30 April 2017

Sofi sent us this photo from her ward family night a couple of weeks ago.  They held a lego car derby.  Each team built a car from a random assortment of legos and then raced against other teams.  This is Sofi's team's car.

We thought the activity looked like fun so we held our own lego derby on Monday night.  We each had 15 minutes to build a car from the box of loose legos.  From the left the cars in the photo belong to Becky, Gibson, Helen, Abe and Brandan.  Gibson's car was the smallest and the fastest.

Every year our scout troop holds a bonfire/treasure hunt night.  The scouts pick up Christmas trees after Christmas each year for a fundraiser,  They take the trees to a landscaping company that makes the trees into mulch and compost.  There are trees the company won't accept, for example trees that have been flocked.  The scoutmaster sets these trees aside for the bonfire.  He adds quite a lot of his own flammable material for an impressive stack.  The boys watch the fire and then use compasses to find candy the scoutmaster has hidden around his property.

Wednesday was cold and rainy all day, but the fire still burned strong.

 Abe spent a lot of time this week getting ready to lead his Eagle Scout project on Saturday.  HIs project was labeling trees in a newly created arboretum in our town.  One of his concerns was making sure each tree was labeled correctly.  Abe prepared a temporary tag for each tree and he and Brandan spent a couple of hours early in the week marking the trees.

 Here's a photo of Abe tying a temporary marker on a tree.

 The city paid for professional markers, but when the markers arrived, the predrilled hole was much too small for the nails to fit through.  The markers are plastic, so forcing the nail through the small hole would probably cause it to break.  Abe redrilled all the holes to the correct size.

 Saturday was a beautiful, sunny day.  Abe's project started at 9 am.  Here's a photo of Helen signing in.

 Here's a photo of Abe explaining the work to be done.  The arboretum is still under development so Abe used our van as a billboard to display information.

Here's a photo of the arboretum as it currently exists.  Abe used this map to divide the area into zones.  He assigned groups of 5-6 people to each zone and each group was responsible to tag the trees in their zone.  Abe had already divided the tree tags into bundles for each zone so the work went very quickly.

This is a photo of the plans for the finished arboretum.

 Here's a photo of a volunteer nailing a tag to a tree.  The tags look very professional.

 Helen was in charge of snacks and did a great job setting everything out.

 Here's a photo of Spencer, Abe and Malakai wielding hammers.

 Here's a group photo of all the volunteers.  We're thankful for everyone who came to help.  Abe had great support from his leaders and troop.  Helen's school class is helping with another part of Abe's project, writing descriptions of each of the trees, and several classmates also came with their parents. From the left are Lilymae, Neil, Letty, Brandan, Javis, Michael, Thom, Hannah, Bernadette, Summit, Bob, Helen , Jenny, Abe, Andy, Kelden, Damian, Tate, Ben, Jason, Carter, Jake, Camden, Ashton, Malakai and Spencer.

23 April 2017

Gibson built a covered wagon out of popsicle sticks for a school assignment. 

 Brandan and Abe went camping with the scouts on Friday night.  They learned that only the military and the Boy Scouts are authorized to properly dispose of American flags.  One of the troop leaders had an old flag a friend had asked him to burn.

 Another leader made a short statement before the boys held the flag over the flames until it caught fire.  Then they dropped the burning flag into the fire pit and watched to make sure the entire flag burned.

 

Here's a photo from the next morning.  We've had a wet, cold spring, but the scouts were blessed with a warm and dry night. 

 This is a vibrant patch of poison oak, a miserable plant.  It's the biggest and most common hazard in the outdoors where we live.  We've all learned to stay far away.

Saturday afternoon turned windy and cold.  Here's a photo of Gibson flying a kite.

16 April 2017

Happy Easter!

We might have packed our Easter a little tight this year.  Abe and Brandan both gave talks in Sacrament Meeting.  Helen and Brandan sang in the choir.  Helen and Becky taught lessons.  We had company for dinner and then rushed off to attend our stake choir's Easter program.  Good things to remember: we had lots of conversations about the meaning of Easter this week as Abe worked on his talk, Helen and her friend planned a creative and meaningful Sunday School lesson entirely on their own and they're only 12 years old, everyone pitched in after church and created a feast in 45 minutes and then Gibson dazzled us after dinner with his piano performance of Porcupine Dance played allegretto staccatissimo.

If you want to try a fun activity, check out relativefinder.org.  The website uses your family search account to find how closely you are related to other people.  In Brandan and Becky's case, that means not really related at all.  Our closest common ancestor makes us 14th cousins.

 Gibson wanted more of a challenge on his ripstick so we took him to the skate park.  Here he is riding down a ramp.

We went to the church pear farm Saturday morning to thin blossoms on the Asian pear trees.  Brandan found a little garter snake.

 After working at the pear farm, we hid eggs in the backyard for the kids to find.

 Here's Helen.

 Abe found the biggest egg in his hammock.  After a wet, cold winter, we finally have had some sunny days and the kids were excited to put their hammocks up again.

Gibson cooked tinfoil dinners for one of his Webelos requirements.

 He kept a close eye on dinner and they turned out great.

 One more food photo: since we were having a big dinner, Becky didn't want to make a big Easter breakfast, too.  We had granola and yogurt for breakfast, but to make it a little special, we sprinkled turbinado sugar on top of the yogurt and used a torch to melt the sugar like creme brûlée.  Each person had fun torching their own breakfast.

9 April 2017

Abe turned 14 on Monday!  Abe is a rock solid kid.  He does a good job managing himself, does quality work, quickly understands complex material and has wide ranging skills.  He's athletic, excels at school, plays the piano beautifully and teaches Helen and Gibson everything he knows.  We love spending time with him.

Abe picked his favorite dessert, brownies and ice cream, for his birthday.  He faked us out by pretending he was going to blow out his birthday candle and then blowing to the side.

 Our ward had a combined Young Women/ Young Men activity on Wednesday night and had a cooking competition.  Each team had 40 minutes to cook an appetizer, main dish and a dessert.  As an extra challenge, each team had to include ham in every course.  Helen's team made crackers topped with apples, cheese and chunks of ham, scrambled eggs in tortillas, and slices of pound cake with strawberries, melted chocolate chips, gummy fruit, a sea of chocolate chips, fruit cocktail, ice cream and 3 peeps with a cube of ham on top of each.  Helen's team got disqualified from the contest because ice cream was not one of the official ingredients. They just found it in the church freezer.  

 Abe's team made a Caesar salad with ham, french toast with ham and cheese and scrambled eggs, and pound cake with drizzled chocolate, caramelized peeps and chopped ham.  Abe's team won.

 This photo was taken backstage from the Good Samaritan concert held at our church Friday night.  The concert aimed to raise awareness for refugees and immigrants in the United States.  We heard a mix of classical music and folk music from the middle east alternating with stories of immigrants and refugees.  Brandan took the photo while he was waiting backstage for his part of the program.  He told about his positive experiences working with health care providers from around the world.  It was a great evening and well attended by members of our church and community.

Gib's trash robot worked so well he started working on a new robot that can sweep.

 Gibson and Brandan worked together on Saturday to hang up new hooks in our garage.  We didn't get a "before" photo of their job.  Here is a "during" photo.

Here is the "after" photo.  It's very nice to have the tools and toys hanging neatly.

Saturday was also the annual piano syllabus.  Abe, Helen and Gibson all had successful evaluations which means they were tested on lots of music theory, ear training, sight reading and they each played three pieces from memory.  Abe passed level 6, Helen level 5 and Gibson level 2.  Each level gets more complicated.  They prepared for about 6 months for syllabus and the certificates represent a lot of work!

