26 June 2016

Helen attended a tennis camp this week with her friends, Sophie and Clara.  Their coach alternated between calling them Happy, Giggles and Smiles.  The girls called him Coach Happy and made him a poster to say thank you.

Gibson went to Cub Scout day camp this week.  Becky went as a helper for two of the days.  Gibson's favorite activities were shooting BB guns and archery.  One of the other moms sent the photo below of Gib performing in his den skit.  Gibson is a pirate prisoner "walking the plank" which means picking up a board and walking away with it.

Brandan took Abe and Gibson to ride go-karts this week.  Abe drove himself and never crashed into the wall.

 Gibson needs to grow two inches before he can drive himself.  He and Brandan drove this cart.

 Brandan and Abe went golfing with a group of friends on Saturday morning.  In the photo are Ashton, Carter, Abe and Jake.

 Carter's dad, Charlie, bought a 1986 Hummer at a military auction.  Charlie gets so many offers to buy his Hummer that he taped a "Not For Sale - Do Not Touch." sign in the window.  Since the vehicle has no doors, people will just climb in without asking.  Charlie gave Abe a ride home from the golf course.  The Hummer's top speed is 50 mph and Abe enjoyed waving to people in other cars as they drove home on the freeway.

After Brandan and Abe got home from golfing, we went hiking up Abbott Butte.  The trail started out through huckleberry bushes.  The lush trail went through an old growth forest full of wildflowers.  This photo does not show the thousands of annoying mosquitos that kept us moving along.

 After hiking a couple of miles through the forest, we came out on Abbott Butte where we had gorgeous views for miles around.  The peak above Helen's head is Mt. McLoughlin.  Mt. Shasta is a dim white shape to the right of Mt. McLoughlin.

 A fire lookout tower sits on top of Abbott Butte.  We lost the trail in the brush, but we could see the tower so he hiked the last few feet to the top through the bushes.

 Built in 1939, the tower is no longer in use and is slowly falling down.  When it was in use, there was a small cabin on top of the lookout.  Someone lived in the cabin through the summer.  With clear views in all directions and with a collection of maps, the person could pinpoint the precise locations of forest fires and radio the information to forest service crews.  The shed under the tower was used to store supplies.    

 It was easy to pick up the trail at the lookout tower when we headed down. The kids found a small patch of snow to play in.

 Abe built a snowman.

 We climbed over many, many fallen trees on our way to Abbott Butte.  They had most likely fallen due to the heavy snowfall we had this winter.  It will take the Forest Service a long time to clear all the trails in our area, especially less traveled trails like this one.  As we started down, Brandan counted how many trees we climbed over and then asked us to guess the number when we finished.  None of us were even close.  85!  If you count up and back, we climbed over 170 trees!

 All the climbing made for an extra long hike, but our kids enjoyed the scrambling.  This was their favorite spot.  A very large tree had smashed into another tree, knocking it over.  The second tree took out additional trees.  Imagine the noise!  The kids could walk across three trees that made a backwards Z shape and crossed the trail twice.  We were amazed at the kids' energy as they invented their own wilderness parkour moves to scamper over the trees.

19 June 2016

Helen, Abe and Gibson had their last day of school on Tuesday.  Becky asked them to make a face to show how they were feeling.  Gib is sad to see the end of school, mainly because he will miss his friends.  Helen and Abe are happy.  Abe is holding a whoopie cushion he won as a prize at Campus Day, the annual year-end carnival at the middle school.

We've set a goal to hike to the top of Mt. McLoughlin by the end of the summer.  With an elevation of 9495 feet, Mt. McLoughlin is a prominent feature in our landscape.  

The trail to the top of Mt. McLoughlin and back is over 10 miles long so we need to prepare.  Our plan is simple.  First, Becky and the kids are going to do the same hike every Wednesday and try to go faster each time.  Here's a photo of Helen and Gibson from our hike this week.

