30 August 2020

 Blackberries are a noxious weed in the Pacific northwest.  The thick brambles quickly overrun any untended piece of ground.  However, for a few weeks in August, they produce giant, sweet berries that taste like summer sunshine.  Best of all, they are free for picking along the road.

Becky picked a gallon of blackberries and made a delicious blackberry cobbler.

Abigail and Alena came over Friday night and helped our kids make a lemon poppyseed pound cake.  Abe and Abigail did most of the baking.

Since they started baking their cake about 9 pm, the girls had to go home before it was finished baking.  Abe packaged up half of the cake to take over to their house when he got home from work on Saturday.

Here's a close up of their delicious cake.

Gibson and Brandan went back to the cabin Gibson is making improvements to for his Eagle project to work on the entryway.  Over the years, the paving stones that make the front porch had shifted and were very uneven.

They moved the stones, leveled the ground and replaced the paving stones.  They worked for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple more hours after lunch.  Gibson is very pleased with the end result.

23 August 2020

Brandan and Becky signed up for a 3 hour platform shift at the pear farm on Tuesday morning.  With social distancing, only 4 people are allowed on a shift, instead of a full platform of 8 people.

Even with the restrictions, platform picking is still the fastest way to pick pears.  The 4 people working on the platform picked 5-6 bins during our shift.

Besides platform picking, ladder picking is all the work left at the pear farm for this harvest.  Here's a photo of Abe working Thursday morning.  Hopefully the rest of the pears will be picked this week.  It's been a different harvest, but with most of our other activities canceled, we've had plenty of time to go to the pear farm.  We've also enjoyed catching up with friends we haven't seen in months.

Abe spent a long weekend at the coast with his friends.  From the left are Malakai, Spencer, Camden, Ashton, Jake and Abe.

Camden's mom helped the boys rent a beach house in Gold Hill. Spencer and Malakai's moms joined Camden's mom and chaperoned the boys for the weekend.  The boys enjoyed playing at the beach and the dunes and staying up late every night.  These boys are fantastic friends to each other. 

 

We watched our broadcast stake conference from home today.  The stake technology experts did a brilliant job making the conference run smoothly and our stake leaders gave beautiful and uplifting talks.  We're so glad they made the extra effort to make the conference successful and inspiring.

16 August 2020

 Abe is building a remote control car from legos and scraps of wood.  He's using an Arduino to program the car.  It's kind of a summer-long project.  This is a photo of Helen helping Abe to solder the live wires for his circuit board to a common connecter piece.

We went pear picking several times this week.

Aunika, Alena and Abigail came to pick with us Thursday night.  It's a fun way to spend the evening and feel good about the service you are doing at the same time.

9 August 2020

Sofi came to visit this week along with three of her friends, Nelson, Erik and Emma.  All three of her friends are from Utah and attend the University of Utah.  Emma is Sofi's roommate.  Nelson and Emma came to visit last fall and we were excited to have them return.  This was our first time to meet Erik.  For our Come Follow Me lesson on Sunday we made a roller box movie of the story of Moroni and Zerahemnah from Alma 42-43.  Abe drew this funny picture of Zerahemnah looking "exceedingly wroth."  From the left are Nelson, Helen, Gibson, Abe, Sofi, Erik and Emma.

Brandan didn't realize he was in Doctrine and Covenants 43 instead of Alma 43 so his pictures were a little different than the others.  This is a picture of the lightnings streaking from the east, calling on people to repent and making all the ears tingle (D&C 43:22).

Brandan had the week off of work and we enjoyed tagging along with Sofi and her friends on some of their southern Oregon adventures.  On Monday we went back to South Umpqua Falls for our third visit this summer.  This is a photo of Sofi going over the falls while Erik is standing at the top.  The warm, beautiful weather made the cold water bearable.

Brandan helped Helen put the trucks and wheels on her longboard.  It's almost finished.  In the photo Brandan is using Abe's longboard to mark the alignment of Helen's wheels.

On Wednesday we drove out to the coast.  We stopped at a gift shop along the way and spotted Bigfoot (Gibson).

We then drove to Stout Grove in the Redwoods.  We spent a couple of hours exploring and admiring the trees.  From the left are Gibson, Emma, Helen, Sofi, Erik, Nelson and Brandan.

This is a photo of Nelson, Erik, Helen and Gibson climbing on a fallen tree.

Here Emma is standing next to a tree with Sofi, Erik, Nelson, Helen and Gibson underneath in a hollow space.

Here's Helen climbing out from their hiding spot.  Even with 5 people under the tree, they said there was room for 5 more.

The Jedediah Smith River runs next to Stout Grove.  This is Helen and Gibson.

Gibson and Helen waded out to rocks in the river.  This is Gibson.

And here is Helen.

Brandan skipped rocks on the river.

We got to the coast in the afternoon, just as the clouds burned off.  We enjoyed looking for creatures in the tide pools and some of us got in the water, even though it is freezing.

Brandan had bishopric meetings Wednesday evening so Brandan, Becky and Helen headed home early, while the others stayed longer.  We took a quick photo before leaving.

On Friday morning, Sofi and friends drove up to Crater Lake.  We met them in the afternoon and rafted the Rogue River.  Abe was working most of the week so this was the first outing he joined us for.  No one fell in the river this time, but we all got splashed.  Our week with friends flew by quickly and now the kids are back in Utah, getting ready for school to start.  We're so happy they came and that we got to show them some of our favorite spots.  And there are plenty of other great places to explore which we didn't get to see and which will hopefully entice them back!  From the left are Emma, Becky, Erik, Helen (sitting on the front of the raft), Abigail, Nelson, Abe, Sofi and Gibson.

2 August 2020

Here's the beginning of Abe's jean quilt.  It's fun to watch a pile of scraps turn into an organized pattern with (mostly) straight lines.

A blessing of the corona virus is there is plenty of time to sew.  Here is the finished quilt top.  I didn't expect it to come together so quickly, but there weren't a lot of competing activities for time this week.

Pear picking started this week.  It's great to be back in the pear orchard and catch up with friends we haven't seen in months.  Pear picking is a fairly safe activity during the pandemic.  It's outside and easy to distance from other people.  We need to wear masks this year, which is new.

Charity invited Helen and Gibson to go swimming in the Rogue River on Thursday with her girls.  They found a great swimming hole with a sandy beach called the Rainbow Recreation area.  From the left are Gibson, Alena, Abigail, Aunika and Helen.

Abe drove up and joined them after work.

On Friday, Abe and Gibson went rafting with the Webers, along a different stretch of the Rogue River.  Here are Abigail and Abe.

Here are Alena and Gibson.

 And here is Charity, the sponsor of the fun outings and source for these great photos.