10 September 2017

Tuesday was the first day of school for Gibson, Abe and Helen.

Gibson is in 5th grade.  He's looking forward to learning more about robotics and woodworking.  His class is starting out with a special unit on forest fires which is appropriate since we went most of the week with unhealthy/hazardous air quality thanks to the many forest fires in our area.

Helen is in 7th grade.  Helen loves her new math class and is not looking forward to PE.  Luckily for her, the gym ceiling fell down just before school started and the air quality is too poor to go outside so PE is postponed.

 Abe jumped right into his freshman year of high school.  His favorite classes are English and History, but he likes all of his classes.  He played in his first high school soccer game on Saturday.  It was supposed to be a home game, but they ended up driving three hours away to play out of the smoke.

 A man in our ward named Jeff is a talented bird taxidermist.  He has a license that allows him to acquire rare birds after they die from disease or old age.  None of the birds were hunted.  He works with zoos and museums.  Our ward's youth went to his studio this week to see some of his work.

 He has a wide variety of birds on display.  Gib's favorite was a penguin with very soft neck feathers. Jeff didn't taxidermy the elk.  It was a gift from someone else.

 Here's a close up of one bird that shows the bird's beautiful markings and symmetry.  The bird flashes its feathers like this to a female, who sees the markings in ultraviolet and is looking for symmetry of the circles and lines.  The patterns on the feathers were amazing; they looked like they were laser printed.  Zoom in to see them more closely.

 Here's Gib with an eagle owl.

 Our airport has a room that is a replica of the oval office.  Brandan had meetings at the airport this week and posed for a photo behind a copy of the Resolute desk.

Helen and Gibson joined Adele and Samuel to play A Child's Prayer in sacrament meeting today.  The kids played twice, once in Adele and Samuel's ward and once in ours.  Playing with 4 kids might be twice as hard as a duet, but the kids sounded great!

We planted an artichoke in our garden this year to see what it looked like as it grew.  We're not planning on eating it.  It's a very cool plant with huge purple flowers.