2 April 2017

The kids had a week off of school for Spring Break.  Brandan took the week off, too, and we enjoyed a great week together.  On Monday we drove go carts.  For the first time, everyone was tall enough to drive their own go cart.

Tuesday night we roasted Peeps.  Gibson built the fire.

 On Wednesday Helen invited a bunch of friends over to watch Moana.  Gibson gave everyone hula lessons after the movie.  He looked like he knew what he was doing.

On Thursday we went rock climbing.  Brandan and Helen both had colds so they stayed home.  Here's Gibson nearing the top of the rock wall.

Here's a photo of Abe navigating an overhang on a boulder.

This is a photo of Abe's hands when we ended.

Thursday night we had a family slumber party downstairs.

Flat Gage came to visit for the week.  Gage sent us a cut out of himself that we took with us on our activities.  We'll mail him back with some photos of his adventures.

We got a lot of yard work done.  Brandan worked on cutting down a tree in our yard.  A branch on the tree broke during a snowstorm this winter.  It's a very messy tree and the broken branch made the decision to cut it down even easier.

 Brandan home teaches a widow.  She has a very large tree in her backyard with branches that extend over her power lines.  Professional tree companies were too expensive and the branches were too high up to use a ladder.  They finally decided the cheapest and safest way to remove the branches would be to rent a scissor lift.  Andy, Bob and Russ met Brandan Friday morning to get it done.  The lift weighs about 1000 pounds so they laid sheets of plywood on the ground to keep the lift from sinking into the grass.

 Brandan was the youngest of the bunch and the only one willing to go up in the lift.  He was able to cut all the branches away from the power lines.

We were happy to have Tim and Kirse's family stop by as part of their Spring Break road trip.  They live in Washington and their Spring Break was the week after ours.  They stayed with us Saturday night before heading down to California.  In the photo is Brandan, Ethan, Becky, Karina, Helen, Tim, Gibson, Kirse and Sullivan.  Abe is in there somewhere, probably behind Tim.

 

The kids spent the afternoon at the creek building a bridge.  It was pretty sturdy as you can tell from this photo with all the kids standing on the bridge.

Tim congratulated them on building a bridge, not a wall.  It turns out that Karina already built a wall to defend her soccer goal in the backyard.

Karina also built a fish net.  The kids practiced floating Helen's flip flops down the creek and fishing them out with the net.

Our friends left early Sunday morning and we settled in for a day of conference.  We started a new puzzle during the Saturday session.  With the extra help from Tim and Kirse's family,  it didn't take long to finish.  Helen doodled while she listened on Sunday.  Except she calls it "zentangling." 

Gibson built a new robot.  He calls it the Trash-Turtl3.  It has grabbers in front to pick up trash.

 Here's a photo of the robot in action.  He built a special trash box with a ramp so the robot can unload the trash it picks up.

 Becky got Easter eggs ready for the kids in her Primary class during conference.  With only five kids in her class this year, it felt very easy.  After conference ended, Becky, Abe and Gibson rode around the neighborhood on their bikes to deliver the eggs.

 Conference was terrific, beginning with the Women's Conference last Saturday until the closing prayer this afternoon.  Becky kept track of all the different ties President Uchtdorf wore on Saturday and Sunday.  Gibson's favorite part of conference was taking a family bike ride between sessions on Saturday.  Helen liked Elder Bragg's talk about light.  Abe liked watching Tim, a talented artist, sketch on his iPad Pro with an Apple pencil while he took notes.  Becky wishes she had conference memorized because it was all so good.  Luckily it's all available on lds.org right now.  The first talk she's going to listen to again is Elder Holland's.  She also liked texting Sofi throughout conference.  Brandan liked: Elder Renlund discussing how Jesus views sin apart from the sinner; Elder Costa reading his own name in Alma 42 and being touched in his heart; Elder Palmer visualizing the moment when Jesus beheld the rich young man and loved him; President Monson's emphasis on charity and the Book of Mormon.


We asked Tim to send us his notes.  Here they are: