3 January 2016

For family night this week, Abe gave each of us a paper plate, a straw and some masking tape and told us to build a turbine.  This is a photo of Gib using a fan to try to make his first design spin.  After a few more tries, Gib's design worked.

Here's Sofi with her design.  We learned the turbine spun best if the blades were angled.

Abe's turbine was the smallest and spun the fastest.

 Every year during Christmas break Sofi tries to read as much of the Harry Potter series as she can in one day.  This year she went to bed after finishing book 4 at 3 am.  She'll finish the rest at a slower pace over the next few days.  This is her 13th time to read the series.  She still laughs and cries her way through.  Gibson made the "do not disturb" sign and gave it to her for Christmas.

 Gibson started on his pine wood derby car this week.  He needed Becky's help to cut his car out.  Becky needed Gibson's help to turn the bandsaw on.  It's trickier than you might think.

 Helen turned 11 on Tuesday!  Helen has a very active mind.  She's in the middle of lots of projects and lots of books right now.

 Helen helped Becky make her rainbow birthday cake.

We went ice skating on New Year's Eve.  None of us are very good, but by the time we left we could all skate without holding on to the wall.

Sofi went to our stake New Year's Eve dance.  The rest of us celebrated by playing games, watching season 5 of the BBC series "Merlin," and making pizzelles.  Abe was our master pizzelle baker.

 We made vanilla pizzelles and gluten free chocolate ones.  We ate them with cool whip.  Delicious!

After working a 12 hour day, Brandan was ready for bed at 11 pm.  The rest of us made it to midnight.  We watched our neighbor's fireworks and took a selfie.

Helen and Abe stayed up even later to help Becky cook breakfast for a group of Sofi's friends.  They got to our house about 12:30 am.

The kids looked great even after hours of dancing.  Sofi DJ'd the dance so she got to play all her favorite music.  In the back row: Josh, AJ, Indie, Nonie, Joey, Mishawn and Sofi.  In the middle: Harrison and Denver.  In front: Gary, Patrick and Carson.

 Our home teachers gave us a 4-pack of puzzles for Christmas.  Abe finished all 4 puzzles in 5 days.  

Sofi saved all her Christmas break homework for Friday and Saturday.  Then she realized her Spanish teacher had assigned her class to practice on a Spanish language website for 5 hours!  She got it done (along with her Chinese homework, her psychology paper and her internship project) but this photo expresses her feelings as she worked on it.  Becky reminded her this was her last Christmas break to put off homework until the last minute.

 We woke up this morning to a dusting of snow.  Our state is coming out of a drought, so we love all the rain and snow we've had this winter.  Sofi, Abe and Helen slept in today (11 am church this year!)  Gib hurried out to play in the snow before it melted.  He threw snowballs at the others' windows to wake them up.

 This is Gib's itty bitty snowman.