25 December 2016

Abe started working on his Eagle Scout project this week.  He met with our city's Parks and Recreation director to talk about identifying and labeling trees in our city's newest park.  The land was specifically donated as an arboretum.  The previous owner's father planted every tree species native to Oregon on the 3 acre lot.  All of the trees haven't survived, but so far they have identified about 60 distinct species of trees.  This is photo of Abe at the edge of the arboretum.  

Between Brandan being busy on Sundays and Abe having basketball games on Mondays, we got a late start on our Christmas concert series.  With no school this week, we made up for lost time and performed 6 mini concerts.  Our largest audience was about 15 people and our smallest was 2 people. In this photo Helen is watching Gibson play the piano.

 Here's a photo of Abe.  Here's our program for this year: Gibson played Little Drummer Boy on the piano.  Helen played Have a Holly Jolly Christmas on the violin.  Abe played his What Child is This/ O Come, O Come Emmanuel medley on the piano.  Gibson played Away in a Manger on the cello.  Sofi sang Hallelujah while accompanying herself on the piano.  Helen played one of her Christmas piano pieces.  We ended by singing Christmas carols, accompanied by Helen on piano.  

 Brandan and Becky attended a Christmas benefit house concert sponsored by our friend Emily on Thursday night.  Emily plays with the symphony and joined friends from the symphony to raise money for the indigenous people protesting the North Dakota pipeline.  The string quartet played Christmas songs and selections from The Nutcracker.

We had a few guests for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and talent show.  Brandan's former medical assistant, Susanne, joined us along with the elders and Jonny, a recent convert in our ward.  We took this photo afterwards.  Helen, Abe and Sofi played the piano.  Gibson and Elder A. showed us card tricks.  Elder H. played a song on his guitar.  Johnny played several tunes on the keyboard.  Brandan recapped our "Light the World" adventures and we sang Come Follow Me.  We ended the evening acting out the nativity story.

The kids almost posed for a new nativity photo for our collection.  This is the best photo we got.

 We've had a lovely Christmas, sleeping under the tree, opening presents, church at 11 am where we sang wonderful hymns, dinner with friends and then relaxing at home together.  However, we didn't take many photos.  Here's one of Brandan, Helen and Gib playing Spy Alley together.  Abe and Becky were playing, too, but they lost early.

 And here's Sofi chilling with a book.

Brandan was the concluding speaker in Sacrament Meeting today.  Here is Becky's favorite part of his talk:

We adore him as the King of Kings, as the all powerful Messiah, as one who heals us, feeds us, makes it possible for us to be forgiven. We adore him as Jehovah of the Old Testament, who humbled himself and was born to a mortal mother as a little baby, just like each of us. . . Some day we will each get to stand then kneel before him and hear him say our name. We will learn then, if we don’t know it yet, that he adores us. 

18 December 2016

Gibson's class presented their projects this week.  The students set up their displays around the classroom and then parents and students from other classrooms rotated between the displays to learn about the projects.  Gibson learned a lot about animal habitats in Australia and shared his knowledge clearly and with eloquence.

 Helen's class attended The Nutcracker for a field trip.  They dressed up for the occasion.  In the photo are Clara, Helen and Lucy.

 Three cheers for having Sofi home!  She finished her fall semester this week and will be spending three weeks in Oregon.  Tonight she lit the candles on our advent wreath.

11 December 2016

This is a photo of Abe and Gibson racing in their laundry baskets when they should be getting ready for bed.  Lots and lots of laughing was involved.

Abe is playing on the 8th grade JV basketball team this season.  He has games twice a week and we have enjoyed watching them.  So far his team has won 5 games and lost 3.  They have 2 more games to play before the season ends.

We had a little snow Tuesday morning.  It snowed steadily all morning, but most of it melted before it touched the ground.

 

Tuesday was also St. Nicholas Day.  Abe has basketball practice at 6:45 am so he was the first to find his shoe full of candy.

 We helped decorate for our ward Christmas party Thursday night.  The party was on Friday.  Here's a photo of Abe stringing lights on a tree.  

 Saturday was the annual Music at the Mall event.  Gibson played Jolly Old St. Nicholas, Away in a Manger and Little Drummer Boy.

 Helen played Toyland.

 She also played a duet of Let it Snow with her piano teacher, Marsha.

 Abe played a medley of What Child is This and O Come Emmanuel.

A toy store in the mall was having a bug exhibit at the same time.  The presenter had a selection of living and dead bugs.  In the photo the kids are petting a whip scorpion (it doesn't sting.)  They also petted a tarantula, a hissing cockroach and a stick bug.

 Becky's primary class made Angel Moroni ornaments today.  Here's the sample she made to show the class what to do.  Abe had the idea to cut the ends off of golf tees to make trumpets.

4 December 2016

While we were in Utah, Parker took us hiking up Adams Canyon in the rain.  

 We took a wrong spur and missed the waterfalls we hoped to see.  We were pretty soaked by the time we got back to our car.  We want to go back in the summertime so we can see the falls.

Back in Oregon, our kids raked the leaves in our yard on another wet day.

