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.

20 November 2016

We left Saturday morning to drive to Utah and Idaho for Thanksgiving.  Abe worked on some nail art for part of the drive.  First he painted a board black.  Then he covered the board in paper and drew a design on the paper.  He's working on hammering nails into the board to outline the pattern.  When he finishes pounding nails, he'll remove the paper and wrap string around the nails to make the design.  We'll post a photo of his finished project.  

 Our first stop in Utah was Sofi's dorm.  Abe, Helen and Gibson liked sitting on her apartment's giant bear.

 Brandan's family got together Sunday night to celebrate birthdays and the holidays.  Brandan's sister, Becky, dominated at Nertz.  Around the table are Becky, Parker, Abe, Salem, Kaylee, Helen and Tian.  Aaron is standing in the kitchen.

 Cousin hug!

13 November 2016

Here's the winning meal from our election night dinner: lasagna, fruit salad, chocolate pie and Mountain Dew.  Mountain Dew?  It wasn't even on the ballot!

 As you can see from the ballots below, our family's small exercise in democracy took a wild swing that should have been a warning for the night.  Abe wrote in Mountain Dew on his ballot and convinced Gibson to do the same.  Which wouldn't have mattered except Brandan wrote in water on his ballot.  This meant water, orange juice and root beer only got one vote each and Mountain Dew won.    

 Brandan's office got a head start on the holidays by holding their holiday party Thursday night.  They met at the ice skating rink for dinner and ice skating.  Brandan took Abe and Gibson.  

 Here's a photo of Gibson skating.  When we were done, Gibson said he figured out that you can tell how much fun you had ice skating by how wet you are.

 Brandan, Abe, Helen and Gibson raked leaves at our friend, Masood's, house this Saturday.  Helen got to use a leaf blower.

 Here's a photo of Gibson using a rake to fill the wheelbarrow while Helen blows leaves his direction.

 The missionaries also came to help.  From the left are Elder L., Abe, Masood and Elder H.

 Gibson got a turn with the leaf blower, too.

 Gibson helped Brandan make quesadillas for dinner tonight.  Gibson especially wanted to make homemade tortillas-- flour and corn.

6 November 2016

Brandan wore his Ip Man costume to work on Monday.  Most people guessed he was either a character from the movie The Matrix or a Catholic priest.

Helen went trick or treating with friends this year.  From the left are Sophie, Gibson, Lucy, Helen, Clara and Ally.

Abe went with his friends.  Nearly every 8th grader we saw on Halloween this year was dressed as a Greaser.  The kids read The Outsiders in their English lit class this year.  From the left are Malakai, Camden and Abe.

Here's Helen with some of her loot.  Someone had a dollar bill in their treat bowl.

The girls swapped candy after they finished trick or treating so Helen only came home with candy she could eat-- a first for this girl with food allergies.

Helen and Lucy both painted their favorite animals on the backs of their Halloween costumes-- Helen's is a silver donkey and Lucy's is a purple horse.

Sofi sent us this meme someone in her dorm made after finding her asleep on a giant teddy bear.  Sofi and her roommates each chipped in $20 to buy the 8 foot bear.  They call it Fred or Beary or Paddington.  We don't know what the meme means, but it's a cute photo of Sofi.

Helen's class performed an original melodrama called The Good Will of Gold Hill on Thursday.  Helen played the female lead, Margaret Brennan, the prettiest girl in town.  Their class aide wrote and directed the play and the kids built the sets, designed the costumes, worked the sound and light boards and played all the parts.

The play was a choose your own adventure story.  Several times during the show, the narrators would let the audience choose which decision a character should make by calling out their votes.  The narrators changed the story based on how loud the audience cheered for one choice or another.  Abe liked voting especially loudly.

Here are Lucy, Sophie, Clara and Helen.

Abe and his partner finished their bug display this week.  Apparently, sticking a pin through a bug on a plain piece of cardboard with a label is too boring.  The class was assigned to be creative with their displays.  Abe and his partner created a bug yoga class on the beach at sunrise.  The bug labels are on the back of the box.

Our family is having a little fun at the end of a long election season.  Helen and Gibson created ballots for us to vote for dinner.  Becky will tally the ballots secretly and surprise the rest of the family with the winning menu on Tuesday night.