaron and delighted they invited us to share their happiness.

10 May 2015

Abe finished a big social studies project this week.  His teacher divided the class into groups and each group created their own country.  Abe's group's country was an island named Feng Fu.

Helen's teacher divided her class into groups to dissect salmon.  She invited Becky to lead one of the groups.  We had a dull knife, 2 pairs of scissors and tweezers to work with.  The whole event was fairly disgusting and extremely educational at the same time.  Or maybe it was extremely disgusting and fairly educational.

We could tell our salmon was a female from its egg sacs.  The egg sacs were the first thing we saw when we cut the fish open.  Each female carries about 2500 eggs.  On average only 2 eggs grow to adults and survive to spawn.  The rest are eaten somewhere along the way as they grow from eggs to fry to smolt to fish.  Or they get dissected by 4th grade classes before they can spawn.

 Our all girl group was full of shrieks and squeals, but every girl took a turn to dissect.  Becky was the only one squeamish enough to want gloves.  Helen is holding an eyeball in this photo.

 Our friend needed to teach CPR to 10 people for his science class.  We invited our neighbors over so he would have extra people to teach.  This is Abe practicing chest compressions.

Abe ran in his last track meet this week-- the 6th grade district meet.  Brandan took a photo of him running the 200 meter hurdles.

 Gibson was recognized at his school assembly for having 150 accelerated reader points.  The principal asked the kids receiving awards to stand.  Gib is standing in the middle of the photo in a blue shirt.

Brandan and Helen started cleaning windows on Saturday and found mold in between the windows and the screens.  Instead of cleaning the windows, they spent the morning scrubbing away the mold with toothbrushes and bleach.  They wore masks to keep mold out of their lungs.

 Saturday was also the prom.  Sofi went with a great group of friends.  From the left are AJ, Sofi, Josh, Joey, Carson and Ireland.

 It took the girls four hours to get ready. They had a slow start, but they were working to the last minute. The boys were a little incredulous that it would take so long to get dressed and do hair and makeup. The girls decided not to tell them about the additional four hours spent the night before trying out hairstyles and doing all the prep work for Saturday.

 The boys planned a great day of activities-- picnic lunch and ultimate frisbee before separating to get dressed for the prom.  They then met for photos before dinner and the dance.  After the dance they wandered around the neighborhood chatting, then played games, told ghost stories, and griped about the DJ at prom. They were home before midnight.

Just for fun-- Ireland, Joey and Sofi with their facials the night before.  Can you tell who is who?

3 May 2015

Abe's piano teacher arranged for her students to play at a retirement community.  Between the senior citizens and the students' families, the community clubhouse was packed.  Abe played a rag piece called "Three's a Crowd" with Ean and Celeste.

 Abe also played the first movement of Beethoven's Sonatina in G major.  You can see his piano teacher hovering behind him.  With the overcrowded room, this was the best spot for her to be available to her students.  Abe played beautifully.

 Our strawberries have started to ripen, not a lot, but a few to snack on.  April feels very early for homegrown strawberries.

 Every shelf in our house was stuffed, some of them 2 deep in books.  Becky mentioned to our neighbor that it was time to give some books away to make room.  The neighbor then gave us 2 bookshelves she had been storing in her garage while she decided whether to try to sell them or give them to Goodwill.  We put one bookshelf in each of the kids' bedrooms.  Gib was especially excited to set the bookshelf up in his room.