30 December 2018

On Wednesday our family went to the funeral of our next door neighbor.  Peggy passed away on December 12 at the age of 90.  She was a terrific neighbor.  She loved to tell stories about raising her 4 kids with her husband, Jerry, who died of ALS in 1990.  She went bungee jumping at age 75 and said she wouldn't do it again.  We were impressed that she did it once!  She was in poor health the last couple of years, but never lost her sense of humor or her love of a good story.

Abe got his wisdom teeth out on Thursday.  He spent the first day icing his face, eating milkshakes and watching TV.  He is healing quickly and his face looks normal today.

 A few Lego animals showed up in our nativity.

This looks like a half or a third of a quilt, but it's going to be made into a gurney quilt.  Our friend, Pam, makes baby quilts for the hospital.  While she was delivering quilts to the NICU, she met a surgical nurse from another department at the hospital.  The surgical nurse makes trips twice a year to Honduras for a service mission at a hospital.  The hospital doesn't have a way to warm patients in the recovery room after surgery.  Honduras has a tropical climate and in general, a sheet is all a patient needs to be comfortable.  However, the anesthetic can make patients feel very cold, even in a warm room.  The nurse asked Pam if she could make quilts for the surgical recovery room that the nurse could take to Honduras when she goes in February.  Pam worked out the dimensions to make a quilt long enough to cover a patient, but narrow enough not to get caught in the wheels of a gurney.  Our family pieced a quilt top for one of the quilts.  We cut the squares out for family night a few weeks ago.  Becky finished sewing them together this week.  Pam's husband has a long arm quilter and will finish the quilt for us.

 We signed up for a free subscription to Netflix as a treat for Abe while he recovered from his surgery.  Our house isn't really set up for watching television  The best option is to stream shows on our computer, which is in our dining room.  Abe, Gibson and Helen lined up comfortable chairs for optimal viewing.

 Happy Birthday to Helen!  Helen turned 14 on Saturday.  Helen is smart, fun, determined, observant and unusually talented.  We regularly ask for her help with music, lettering, drawing and graphic design.  Helen is very creative and comes up with terrific ideas.  She's also very organized and capable and uses detailed plans to make her ideas come to life.

 We're learning how to move out of the way and watch Helen fly!

Merry Christmas!

We had a glorious Christmas Eve.  Our friend, Debbie joined us for dinner and for acting out the nativity story.

Debbie was our narrator, Brandan and Becky were Mary and Joseph; Helen was the angel and a wise man; Gibson was an innkeeper, a sheep and a wiseman; Abe was an innkeeper, a shepherd and a wiseman.  We sang lots of songs and read the story from Luke 2 and Matthew 2.

Skyping Sofi was the highlight of our celebration.  Christmas in Taiwan is just an ordinary day, but she and her companion made it extraordinary by talking to people about the gift that is Jesus Christ.  And by wearing reindeer antler headbands.

Abe frosted our Buche de Noel and made it look amazing.  

Helen put baby Jesus in the manger before we went to bed.

We opened presents on Christmas morning.  Abe hid his present and created a treasure hunt for us to find it.

The first clue led to a battery.

The battery connected to a homemade box Abe had made.  Another clue was the code to type into the keypad on the box.

Here is Gib trying out the code.

The screen on the box revealed the location of the gift.  Abe used his Arduino to program the secret code and the message.

Brandan's family used Facebook messenger to talk to each other at the same time.  Clockwise from the top right are Becky, Wade, Dan, Brandan, Drue, Jon and Nate.

We invited Sister D and Sister W over to use our computer to talk to their families.  They ate lunch with us and each sister played games with us while her companion talked with her family.  It felt great to share some Christmas with them.  We wish we could have called Sofi again after they left.

Here's a photo of Sister D taking a selfie with Helen.

Sofi sent us a package from Taiwan.  Helen got 2 presents-- one for Christmas and one for her birthday.

Helen painted each of us a painting.  From the left are paintings for Gibson, Becky, Brandan and Abe.

Gibson made Becky an hourglass from driftwood and spare parts.  We love that he found a scripture to go along with his gift.

Our Christmas countdown puzzle is complete!

Becky had one last surprise for Christmas dinner-- Christmas crackers!  We read about them in Harry Potter, but we had never tried one before.

We moved away from the table to pull the crackers in case they exploded.  In reality they barely snapped when pulled.  Inside each cracker was a crown, a toy and a sheet of very British jokes that we mostly understood.  What does a duck want for Christmas?  Christmas quack-ers.

It was a very merry Christmas.

23 December 2018

Merry Christmas!  Our sacrament meeting today was a highlight of our Christmas season, with lots of music and beautiful talks.  Here's a photo of the kids in their Christmas finery.

 They could be mistaken for Christmas angels, although Gibson is mischeivously pretending to eat an ornament. 