Gibson made this map of Australia for school.  The red paint marks kangaroo habitat (almost the entire continent), the yellow lines show koala habitat and the blue dots show wombat habitat.  The green spot on the left is the Gibson Desert, named for an explorer who got lost there in the 1800s and is presumed to have died.

 Gibson took his koala bear to the Festival of Trees for a checkup.

 Should we be concerned that none of Koaly's X-rays look like him?  The doctor diagnosed him with a broken leg and put a bandaid around his leg.  She recommended keeping the bandaid on for 4 days and reading lots of books to him.

Helen played the violin with Siskiyou Violins at the Festival.  Her first performance with Siskiyou Violins was at last year's Festival of Trees and she performed with the Junior group.  The juniors were missing lots of performers so the director asked some of the advanced performers, including Helen, to help out.

 The advanced group played a selection of classical music and Christmas carols.  The group sounded great.  We love watching all their bows moving up and down together.

 After just a few days, we're enjoying the Light the World countdown to Christmas.  Some days we've done a service project together and some days different family members have chosen different activities to do.

 We've hung the Light the World calendar next to our advent calendar.  Before taking chocolate out of the calendar, you need to finish your service!

27 November 2016

On Monday we went to Dan and Martha's house.  Gib and Abe made minions out of the yellow containers that come in the middle of kinder eggs, blue masking taps and sharpies.  Wade makes regular trips to Canada and always comes home with kinder eggs.  Emma is also in the photo.

 Our friend, Masood, likes a Middle Eastern sausage called mortadella that has pistachios and garlic in it.  You can't buy it in our small town.  Since Salt Lake City is bigger and has lots of immigrants, we found some for him at a specialty market.

 We picked up some food from the market for lunch: flatbread, Persian cucumbers, persimmons, chips and candy.  We also tried a bottle of yogurt soda.  We've tried it so you don't have to.  It tastes like carbonated curdled milk with a hint of mint.  Vomitous. 

 On Tuesday, Becky, Abe and Sofi went to the Salt Lake Temple to do baptisms.  The entrance to the baptistry is a side door in the wall next to the flagpole in front of the tabernacle.  The door opens on a short tunnel that leads right to the baptistry in the basement of the temple.  It felt very 007.  Sofi is on the temple and family history committee in her ward and prepared lots of family names for us to be baptized for.

Meanwhile, Brandan, Helen and Gibson explored the family history discovery center at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  The center has a large green screen that allows you to take a photo of yourself in front of places all around the world.  Helen and Gib took a photo in front of our temple back home.

 This is a photo of the kids playing in the revolving door at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

 Tuesday evening we met Dan and Martha, Drue's family and Becky's family in Park City to go bowling.

 The best part of bowling was watching the cousins help Niko bowl.  Whenever it was Niko's turn, 3 or 4 other cousins jumped up to help him position his ball and roll it down the beginner's ramp.  In the photo are Helen, Salem, Niko and Gibson.

 Abe and Parker played NFL Blitz downstairs at Wade and Steph's house.  In the photo are Dallin, Helen, Abe, Kaylee, Parker, Emma and Gibson.

 We picked Sofi up from the U after she finished classes on Wednesday and drove to Sarah and Joe's house in Idaho.  Sofi and Brandan are hard at work side by side in this photo.

 This side of the room is less hard at work watching videos on Zina's phone.

 The kids worked up an appetite Thursday morning by helping Joe stack firewood.

 Joe and Keri's family and Grandma and Grandpa came for Thanksgiving.  Here's a photo of the cool kids' table.  Clockwise from the right: Zina, Abe, Gibson, Sawyer, Gage, Sy, Hayden and Helen.

 Sarah kindly cleaned up the pile of dishes afterwards!

 Gibson was bored so Brandan helped him do a liquid chromatography experiment in and around the other activities.

 This photo shows the kinds of liquids he used and the three types of ink plus one food coloring he tested.

 The girls practiced braiding hair.  Thanksgiving was rather lopsided with 7 boy cousins and 3 girl cousins.

On Friday morning we borrowed Sarah's cute shed and Joe's photo taking skills to take pictures for our Christmas cards. This photo will not be on the card.

Helen decorated a #lighttheworld advent calendar for Sofi.  You can print your own calendar here .

 Friday afternoon, Sarah and Joe took us ice skating in Hailey along with their neighbors, Will and Jane.  Here's a photo of the kids getting ready to skate.

 Helen and Becky skated together most of the time.

 Here are Sofi and Abe.  Gibson is in the background in the orange hat.  While none of us are very good at ice skating (except, Zina, Jane and Will) we spent more time vertical than horizontal.

 Sarah helped Sofi make Christmas presents for her roommates.  With seven of them, homemade is the way to go!  Becky and Brandan helped keep the assembly line going.

 Here are the finished presents: microwavable rice heating bags.  Sofi picked different fabric to match the personality of each roommate.

 We drove home on Saturday, stopping in Twin Falls so Sofi could catch the shuttle back to Salt Lake while we continued on to Oregon.  Sofi had a little misadventure.  Her suitcase was missing when she got to her stop in downtown Salt Lake.  Fortunately, the lost and found at the Salt Lake airport called within an hour to say someone had found her suitcase and turned it in.  Hopefully she can pick it up on Monday.