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: