26 May 2019

Becky turned 45 on Tuesday!  She had one candle for each 9 years on her cake.

Sofi's best friend, Joey, is getting married on June 1.  Sofi hosted a bridal shower for her on Thursday at our house.  Helen helped by making banners and a poster.

The food was delicious.  Sofi and Joey both love good food.

Gibson helped make this balloon arch that made the party feel especially festive.  He stuck around for a few minutes at the beginning of the shower and then went to play soccer with Brandan. 

Abe was at a friend's house filming a movie for a Chinese class assignment.  They're still filming, but Abe worked this weekend to edit together the parts they finished.  We'll publish a link to the video when he finishes it. 

19 May 2019

We're starting out with a couple of photos from last week.  Sofi took a photo of our ward on Mother's Day.  It was surprisingly painless and a fun memory to preserve.  

Sofi made a delicious dinner for Mother's Day.  Gibson is riding his ripstick in the photo while he waits for dinner to start.

Gibson's school held their honors night on Thursday.  Gibson got a pin for academic excellence and also received a Solid as a Rock award for his positive character traits.

 Gibson went to a camporee this weekend.  Only two boys from our troop went, Gibson and Aiden who is standing next to Gibson in the photo.  Our troop is having a hard time maintaining enthusiasm since parents know the church will leave scouting the end of the year, but Gibson is still going strong.

 Brandan and Abe went to the grand opening of Crater Works, a new maker space in town.  Crater Works offers space, tools and guidance for a wide range of shops such as woodworking, welding, 3D printing and commercial cooking.  The high school will use the space during the day.  At nights and on weekends, community members can rent space or take classes and use all the tools and equipment for their own projects.

Once a year the three wards who meet in our church building only have a combined sacrament meeting and then leave the stake center for a regional young single adult conference.  Helen and Gibson played in a string quartet for the musical number today.  They accompanied a children's choir that sang "The Family is of God."  This is a photo of the kids tuning their instruments before sacrament meeting started.

12 May 2019

Happy Mother's Day! It's pretty awesome to be the mother of these cuties.

For family home evening this week we had a Bob Ross painting night.  Abe picked out the episode we followed, gathered all the supplies and set up space for us to paint.

Here we are getting started on our canvasses.  We used acrylic paint instead of oil paints like Bob Ross uses because we have lots of acrylic paint, it smells better and is easier to clean up.  However, Bob calls painting with acrylics "agony city" because the paint is harder to blend.  Also, our paintings took significantly longer than his to finish.  We paused the video frequently while we caught up to Bob.

Here's Gib dabbing some highlights on to his bushes.

Abe used his fingers to finish up his painting.

The finished paintings look pretty good.  Bob Ross is right-- anyone can paint.

We had a fun night painting together.

Gibson built a trebuchet out of chopsticks this week.  A trebuchet is like a catapult, but it uses a counterweight to propel the projectiles.  Gib's counterweight is a rubber band ball.

Abe's school held its honors night on Wednesday.  Abe got an award for having a great GPA.

He also received a BIS LEADS award for showing leadership, enthusiasm, academics, determination and success.

5 May 2019

Helen and her class went on a field trip to Crater Lake on Monday. They enjoyed snowshoeing around the lake and talking about animal adaptations in the winter. The people in this photo are: Roberta, Chayton, Wyatt, Helen, and Keleigh.

Sofi is home for the summer!  She and Joey drove home from Utah together on Wednesday.  We're soaking up our time with her and enjoying her stories and company.  Our family went to see the Avengers movie together on Saturday night.  It might look like Sofi is snapping her fingers together, Thanos style, but actually she's making a heart with her thumb and first finger, Taiwanese style.

 We enjoyed our Come Follow Me study out in the backyard today.  It was a perfect sunny afternoon to linger together.