Our ward collected new pajamas, socks and underwear for foster children at our ward Christmas party.  Becky got to deliver the clothes to the agency that needed the donations.  This photo represents about a third of the donated clothing.  The agency wasn't surprised because they have learned our church is very generous.

We started our Christmas concert series this week.  We shortened the number of concerts we're doing since the kids didn't get out of school until December 21.  Our first stop was a foster home for the elderly.  Our neighbor's husband lives here.  It's hard to say how many of the residents were paying attention to the music, but a couple of them seemed to enjoy it. 

 Our next concert was at an apartment building for low income senior citizens.  Several of the residents are Brandan's patients and/or members of our ward.  Here's a sample of our concert this year.  Helen starts out by playing Have a Holly Jolly Christmas on the violin.

 Next, Gibson plays God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on the keyboard.

 Brandan plays What Child is This on the guitar.

 Abe and Gibson play a duet of O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

 Then Helen plays something Christmas on the keyboard.  She likes to mix it up.  So far she's played Deck the Halls, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear and Good Christian Men Rejoice.  We end by singing Christmas carols together, accompanied by Helen.  Our program lasts about half an hour.

Here's a photo of the audience.  Everyone joined in the caroling.  We love how festive the community room looked.  All the residents help decorate it.

 We also played for Jeanie and the DeKortes.  Brandan and Abe minister to Jeanie and the DeKortes minister to our family.  Both of them invited family and friends over and made a little party out of the concert.  Our Christmas concerts started in 2010, with Sofi playing the keyboard, Abe playing a ukulele and Helen playing the violin.  The kids have all grown as musicians and the concerts are still a great way for the kids to show love for our elderly friends and neighbors.  We have a couple for concerts lined up for today and then we'll be finished for another year.

The 8th graders at Helen's school had a Christmas dance on Friday.  The dance was pretty low-key, just the last hour of school, but Helen and Clara had fun dressing up in holiday clothes and curling their hair for it.  It was their first dance and they had a great time.

Our Christmas countdown puzzle is almost complete.  The kids are impatient to finish the puzzle and sometimes threaten to open all the envelopes and put the rest of the pieces in at once.  For Becky, it seems the puzzle is going together very, very quickly!  Two days until Christmas!

16 December 2018

Our ward Christmas party was Saturday night.  Becky coordinated the party this year and the event took up a few evenings this week.  On Wednesday we went to the church to check the microphones and allow some performers time to rehearse.  In the photo, Gib is playing O Come, O Come Emmanuel on the cello to see how it sounds with a microphone.  For the program, Abe and Gibson played a duet with piano and cello, Brandan played What Child is This on the guitar and Helen played an arrangement called The First Noel/ Christmas Waltz on the piano.

On Saturday we ran the Ugly Sweater 5K together.  Brandan and Becky were the only ones in our family who wore ugly sweaters.

One runner stood out in the crowd of festive Christmas attire so we stopped to ask about his outfit.  He's dressed as Krampus.  We had never heard of Krampus before and we learned Krampus is a mythical demon who accompanies St. Nicholas in some European countries.  Krampus gives naughty children coal, leaving St. Nicholas the pleasant job of giving good children presents.  The boy's mom crocheted this impressive costume.  Kudos to the boy for running 3.2 miles while wearing it!

Helen wrapped Christmas presents for her Young Women leaders Sunday morning.  For years we've given Lindt chocolate to the kids' teachers.  This year we're switching it up with tins of Dutch stroopwafels.

Becky set a goal to read the Old Testament in 2018.  She read 4-5 pages a day and finished this morning.  This time through she read the NIV translation and highly recommends this version, especially the study Bible that is full of helpful charts, maps and photos.

9 December 2018

Thursday was one of our favorite days if the year: St. Nicholas Day!  Everyone woke up to shoes stuffed with chocolate and a new book.  Brandan got Temple Reflections, Abe got To Kill a Mockingbird, Helen got Anne of Green Gables and Gibson got The Jungle Book. 

 Helen's violin group is going to Carnegie Hall in April.  Before they will be allowed to perform, each student must pass off the repertoire of songs for her violin teacher, Faina.  Helen passed off the last of the songs this week and got to hang her sticker chart up in her teacher's studio as a reward.  

Besides having the music memorized, Faina watches and listens for 9 other qualities.  It's quite an accomplishment to get every mark for each song.  Because of Faina's high standards, the group sounds amazing when they play together.

On Saturday we went to watch Clara perform in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Clara was an Oompa Loompa.  We loved the Oompa Loompa's steampunk costumes, quite a nice change from the orange men in the movie.

We started a new puzzle today.  Our kids are too quick putting together 1000 piece puzzles so we're trying a 2000 piece puzzle for the first time.  The puzzle will actually be too big to fit on our card table, but we don't have to solve that problem today.