29 November 2015

With an entire week off of school for Thanksgiving, this week was a great opportunity for Sofi to get her wisdom teeth removed.  Sofi had the oral surgeon's first appointment slot on Monday morning.  She's been a trooper all week, even when she couldn't talk or eat solid food.  Here she is with a peanut butter/banana smoothie. 

We subscribed to Netflix for the week as a consolation for Sofi having a lousy vacation.  This was a big treat for our non-TV watching family.  The kids enjoyed watching Disney movies and the TV series "Once Upon a Time" and "Psych."

Abe piled blankets and pillows in our game closet.  He and Helen took turns reading in the "Hobbit Hole."

The five of us who didn't have surgery participated in the annual Turkey Trot--a 2 mile fun run on Thanksgiving morning.  Over 500 runners met at 8:30 am in brisk weather.  Abe was our family's fastest finisher.  He came in 34th overall.

 

 Greg and Pam invited our family and two other families to join them for Thanksgiving dinner.  We met for dinner at 2 pm and stayed until bedtime, enjoying great company.  We took two desserts to share -- our favorite allergy friendly chocolate mousse dessert and a cranberry pie.  Gib said the cranberry pie "looked fancy, but not yummy."

Brandan and Gibson strung red Christmas lights on our Japanese maple in the front yard.

 Abe helped put lights and decorations on the tree inside.  We still have lots of decorations to put up, but it's beginning to look like Christmas!  

22 November 2015

Sofi's school celebrated National Take a Hike Day by encouraging the students to dress like they were going hiking on Tuesday.  Sofi carried her schoolbooks in Abe's frame pack.  She took Abe's since it is the smallest of our backpacking backpacks.  Maybe they should have celebrated the day by actually going on a hike.

 Abe has 2 or 3 basketball games a week.  They've won some and lost some.  Here's a photo of Abe warming up before Wednesday's game.

 On Friday, Helen and Gibson's school celebrated No Shave November by wearing mustaches.  

 Gib was awarded student of the month for his class at the school assembly.  In every other class, the teacher selects the student of the month.  In Gib and Helen's class, the students choose the student of the month.

 This is a photo of all the students of the month and their teachers.  Some classes had 2 students so there are more students than teachers in the photo.  Our new grade school is about half the size of our old one.

 Brandan and Gibson emptied a load of rich compost from our compost bin.  It's great to get such rich fertilizer for free.  They spread the compost on our vegetable garden.  We need the empty space in the bin for all the leaves that fell in our yard this week.

15 November 2015

Becky bought a bolt of this fabric before Halloween.  The Christmas mustaches made her smile. 

This week she made it into pajama bottoms for the kids.  Besides the fun print, the flannel fabric is super soft and comfortable.  This was a fun, quick project.  Helen and Gibson wore mustaches for the photo.

Here's another quick project.  Becky was in a hurry and bought far too much red fabric for Abe's sock monkey costume.  Usually haste makes waste, but in this case it turned out to be a fortunate mistake.  Becky sewed polar fleece to the back of the red knit fabric to make a cozy blanket.

This is a photo of the scouts taking the food collected from the food drive to the food bank.  Our troop passed out about 1000 flyers asking for donations last week and picked up 64 bags of food this week.

Brandan took Gibson to play at a skate park on Saturday afternoon.  Gib likes to run up and down the cement structures.  If he can grab the rim of this bowl, he can pull himself out.

8 November 2015

Brandan made a quick trip to Utah this week.  Dan met him at the airport and they first took flowers to Linda's memorial site.

Brandan made the trip to support Dan as he spoke at the Utah Hospice and Palliative Care Convention.  He was invited to share his personal experience with hospice.  Dan and Linda were blessed with wonderful hospice nurses, chaplains and counselors at the end of Linda's life.  Dan spoke of his appreciation for the wonderful care Linda received.  He feels that birth is a celebrated experience and, even though parting is sad, death can also be a celebration and a time for gathering.  Dan and Linda organized this convention for several years in their role as presidents of the Utah Home Health and Hospice Association and were well known to the attendees.  Luckily he was the last speaker of the convention because it wouldn't have been easy to follow.

 Brandan, Abe, Helen and Gibson spent a couple of hours on Saturday delivering fliers to remind people of the Scout food drive next week.

 Abe tried out for the 7th grade basketball team this week and made the JV squad.  We're looking forward to watching him play.

1 November 2015

Abe's troop held a court of honor on Wednesday.  Abe received 9 merit badges and advanced to Star rank.  This is a photo of his scoutmaster, Bob, reading the names of his merit badges.

Abe had his last cross-country meet on Thursday.  He placed 5th in his division with a personal record time of 12:31.

Brandan's clinic director, Stan, is moving on to bigger things so the clinic honored him with lunch on Friday.  Brandan is the medical director of the clinic and manages the doctors and nurse practitioners.  Stan manages everyone else.  They'll still work together in Stan's new job, but the clinic will miss Stan's warm style of management.  The clinic also celebrated Halloween on Friday, which is why Brandan is wearing a bow tie.

The fall soccer season ended Saturday.  In an almost Hollywood finish, Brandan and Abe's team won both of their games on Saturday-- a great boost after a challenging season.  Gib's team was undefeated.  This is a photo of Brandan's team.  To save time and money, Brandan asked Sofi to take the team photo and individual shots and then emailed the photos to the parents.

Brandan finished his ocean painting.  Here are the three paintings held by the artists who painted them.

Our week ended with Halloween.  Gibson dressed as a spy.  He put together his own costume.

Helen went as Peter Pan.  She cut up a green T-shirt for her costume.  Becky made the leggings and hat.

Abe was a sock monkey.

Sofi dressed up as Zam Wessell.  Who?  The shape shifting assassin from the Star Wars movie "Attack of the Clones."

Sofi hosted a Halloween party at our house.  Her friends came dressed (mostly) as Star Wars characters.  Back row: Maccoy, Joey (ewok), Harrison, AJ, Ireland (C3PO), Patrick (Qui-Gon).  Front row: Carson (Darth Nihilus), Emma (Princess Leia) and Sofi (Zam Wessell).  These kids are a bunch of foodies (mostly) so they had fondue for dinner, went trick-or-treating and watched a very goofy movie called "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken."

Our neighbors gave Abe chow mein noodles when he went trick-or-treating to their house.  Easily the funniest treat of the night.