Then our whole family will go on a long hike every Saturday, increasing our distance every time.  This Saturday we hiked to the top of Grizzly Peak.  Depending on the source, this hike is listed between 4 and 5 ½ miles long.

Here are Abe, Gibson and Helen on top!  We had beautiful hiking weather. We left on our hike about 4 pm so we almost had the trail to ourselves.  Thanks to a wet spring, the mountain was covered in wildflowers. 

One side of the mountain burned in 2003 and a section of the trail is dotted with snags left over from the fire.  The forest is regenerating, though, and without the trees blocking the view, we could see Mt. Shasta to the south and the towns to the west.

Becky works out with a group of ladies at our church every Monday and Friday.  Abe, Helen and Gibson came along this Friday with plans to play in the gym.  However, the missionaries were holding a zone conference in the gym so we all had to squeeze into the nursery.  One of the moms took this photo of Abe reading to some of the kids. 

12 June 2016

Our big event this week was Sofi's graduation from high school!  Besides her cap and gown, Sofi wore a blue cord to show she attended the school of Business, Innovation and Science, yellow cords to show her GPA was in the top 5% in her class and a medal with a blue ribbon to show she was valedictorian of her school.  

We showed up an hour early to get good seats.  Graduation was held outdoors in the football stadium.

Becky made bingo cards to keep Abe, Helen and Gibson entertained during the ceremony.

The graduates lined up based on which of the three small schools they attended, height and alternating boy and girl.  Except they ran out of girls and just had a long line of boys at the end.  By random luck, Sofi ended up at the end of the front row.  We could see her the entire ceremony.

The program was fairly simple: the three principals offered a few welcomes and acknowledgments, the three valedictorians (one from each school) spoke and then the graduates received their diplomas.  Here's a photo of Sofi giving her speech.

Bella, the valedictorian from the Renaissance Academy, brought her school's unofficial mascot, a green garden gnome, to graduation.  Bella gave the gnome to Sofi to hold while Bella gave her speech.

Based on her seating assignment, Sofi was the last student to receive her diploma.  We cheered for everyone!

The Class of 2016!

We found Sofi in the gym after graduation.

We're super proud of Sofi!  She did a fantastic job on her speech and showed extraordinary poise and grace.

All the graduating boys got a white rose boutonniere and all the girls got a red rose stem from the school.  Here's Abe modeling Sofi's hat and rose.

Joey, Bella and Sofi have been friends since 8th grade.

Maybe getting a little tired of taking photos?

Sofi's friends met up after graduation for a bonfire at Joey's house.

Here's a flashback to Sofi's first day of school as a kindergartner at Marrion Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington.

Here's a photo from Sofi's last day of school.  We had a hard time choosing her last day of school (last day of high school classes? graduation day? last day she helped out in the freshman English class?) and finally decided on June 10.  She took her physics final at the community college on Friday and is now truly done with school work for the summer.  Sofi, Abe, Becky and Brandan celebrated by going out to breakfast before school.  The elementary school started too early for Helen and Gibson to come.

Here's another flashback: Sofi's first piano recital, held on 26 October 2006.  It was a Halloween themed recital and Sofi played a song called "Cops and Robbers."

Here's a photo from Sofi's last recital.  She played "Cristifori's Dream" as a solo and "Homestead Hoedown " as a duet with Joey.

Their song was written to be played on two pianos, but Joey and Sofi thought it would be more fun to just swap places at one piano.

They jumped up and changed positions more than once and never lost their spot in the music. Fun!

Joey's mom, Andrea, has been Sofi's piano teacher for the last four years and has been a mentor and friend to her beyond piano lessons.

Today was Sofi's last day in Young Womens.  Her leaders gave all the seniors candy posters.  Sofi has her first grown up calling at church: family history consultant.  She helped teach the family history Sunday School class today.

