28 June 2020

This photo of Brandan is from last Sunday.  He's relaxing on the front porch and listening to Sofi on the phone.

Abe came out to share a piece of the fried chicken he made himself for lunch.  Not only was this Abe's first time making fried chicken, it was his first time eating fried chicken since most recipes use wheat.  He did an amazing job!

This is what soccer practice looks like right now, with players spaced out across the field.  Abe is on the right in the photo.

Abe juggled a soccer ball 512 times in a row this week, a personal record for him.  His team hopes to get permission to scrimmage soon, but for now they are working on drills and conditioning.

Helen held a Harry Potter movie marathon for herself on Tuesday.  She started watching the first movie at 6 am and finished the last one at 2:30 am on Wednesday, taking a short break for dinner.  It was over 20 hours of movie watching.  She decorated the library on Monday before her marathon and here are some of her decorations.

Helen, Gibson and Brandan explored a creek near our house on a hot afternoon.

Gibson and Helen are building longboards with Brandan's help.  This is a photo of Gibson sanding the deck of his longboard.

Helen spent a lot of time this week experimenting with designs and paint colors to decorate her longboard.  Here she is making a life size version of the flowers she wants to draw on the bottom of her longboard's deck.

On Wednesday we went to the Oregon coast for the day.  The tide pools were very interesting to explore.  The bright orange object in the water is a large crab.

The view from a hill next to the beach shows what a beautiful day it was.  It was pretty easy to socially distance here.

It's rarely warm at the Oregon coast, even when the sun is shining.The wind turned Gib's beach towel into a cape.

Gibson's eagle project was approved just as the country shut down because of the corona virus.  With facilities slowly reopening, he's moving forward with the next steps.  On Saturday, Brandan and Gibson met with the park's program director and started cleaning out the cabin.  

21 June 2020

Our stake is collecting items for the Children's Advocacy Center, a local organization that supports children who are recovering from child abuse.  Becky made some child sized masks to donate.  

Brandan had the week off and he took the kids mountain biking one morning along the Sterling Ditch Mining Trail. 

The trail was more challenging than they were prepared for, but they enjoyed the relatively easy stretches.

Chinese workers dug the ditch in 1877 to bring water from the Little Applegate River to the Sterlingville gold mines.  The entire ditch was dug by hand, including this tunnel through the ridge of Anderson Butte.

 The kids were very tired at the end of their bike ride, but we had already made arrangements to go to Lake of the Woods for the afternoon.  Our church owns a beautiful camp on the edge of the lake.  The camp is closed this year because of the corona virus, but the camp hosts welcome individual families up for day use.  They limit the number of people who can come at the same time and they ask the families to help with projects while they are at the lake.  Our family service was collecting branches from recently cut trees and adding them to a burn pile.   

 We quickly finished our work and then we had the lake to ourselves.  It was hot in the valley, but surprisingly cool in the mountains.  Abe was the only one of us who swam.  It was too chilly for the rest of us.

 It was a very relaxing afternoon.  We had a picnic dinner on the docks and then drove home.

 Abe had been working about 30 hours a week.  Between work and soccer practice, he is quite busy.  We went to Chick-fil-A for lunch on Friday and hoped to see him.  We had good luck; he was working the drive through window.  Currently the restaurant is only open for drive through orders.

 We have been following news of the protests for social justice in the news and knew similar protests were being held in our community.  We feel a need to listen, learn and show our support for marginalized groups, but are also very aware of the corona virus pandemic.  Nevertheless, we decided to attend a march and candlelight vigil for Juneteenth on Friday night.  We felt we could wear masks and keep appropriate distance while still participating.

 People started to gather in small groups in the plaza in front of the Medford city hall.  Everyone was respectful, friendly and welcoming.  Many people brought homemade signs.  We live in an overwhelmingly white community and almost all of the protestors were white.

The protest march was well organized and peaceful.  We marched around downtown Medford while chanting slogans like "Black Lives Matter" and "No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police."  

 The march ended at a park where we all knelt, sat or laid on the ground for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time a police officer knelt on George Floyd's neck, killing him.  It is a very long time to kneel.  We then lit candles in memory of the hundreds of black men and women killed by police and listened to a few people tell their stories of injustice.

 It was an extraordinary and thought provoking experience.  We left with better information, hope for change and a desire to help change happen.  We're so glad we went.

 Helen talked us into a sunrise hike for the summer solstice.  This meant waking up at 4 am so we could be on top of Upper Table Rock by the time the sun came up.  

 Gib's buddies, Eddy and Jason, joined us as well as their parents.

 The sunrise was gorgeous, definitely worth the early morning.

 The boys had plenty of energy, even before 6 am.

From the left are Andrea, Becky, Blake, Helen and Angel.  It was a golden morning and we're thankful Helen suggested it.

14 June 2020

This was finals week for our spring term.  Helen and Gibson finished school last week.  Abe had a big project to finish up for his business class and Becky had a couple of final exams.  Since the classes had to move online quickly in March, each teacher developed their own system to make distance learning work.  This is a photo of Becky's set up for her abstract algebra final.  The professor had all the students join a zoom meeting so she could watch everyone work.  She pinned the video so her screen was the largest to prevent us from looking at each other's tests.  At the beginning of the test, she emailed a copy to everyone which we printed out, then took the exam and finally scanned the test to submit it to her.  While the process worked, it was very clunky.  The entire term was stressful for all of us and we are glad summer break is here!

We celebrated the end of school by trying to ride our bikes through the drive through at DQ.  It turns out they don't allow bikes in the drive through lane so the employee wouldn't take our order.

They let us come inside to order.  We couldn't eat inside because of the restrictions due to the corona virus.  From the left are Gibson, Eddy and Jason.

We have lots of plans for projects and activities now school is out.  One goal is to learn how to make gluten free ravioli.  Brandan and Becky made an attempt with some cheese filled ravioli on Friday night.  They turned out great.  We're looking froward to perfecting our recipe over the summer.

 We have a bumper crop of raspberries this year.  So delicious!

Becky made some raspberry freezer jam on Saturday morning.

Helen had a flat tire on her bike and Abe showed her how to fix it.  Our kids ride their bikes every day now so Helen was happy to get it fixed.

7 June 2020

Abe started working at Chick-fil-A this week.  He's glad to have a summer job where his friend, Camden, works and is looking forward to earning money.

 Our high school held their graduation Wednesday night.  Since large gatherings are banned due to Covid-19, they couldn't hold a traditional graduation ceremony.  Instead, the seniors drove through town in a parade and then went back to their own homes for an online ceremony.  It was great fun to cheer for all the graduating seniors.  Helen made these great posters for us to hold while we cheered.

Brandan got a couple of hammock anchors for our backyard.  Since we cut down our mimosa tree, we only have two trees big enough to hang a hammock between.  The anchors will let the kids spread out a little and hang up more hammocks.  Helen and Gibson helped Brandan mount the anchors on the corner of our garage.  It's been a cold and rainy weekend so the kids are going to wait for warmer weather to try them out.