24 February 2019

Our friend, Pam, called last Sunday to let us know the quilt top we had given her was finished.  Pam's husband, Gregg, quilted the quilt with his long arm quilter.  Pam sewed the binding and another friend finished up the hand sewing.  The gurney quilt is now ready to send to Honduras.

Pam sews a tag like this one on the back of every quilt she donates.

Helen helped organize a class kindness week at school.  She planned activities for every day.  She made a big sign to hang on the wall and her classmates wrote kind notes to each other and posted them on the wall.

This is a photo of the scouts getting ready for their winter backpacking trip.  They made soup mix for dinner and packed cold cereal and powdered creamer for breakfast.

On Wednesday, Becky and Brandan went to their Thai cooking class.  The photo shows the menu of food we learned how to cook.

Brandan and Becky made the soup.  It had a lot of unusual ingredients including lemongrass, galangal and kefir lime leaves.  In this photo, Brandan is hitting the lemongrass with the back of his knife before putting it into the broth to cook.

Traditionally the soup is very spicy.  The recipe called for 10-12 of these birds' eye chili peppers.  After tasting a tiny piece of one pepper and finding it very hot, we decided to only put in 4 peppers.

This is the soup ready to be served.  Besides the flavorful broth, the soup contained chicken, two kinds of mushrooms and coconut milk.  It was unusual and delicious.

Another team made a colorful green papaya salad.  The salad had lots of birds' eye peppers in it and was very spicy.

We also had fish with red curry sauce.  One team made the fish and another one made the sauce.

We had coconut ice cream with fresh corn and mango for dessert.  

 On Friday, Brandan, Abe, Helen and Gibson backpacked in to Lake of the Woods with the scouts.  They slept in cabins with electricity and wood stoves, but no running water.  Gib cooked the soup he made earlier by pouring boiling water over it.

 He melted snow in his jetboil and filtered it so he could drink it.

 Everyone played for hours in the snow outside the cabins.  This is a photo of Helen and Emma sledding down a hill.

 Tall drifts of snow made it easy to climb onto the cabin roofs.  Here's a photo of Helen sitting on a roof.

17 February 2019

Helen made personalized Valentines for all of her classmates this week.  She spread out on the floor for more surface area. 

 Becky made Valentines for the kids and gave them nerdy t-shirts.

Helen accidentally ate some wheat at her class party on Valentines Day and came home sick from school.  We had a busy evening planned, but canceled our activities for a mellow night at home.We still had a candlelight dinner together, including creme brûlée for dessert.  This is a photo of Gibson caramelizing the sugar on top of his dessert.  This was our first time making creme brûlée without Sofi and it was surprisingly simple. 

Helen went to an art party on Saturday.  Jules, the friend who hosts the parties, is moving soon so this was their last party.

Here are the girls' finished projects.

Gibson and Brandan finished the wood pen that Gibson has been making on his lathe.  It turned out beautifully!

10 February 2019

Helen helped lead the National Junior Honor Society induction ceremony at her school on Wednesday.  She gave a talk about Scholarship and led the pledge for the new members.

 She also played Leaves on the Seine on the piano.

Several friends from Helen's class were at the meeting.  From the left are Helen, Becca, Roberta, Lucy and Clara.

Abe and Helen practiced this week to prepare to accompany the ward choir.  They learned an arrangement of I Am A Child of God.

They didn't end of playing because it snowed Sunday morning.  Our stake president canceled church for the stake.  A large group of kids from our ward met at the soccer field in our neighborhood to play in the snow.  Abe, Helen and Gibson are in the back right of the photo.

 Gibson built a snow BB8.

 Abe built a snowman.  The snow is almost melted now.  There is more snow in the forecast for this week, so we might have more snow days in our future.

A retired submarine captain named Mike lives in our ward.  Brandan invited him to speak to the youth at the bishop's fireside this evening.  He told stories and answered questions for about an hour.

He was the captain of the USS Drum, an attack submarine.

Mike says there are two kinds of ships, submarines and targets.

 From the left are Emma, Hannah, Hailee, Helen, Mike, Aiden, Abe, Gibson and Hunter.  Gib is holding a cross section of a submarine hull.  It's three inches thick and very dense metal.

We had a great year in 2018 and wanted to remember some of the blessings we experienced.  We started a list on our mudroom door.  The paper is starting to tear so we're posting a photo here.

3 February 2019

Becky registered for a couple of cooking classes for a gift for Brandan's birthday.  Our first class, Middle Eastern cooking, was Wednesday night.  The class is taught by Chef Emily, a retired professional chef and former instructor at Le Cordon Bleu.  Chef Billy was her assistant.  Twelve students met in the community college cafeteria to learn how to cook a middle eastern feast.  The class divided into 3 teams and each team cooked part of the meal.  We were on the baking team and learned how to make pita bread and a cake.  In the photo, Chef Billy is showing Linda, Farris and Brandan how to proof yeast for pita bread. 

Chef Emily showed us how to whip egg whites for the cake with a very large bowl and very large whisk.

 We had detailed instructions for each recipe and the two chefs would rotate between the teams to keep us on track.  In this photo, Linda is spreading the very thick, almond filled cake batter in a pan.

 Here's a photo of Chef Emily.  Her long cooking career includes time spent working as a cook in Israel and traveling throughout the middle east.  In this photo she is checking on the soup.

In this photo Chef Emily is helping Brandan bake the pita bread.  The pita bread baked in a very hot oven and was done in only a few minutes.

Here's a perfect pita bread, fresh from the oven.

 The class started at 5:30 pm and by 8 pm, everything was finished and ready to eat.  In the center of the table are the pita bread, a cucumber and yogurt salad, baba ganoush (an eggplant spread) and chicken in pomegranate walnut sauce.  The cups at the edge of the table are filled with dried fruit soup.  We also ate rice with spinach and tomatoes and a semolina almond cake in cinnamon lemon syrup.  Everything was very delicious and full of rich flavors.

The cooking class was great fun.  We learned some new recipes, ate a delicious meal and enjoyed getting to know some new people.  We're looking forward to a Thai cooking class in a few weeks.

Helen's violin group is going to NYC in two months to play at Carnegie Hall.  The group has worked very hard to memorize their half hour program.  They played a concert Thursday night as a thank you to the church that lets them use their building for rehearsals.  The group played with skill, unity and dynamic sound.

We think they're ready for Carnegie Hall, however Faina will spend the next two months polishing them to perfection!

 Gibson can play church basketball now that he's a deacon.  He looks forward to playing every Saturday.

 Abe plays on the same team.

 Five of us had the special experience of going to the temple together on Friday night.  It was Gibson's first time to do baptisms at the temple.  Abe baptized Gibson and Helen and Brandan baptized Abe.