Sofi's Chinese class came to dinner Sunday night.  Yes, this is the whole class of higher level Chinese speakers.  Chinese was Sofi's favorite class this year.  Their class talked about EVERYTHING, in Chinese, of course.  From the left are Eliza, Renna, Zheng Ling, Sofi and Colton.

Zheng Ling and her son, Jerry, taught us how to make dumplings.  Before tonight, Becky would have called dumplings "potstickers." This is a photo of Zheng Ling kneading the dough before rolling it into little circles.

 She made two kinds of filling, pork and vegetarian.  Traditional dumplings are made with wheat flour, but we experimented with rice flour to make some for Abe and Helen.  Fei chang hao! (Super good!)

5 June 2016

Our family drove to Portland and Vancouver Saturday morning for Memorial Day weekend.  Carson was working on his Eagle project on Saturday, too, so we stopped by to check it out.  Carson's family and friends painted an enormous map of the Untied States on the playground of an elementary school.  Abe grabbed a paintbrush and helped paint Arizona and Kentucky during the 15 minutes we were there.

 Our first stop in Portland was OMSI, the science museum.  Abe's favorite exhibit was the harmonograph.  The harmonograph uses pendulums to draw spiraling pictures.

 We met friends at OMSI and Tim took us on a short walking tour of Portland's newest bridge: bikers and pedestrians only.

 The Mays shared their favorite Thai restaurant, E-San.  We liked everything we ordered.  Abe is cleaning out the last of the fried rice which was served in a pineapple bowl.

Karina is a talented actress and we were lucky to watch her perform in The Legend of Pocahontas on Saturday night.  Karina played a woman named Luna and opened the show with a dramatic solo.

 Sunday we dropped by to visit Tony, a man Brandan home taught 15 years ago.  Brandan and Tony are kindred spirits and have been close friends ever since.

 Tony has wide and varied interests.  He's an artist, an inventor, a horticulturist, a hairdresser, a student of the gospel.  He sent us home with a bonsai tree and a few models he's realized he'll never get around to building.

 We stopped by historic Fort Vancouver and walked around the beautiful English gardens planted outside the fort.  Gibson is meditating on a post at the center of some roses.

 We talked our friends into hiking the Columbia River Gorge on Monday.  After living in rural Oregon for 12 years, we had forgotten what traffic in the gorge is like on a sunny holiday.  With some luck, lots of persistence and Brandan and Tim's willingness to shuttle the rest of us around, we enjoyed a gorgeous hike on the Eagle Creek Trail to Punchbowl Falls.  From the left are Sullivan, Karina, Sofi, Gibson, Abe, Helen and Ethan.   

Brandan and Tim have been friends since grade school.  We love his smart, sweet, funny and very cool family!

 We made it to the falls.  The kids took turns climbing out on a rock to get a closer look of the falls.  The photo shows Abe having his turn.

 Going down was easier than hiking up to the falls.  Most of the trail was shaded and surrounded with thick vegetation.

Helen and Gibson's class researched famous people to go along with their state and country projects.  On Wednesday they had to dress up like the famous person they chose to represent their state or country.   The class formed a living museum.  Each student gave a short talk about their person.  Helen dressed up as Ximena Navarrete from Guadalajara, Mexico.  Ms. Navarrete is an actress who won the Miss Universe pageant in 2012.

Gibson dressed up as Alejandro Amaya, a famous bullfighter who was born in Tijuana, Mexico.   Bullfighters traditionally wear pink socks so we borrowed a pair of pink soccer socks from our neighbor for Gib's costume. 

 Sunday night was seminary graduation.  The two local stakes joined together for graduation with about 45 students graduating altogether.    The students at our high school attend early morning seminary, so their graduation represents a big effort from the students, the parents and the remarkable teachers who volunteer their time.  Josh and Carson also graduated.  Josh is headed on a mission to Arizona in July and Carson is going on a mission to Ohio in August.

 Joey is working on turning her mission papers in.  She turns 19 in September.  Sofi has been blessed to have a group of strong and true friends.