28 January 2018

Our cub scout pack held its pinewood derby race this week.  

Last year Gibson spent a lot of time building his car and was happy with his design.  At the derby last year he received the "Looks Fast" award and was a little offended.  This year his goal was to build a car that was really fast, didn't just look fast.  He watched youtube videos to get ideas and learned the most important factor for speed is reducing friction.

 As you can tell from Gibson's cheering squad, his work paid off.  He had a smoking fast car.

 Here's a photo of Gibson waiting for his turn to race again.  He won every race he was in, no contest.

Abe and Helen brought cars to race in the family races.

 They brought two of Abe's cars from past years.  Abe built the white car in lane 1 as a Webelos scout and the cow car in lane 3 for fun last year.

 Gibson won first place for his den and first place overall.  He also gets to race in the district pinewood derby in May.  We're proud of Gibson for setting a goal for himself and figuring out how to achieve it on his own.  He was only hoping to win a few races so he exceeded his own expectations.  This is Gibson's last year to race and he went out on top!

 In other news, Gibson is trying to train Lily to navigate a maze for a school project.  Saturday was her first trial.  It turns out she's fantastically good at following a path of red pepper pieces.  We had fun watching her gobble the pepper pieces like they were candy.

 Gibson put a small piece of strawberry at the end of the maze for a reward.  Turtles don't need to eat very much food so he'll have to wait for another day to try it again.  He's going to try spacing the red pepper out more and even try it without the treats.  It would also be interesting to see if she would follow a path of pieces of kale, her normal diet.

21 January 2018

We held our annual MLK Day blanket making event on Monday.

 Abe was in charge of this blanket decorated with soccer balls.

 Gibson got tired of the little girls climbing over him.

 Work is always more fun with friends.

Helen attended another art class this week.  

This week the girls made abstract paintings using masking tape to section their canvases.

Here's a photo of Helen's finished painting.

Brandan DJ'd the stake dance on Saturday night.  Abe is old enough to attend the dance.  The rest of us stopped by for half an hour.

 Brandan had a great time preparing for the dance and playing music at the dance.  He learned the kids are much more conservative musically than he is.  They prefer listening to and singing along with songs they know and like more than dancing to something with a great beat.

 The dance committee lit the gym with black lights and had glow-in-the-dark paint the kids could paint their faces with.  They also told the kids to wear white shirts.  It was definitely a fancier stake dance than usual for our stake, especially with a real DJ!

Here's a photo of Abe with his face paint.  He liked the theme and thought the DJ was great.

14 January 2018

On Friday we tried out the face masks Sofi sent us from Taiwan.  Abe is the only one who is brave enough for us to post a photo.  All of the masks were coated in gooey liquid.  We left them on as long as we could stand it.  Maybe the masks are refreshing in sub tropical Taiwan, but mostly they felt cold to us.  We think we looked like luchador wrestlers with our masks on.

 Abe and Brandan helped with another Eagle project on Saturday, once again back at the arboretum.  This time they took shingles off a historic cabin and prepped the roof to put new shingles on. 

 We all joined Brandan in a fun project this week.  He was asked to DJ the upcoming youth stake dance.  For most stake dances this means shuffling through the playlist of approved music.  Brandan's going to be a real DJ, mixing and sampling the music.  

 Helen and Gibson are both learning how to use the DJ board.  Helen has been practicing how to smoothly move from one song to the next and how to add sounds.  She says it's hard to blend two songs.  Her favorite song to manipulate is "The Greatest Show" from the movie The Greatest Showman.  The laptop gives her visual cues to help her match up the sounds she wants.

Here's a photo of Gibson playing "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons.

Sofi's companion, Sister Wu, sent us this charming drawing of our family with her family.  We love it!  We especially love how young she made us look.  Maybe this is us after we used our hydrating face masks.  

7 January 2018

We celebrated New Year's Eve by cooking a Taiwanese feast.  Or at least our version of one.  We made Beef Noodle Soup, Braised Pork, Salt and Pepper Chicken and Green Onion Pancakes.  We got the recipe for the pancakes from Sofi and the rest from the internet.  The pancake recipe doubled as a craft project as well as a menu item.  The Beef Noodle Soup was our favorite with its rich, flavorful broth.  None of us liked the Salt and Pepper Chicken which mostly tasted like cinnamon.  We also got to email Sofi which added to our enjoyment of our feast.

For dessert we made Taiwanese shaved ice with mango.  Sometimes this is what Sofi eats for a meal when it's hot.

Brandan went to bed about 8 pm, but the rest of us made it to midnight.  Mostly we played games, but we lost energy as the night wore on.  Here's a photo of the kids as the clock ticked closer to midnight.

New Year's Day was dreary, but we bundled up and went for a bike ride anyway!

Our celebration continued with Brandan's birthday on Thursday.  His birthday gift to us was spending the evening at home.

We had two new elders assigned to our ward on Thursday and they stopped by to meet the bishop.  We invited them in.  First Brandan described the ward to them and then they joined us in making mochi for Brandan's birthday dessert.  If you've never heard of mochi before, and we hadn't before Brandan requested them, they originated in Japan.  Brandan found the recipe by googling "best desserts in the world."  The recipe is another one that doubles as a craft project.  First we made a dough of rice flour, sugar and water.  Then we steamed the dough until it became as thick as play dough.  We rolled it out and filled the dough with chocolate.  We were very impressed that our mochi turned out to be more than lumps of goo, but think we need to try some in a restaurant to see what they're supposed to taste like.  

Here's Brandan's birthday math problem.  The answer is Brandan's age.  Need a hint? Diagonal boustrophedon.  Need another hint? Fibonacci series.  The answer is at the bottom of the post.

The party hadn't ended yet!  Helen invited some friends over Saturday night to celebrate her birthday.  They had dinner and watched a movie and played the saran wrap game.  Abe helped Brandan and Becky prep the game which we will explain.

We wrapped an assortment of small prizes like candy, gum, mints, chapstick, card games, socks and gift cards in layers and layers of saran wrap (in this case the holiday wrap was on sale after Christmas.)  A person can only unwrap the ball while wearing oven mitts.

 Meanwhile, the person next to them is frantically rolling dice, trying to get doubles.  As soon as the player with the dice gets doubles, the player with the saran wrap ball has to stop unrolling the saran wrap.

 The player rolling the dice then gets the next turn to try to unwrap the ball.  Whoever has the saran wrap ball gets to keep all the loot that falls out during their turn.

 Mostly the kids were good sports, except when Abe had the ball, everyone would yell at Gibson to roll the dice faster so Abe wouldn't get as many prizes.  The prizes got fancier closer to the center and Gibson won the very center prize, a gift certificate to a Hawaiian restaurant.

Here's a photo of everyone at the party.  Clockwise from Helen are Aubrey, Lucy, Sophie, Clara, Lily, Gibson, Abe and Hannah.

 Here's another view.  Clockwise from Abe are Aubrey, Lucy, Sophie, Clara, Lily and Gibson.  Helen has a great group of nice, smart, creative friends.

 Lighting the birthday cake was a group project.  In the photo are Sophie, Abe and Hannah.

 For dessert Helen asked for a giant ice cream sandwich.

 Here's a photo of Helen eating a chunk.  And our 2017 holiday season is officially over.

Answer to math puzzle: 46