29 April 2018

Helen drew this optical illusion on a plain piece of white paper.

 We had a couple of warm days this week and ate dinner outside one night.  Eating outside always feels like a party.

This is a photo of Helen building electrical circuits with some girls at school.  From the left are Aubrey, Helen, Hannah, Sophie and Roberta.

 Helen grew out of her ¾ size violin and needed a full size violin.  Brandan played the violin in junior high and kept his violin.  We took the violin into our favorite luthier who gave it a tune up and a new set of strings.  The violin sounds great and Helen loves that she's playing her dad's violin.

This photo was taken June 5, 1986.  Brandan played with the orchestra at Clayton Junior High in Salt Lake City.  Brandan's junior high school orchestra teacher brought passion and love for music to his students.  Brandan also played in the orchestra for one year in high school, however, the new teacher was uninspiring and Brandan lost interest.  We're glad he kept the violin and also kept his love of music, all kinds.

Here's a photo of one of Abe's passions: soccer!  Even though he's busy almost every day with golf, Abe signed up with a club team and practices with them a couple of times a week.  He ended golf early on Friday and hurried to play in a soccer game.  Golf is winding down this week so Abe will have more time for soccer.  

 Becky, Helen and Gibson spent a rainy Saturday hiking Lower Tablerock.  The wildflowers were amazing.  The top was covered with drifts and billows of purple, white and yellow flowers.

 Small ponds and puddles were full of thousands of tadpoles.  We saw tadpoles in all stages of development.  This little guy is almost a frog.  He just needs to lose his tail.

 Helen and Gibson practiced photographing the wildflowers.  They experimented with camera settings and angles to get the perfectly crisp images they wanted.  The rainy day made great lighting.  These are a few of Helen's favorites.

 Here's a dandelion.

 The edges of this flower are sharp.

 We don't know the real name of this plant.  Our family calls it sticky weed.  This photo captures its delicate flowers.

Brandan and Abe went on a scout overnighter Friday and Saturday.  They tried out a new campground called Flumet Flats.  The area was a rich gold mining site in the 1800s.  The boys hiked around an old mining site and tried panning for gold in the river.  This is a photo of Ashton, Cameron and Abe playing horseshoes at the campground.

22 April 2018

In an email, Sofi told us that she has met many missionaries who do not know how to mend their clothes.  Since we have three future missionaries at home, we practiced hand sewing for family night this week.  Helen already knows how to sew and she stitched together a small bag with a button closure

Abe has a little sewing experience.  He used the time to sew up a seam that had come undone on his travel pillow.

Sewing was new for Gibson and he was excited to learn.  He made himself a drawstring pouch.

Becky's service learning class is working on a quilt to donate to a local homeless shelter.  This is a photo of some of the kids tying the quilt.  This is the first time the kids have tied a quilt and they are enthusiastic learners.

The Young Women in our ward hosted a spa day for the activity day girls.  The big girls brushed the little girls' hair, gave them massages and painted their fingernails.

The Young Men in our ward had a bonfire.  One of the leaders lives in the country where burn piles are common and legal.  A neighbor still called the fire department because the fire was so large.

Helen went to Oregon State University for 2 days this week as part of a group of girls exploring careers in science.  Helen had a fantastic time.  They started in the math department.  This is a photo of the group doing brain teasers.

The girls extracted fluorescent proteins in the microbiology lab.

This is a photo of Helen and Hannah in one of the greenhouses.

 A piano in the student union had a sign that said "Please play me" so Helen played a song.

The girls wrote thank you notes to the college after dinner on Thursday night.

With Helen in Corvallis, Abe playing golf and Brandan at work, Becky and Gibson did some errands on their bikes Friday afternoon.

First stop was the chocolate shop where Gibson picked out a chocolate for finishing a piano book.  He also picked out a couple of chocolates for his piano teacher.

Next stop was Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone.  It's pretty fun to assign yourself some errands on a sunny afternoon.  We love our small town!

On Saturday we drove to Ashland to listen to Helen play at the earth day celebration.  She's in the back row.

There were a variety of exhibits at the event, including this battery assisted bicycle.  Or maybe it could be called a pedal assisted car.  It even has a passenger seat in back.

We all agree we would that given a choice between a battery assisted bicycle and a Tesla, we would prefer a Tesla.  Here's a photo of Abe sitting in one.

We hurried to our next event, the celebration recital for the winners of the sonatina competition.  Abe played his entire sonatina and Helen played her favorite movement.  This is a photo of the winners for all three divisions.

Abe drove to church today.

15 April 2018

Abe played in his first high school golf tournament on Wednesday.  He had a partner from a different school for the tournament and played in a foursome.  The partners check each other's scores and sign each other's scorecard at the end of the tournament.

They played 9 holes.  We got to the tournament in time to watch the 8th and 9th holes.  Here's a photo of Abe teeing off on the 9th.

