29 October 2017

Gibson grew out of his ½ size cello and is moving up to a ¾ size.  He played "When I am Baptized" on his ½ size cello for the Primary program today.

Helen had a tooth pulled this week.  Becky scheduled her appointment at the beginning of a school break so she would have plenty of time before she had to go back to school.  It took her about 2 hours to recover.  Her oral surgeon gave her flowers and gift cards for a movie and Coldstone ice cream!

 Our school district moved parent teacher conferences from November to October so the kids had three days off of school this week.  We had beautiful weather and went hiking one day.  Luckily the kids would occasionally wait for Becky to catch up with them before running ahead.

 Gib was the first one back to the trailhead.

 We hiked the woodland trails near the Britt Gardens.

 Our ward Primary held a carnival after their Primary program practice on Friday.  Becky got to make cotton candy.  This was her first time to use a cotton candy machine and it was harder than she thought it would be.  She had to turn the machine off each time after making 3 or 4 or else there would be too much cotton candy billowing out of the maker.

Here's a photo of Gibson helping Brandan make Brandan's Halloween costume.  You can see the finished product below. 

 We went to our stake trunk of treat on Saturday.  Gibson went as Earthquake, a character Gibson invented who has power over things like dirt and rocks.  Helen went as a gypsy.

 Brandan and Becky went to a couples Halloween party Saturday night.  Brandan was Dr. Strange and Becky was the Ancient One, comic book characters from a movie last year.

22 October 2017

Helen and Gibson's school celebrated Spirit Week with a week's worth of dress up days.  Monday was superhero day and we didn't take a photo.  Tuesday was career/college day.  Helen dressed as a spy with a BYU T-shirt.  She made her own earpiece to wear from an old set of headphones and a broken book light.  Gibson dressed up as a carpenter.

 Wednesday was wacky day.

 Thursday was wear pink for breast cancer awareness day.  

 Friday was the day to wear school colors.  

 Gibson learned how to make a paracord bracelet this week by watching videos on youtube.  Brandan helped him get started.

 Here's a photo of his finished bracelet.  Paracord bracelets are popular with survivalists because each bracelet is made of a lot of cord that would be useful in an emergency.  Gib's bracelet would be 7 feet long if it were unwound.

 Gibson and Abe started a monopoly game Sunday morning.  Gib is chortling in the photo because he just landed on the "free parking" space.  It took him a couple of turns to sort out all the money he collected.

15 October 2017

This week we went to a food share garden for our service elective.  It's the end of the growing season, but we still had lots of work to do.  These girls are cheerfully emptying a trailer full of horse manure.

 

Helen is helping stack tomato cages.

 The foodshare garden raised 33,000 pounds of food for local food pantries.  Helen ate 5 tomatoes she found on the ground.

 Helen took charge of our family vegetable garden this year for a personal progress goal.  She and Brandan cleaned out the garden this week.  Here are the last of her tomatoes and cucumbers.

 They spread compost over the garden beds after they pulled the plants out.

 Our ward had an assignment to clean the Bishop's storehouse this week and Brandan took Gibson with him.  This is a photo of Gibson mopping the floor.

Abe's Sunday School teacher is moving.  Today will be her last week at church.  His class all decided to bring treats to share.  Here's a photo of Abe making chocolate mousse.

 Here he is with his finished dessert.

8 October 2017

Becky is leading a service group at Helen and Gib's school this fall.  We meet once a week and work on a service project together.  It's been great fun so far.  Last week we made tombstones to give to a historical society for their annual haunted house.  First the kids used a jigsaw to cut out their tombstones.  Using the saw was most kids favorite part.

 The kids used textured spray paint to make the tombstones look like they were made of stone.  Then they painted messages on the tombstones.  

We finished up the tombstones this week by screwing hardware to the back so they can be staked to the ground.  Here are the finished projects.  

 This week we also made fleece blankets to donate to homeless teens.  We only have an hour and 15 minutes to meet so the kids have to work hard.

While Helen and Becky have been working in the service group, Gibson is in a group learning about nature with another mom.  So far his group has made models of landfills, learned about clouds and made homemade chapstick and soap.  These photos of the landfill project were posted by his teacher on Facebook.

 Our friend wanted to raise money for the Malala Fund which supports education for girls around the world.  She came up with the idea to teach art classes and donate the profits.  Helen went to her first class on Saturday.  Besides learning about painting with acrylics, Helen had a lot of fun.

 Here's a photo of all the girls with their finished paintings.

1 October 2017

Helen made a Battenberg cake for family night treat this week.  Battenberg cake is a traditional British teatime treat with a distinctive checkerboard pattern of pink and yellow cake.

Helen made herself this sheet of instructions.  Her cake turned out great!

Becky finished reading The Lord of the Rings to Helen and Gibson this week.  The trilogy is over 1000 pages long and took us over a year to read.  We love the brave, sturdy hobbits.  Brandan is reading their next bedtime story: The Count of Monte Cristo.

Brandan's Australian cousin, Cynthia, passed away this summer.  She was an ardent genealogist and traveled Australia and the United States to research her family.  Her stepchildren shipped Brandan some of her notebooks after her death.  Cynthia tried a couple of times to put her research online, but technology moved faster than she did and the changing family history platforms frustrated her.  Brandan will now digitize these records to make them available to other researchers.  Two boxes arrived on Monday and one more came on Friday.  These battered boxes contain a treasure!

Another conference weekend flew by!  We enjoyed being at home and focusing on the words of the prophets.  Gibson and Abe are working on a puzzle while they listen in this photo.  Brandan is watching on the couch with a man named Jakob from our ward.

Helen took notes in her highly decorative style.

 We finished the puzzle shortly after conference ended.  This was a rich, dense conference and many talks deserve more time to digest.  Here are some of our favorites: Brandan liked Elder Koch's talk on unity, Becky liked Elder Holland and Elder Zwick, Abe liked President Callister's talk on the Book of Mormon, Helen liked Sister Oscarson's talk on service and Gibson liked Elder Stevenson's talk on spiritual eclipses.