Sunday, February 26, 2017

26 February 2017

Abe received approval on his Eagle Scout project, but the committee wanted him to expand his project to include a map of the arboretum and a guide that describes all of the trees.  Abe could do all the work himself, but since part of the project is showing leadership, Abe asked Helen's school class to help him research the trees.  He presented his project to the class at the monthly parent meeting and got enthusiastic support.

 Abe has been working on his Duty to God by making dinner every Tuesday night.  This is a great night for him to cook since the rest of us don't get home until 6:30 pm.  It's very nice to come home to dinner.  Abe's dinners have steadily gotten more elaborate.  This week he cooked lasagna.

 Gibson completed the requirements for his bear rank and received his award at the Blue and Gold banquet this week.

Abe competed in the regional mathcounts competition on Saturday.  Since math is not really a spectator sport, Brandan and Becky came at the end for the awards.  When we got to the event, the kids were working on some math games while their scores were tallied.

Here's a photo of his math team.  The coach, Mr. S., is in the back.  Back row: Ashton, Malia, Hannah, Sophia, Thomas and David.  Front row: Taryn, Ashton, Abe and Kelden.

 Abe got the second highest score in the individual round.  He received a trophy, a mini-ipad and gets to compete at the state mathcounts event in a couple of weeks. 

 Only the 8th graders' scores count in the competition.  Abe's school won 3rd place overall.  Here is the team posing with all their swag from the event.  Ashton is holding the 3rd place trophy that will go to the school.  Taryn has the headphones she won as 5th place overall winner, Abe has his prizes and Jake has the mathcounts logo.

 One of the women Brandan visit teaches noticed some water damage in her kitchen.  Brandan and Gibson went over Saturday afternoon to investigate.  They didn't find the leak, but they did clean out a cupboard and work on other projects around her house.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

19 February 2017

This is a photo from our Valentine's Day breakfast.  Our family exchanged homemade valentines and ate crepes.

 Here's Gibson.  We ate breakfast at 6:30 am so Helen and Gibson could get to school on time, but everyone was cheerful.  It was a fun start to a fun day.

 This is the before photo of Becky's latest project: a jean quilt made from jeans she has saved since Sofi was a baby.   Most of the jeans are from Sofi's toddler and preschool days since all her jeans in the past 15 years or so have spandex in them and wouldn't make a good quilt.  Brandan donated a couple of his old jeans to have enough material for the quilt.  Becky has a similar pile of jeans saved for Abe and Helen.  Gibson almost always wears athletic pants or shorts so she hasn't decided what material to use to make him a quilt when he graduates. 

Gibson made a poster and a model of the sun for school.  His class is studying the solar system.  We learned some interesting facts from his research.  For example, the same photon of light that takes 8 minutes to go from the surface of the sun to the earth can take up to 100,000 years to get from the sun's core to its surface.

 Helen drew a diagram of the plan of salvation and explained it to her Beehive class today.  

Sunday, February 12, 2017

12 February 2017

Gibson dressed like a sheriff for his school's Western Day.

 Gib made valentines for his class by taping paper mustaches to pencils.

 Here's a photo of a finished valentine.  "I mustache you to be my valentine."

 Helen decorated boxes for her class and put candy and a joke in each one.

Since we have church at 1 pm this year, we spent Sunday morning baking and decorating cookies.  Becky made some to take visiting teaching.

Gibson likes the frosting.

Here's Helen with her cookies.  We made some gluten free cookies for her and for Abe.

 And here's Abe.  


Sunday, February 5, 2017

5 February 2017

Sofi got her mission call on Friday!  It was delivered to her dorm so we watched her open it on FaceTime.  

Sofi will serve in the Taiwan Taichung mission.  She'll enter the Provo MTC on June 14th.

Sofi set up a webpage to let friends guess where she would be called.  Brandan guessed Taiwan and is the winner!

Brandan joined a soccer team for the winter season.  His first game was Saturday night.  Abe went along to watch and took some photos.  It was dark and cold and Brandan is not used to running for an hour and a half, but he had a good time.

 Helen and Abe made a two layer gluten free red velvet cake before church today.  It was their first time baking a cake and it was delicious.