A heron was standing in the water hazard below Abe.

Here's Abe at the putting green.  Abe scored a 63, somewhere in the middle of the group for this event.

Saturday was the annual 10 mile Pear Blossom Run.  Helen and her friends decided to run the race last summer and started training for it in January.  Interestingly, even though we registered for the race separately, our race bibs went in order numerically.  From the left are Clara, Becky, Helen and Lily.

 Helen and her friends sped up halfway through the race and Helen finished the race in 1 hour 38 minutes, just under a 10 minute pace.

 Becky slowed down halfway through and finished in 1:52, just over an 11 minute mile pace. 

Here are the girls at the end of the race.  Lily came in 1st, Clara in 2nd and Helen came in 3rd for their age group, girls ages 10-14.  We're super proud of them!

 After the race, Brandan took Abe to perform for the regional sonatina competition.  Becky took Helen home for a quick shower and then to the competition.  Abe played Sonatina No.3 in C major by Friedrich Kuhlau.  Helen played Sonatina 4 opus 36 by Muzio Clementi.  This is a photo of Abe warming up in a practice room before the competition.  Both Abe and Helen competed in the Division II category.  Abe won first place and Helen won second.  Their prize for winning is performing next weekend in a recital.

8 April 2018

Happy Birthday to Abe who turned 15 on Tuesday!  

 Abe works hard all day from early morning seminary at 6:25 am until he finishes golf or soccer practice at 7:30 pm.  

We took Abe to the DMV before school on Wednesday so he could take the driving test for his learner's permit.  Abe went driving for the first time on Saturday.

Abe's friends came over Friday night to celebrate his birthday.  They played the same saran wrap game that Helen played at her birthday party.  We decided to make the game harder by using press and seal plastic wrap.  It was definitely harder to peel the ball apart and get the loot out.

Popular prizes were gift cards to fast food restaurants and colorful socks.  Clockwise from Abe in the photo are Jake, Ashton, Camden, Cameron, Malakai and Spencer.

 Gibson had a birthday party on Saturday.  He wanted an Ilvermorny party.  Ilvermorny is the North American School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter's world.  It's mentioned briefly in the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and there's more information on the website Pottermore.

 Like Hogwarts, Ilvermorny has 4 houses that the students are sorted into.  Each house has a mascot and the people who belong to each house are known for similar broad characteristics.  We planned an activity for the party to represent each of the houses.

 The first house, Puckwudgie, is known for being healers.  For this house Brandan created a couple of activities using potions.

He used red cabbage juice as an acid/base indicator and let the kids find the relative pH of a few household items.  The dramatic color changes seem like magic.  From the top left are Nick, Aubrynn, Javis and Michael.

 The kids also microwaved bars of Ivory soap and watched it puff up into a large mound of fluffy soap.  This is Clara.

The second house, Horned Serpent, is known for having scholars.  Helen created an escape room for this activity.  The story was the kids were locked in a room and had to follow the clues to find their wands to unlock the door and escape.  It took Helen about 5 minutes to plan the escape room.  Here are her notes

Here's a photo of her clever hiding spot for the wands.

She cut the spines off a few old books (we got them from the library book sale) and glued the spines to a cardboard box.  When she slid the box onto the shelf, the box was completely hidden.  The wands were inside the box.  Everyone enjoyed following her ingenious clues.

 The third house, Wanpus, is known for warriors.  For this activity, the kids battled with balloons.  They taped a straw to the top of a balloon, inflated the balloon, ran fishing line through the straw, then let the air out of the balloons so 2 balloons would race toward each other.  One balloon would push the other balloon to the end of the fishing line.  Here's Gibson with his balloon which isn't fairing well.

 Here's a photo of Eddy getting ready to battle Gibson.  Also in the photo are Ethan and Brandan.

 The kids taped bamboo skewers to their balloons to hopefully pop their opponent's balloon.

 The last house, Thunderbird, is known for adventurers.  The fourth activity was maneuvering through the hallway without touching a spell- the yarn crisscrossing the hallway.

 Here's a photo of Helen making her way through the maze.

 Next we had cupcakes and snacks.  This is Gibson blowing out the candle on his cupcake.  Each cupcake had a chocolate snitch on top.

 Since Ilvermorny is in North America, we let everyone choose which house they wanted to be sorted into.  Most kids chose Thunderbird.  Abe was the only one who chose Puckwudgie.  He's wearing his Puckwudgie badge in this photo.

 We ended the party with a game of Quidditch which is a worldwide sport in the Harry Potter world.  Here are Michael, Caleb and Nick.

 Here are Eddy (in the back looking for the snitch), Caleb, Nick, Helen, Sophie, Clara and Abe.  It was a great party.  Everyone in our family contributed by making invitations, planning games, making wands and Quidditch goals, decorating, making food and cleaning up.