3 July 2016

Brandan taught our kids how to suture for family night this week.  He bought a couple of pillows at Goodwill for them to practice on.   Sofi and Helen shared one pillow and Abe and Gibson shared the other.   First he showed them how to cut an ellipse from the "skin" of their pillows.

Abe is using needle drivers to remove the suture from the package.

Sofi quickly got the hang of using forceps and needle drivers to manipulate the suture.

This is a photo of Abe waiting for Brandan to show him how to tie a surgeon's knot with one hand.  Gibson dug around in his pillow and pulled out some of the stuffing.

Then he decided he didn't want to get any pillow guts on his hands so he put on a pair of gloves.

Here's a photo of Sofi with her finished stitches.  

Becky took the 11 year old girls from our ward up to Girls Camp for one day this week.  The older girls in our stake make a fuss over the 11 year olds to help them look forward to coming to camp when they are 12.  All the girls got T-shirts and candy leis.  From the left are Samara, Annie, Emma, Sierra and Helen.

Our girls camp is on the edge of a beautiful mountain lake.  There are cabins to sleep in, a dining hall with a fully equipped kitchen and a craft house/ boat house.  The leaders look forward to camp as much as the girls.  The kitchen staff takes care of all the meals, the girls take turns cleaning up and the atmosphere at camp is very relaxed.

The 11 year old girls got to try out all the highlights of camp.  First they learned some camp songs, then they made a craft and then they attended a devotional.  This is a photo of Helen sitting in the amphitheater during the devotional.

After lunch, they changed into swimsuits and got to play in the lake.  Some of the girls were nervous about swimming in the lake, but by the time we left, all of our ward's 11 year olds had passed the swim test by swimming out to the dock and back without a life jacket.  They are ready for next year!

Becky got back the results of her DNA test this week.  Brandan gave her a kit for her birthday that allowed her DNA to be compared with the DNA of people around the world who are native to 26 global regions.  The results weren't very different from what she expected, but there are two interesting things.  One, her DNA represents less Scandinavian DNA than it should by looking at her family tree (Danish grandfather should count as 25%)  The other interesting thing is looking at the trace regions represented.  It would be fascinating to have a name and face to associate with these unexpected ethnicities.