28 February 2021

Brandan was mentioned in an article about last year's urban fires that resulted in thousands of people evacuating their homes in the Family Physicians of Oregon winter 2021 magazine.

Here's a close up of the paragraph that describes how he helped at one of the emergency shelters.

Abe made a delicious lasagna for dinner last Sunday night.

It took him most of the afternoon to make so we ate dinner in the evening after mission prep. It was well worth the wait!

High school sports that are traditionally played in the fall are gearing up for an intense mini season in March. The newspaper previewed the local boys' soccer teams and Abe got a brief mention for Crater High School.

The kids at the high school are screened for corona virus when they arrive at school and then must wear a sticker the rest of the day to show they were screened. This is a photo of Gibson after Becky picked him up from school one day and shows the typical sticker.

This is Abe's arm when he came home from school on Friday. Obviously, he was very screened that day.

We went hiking on Friday and got distracted by kids wanting to explore and build. Helen and Gibson are on the far side of the pond in this photo.

The kids built a bridge across the creek using fallen limbs. Gibson and Elsa are in this photo. Hiking in February is too cold if you don't keep moving so we didn't stay out for very long.

Brandan and Becky watched several speakers from the Roots Tech Connect event on Friday night. We enjoyed listening to the fascinating family stories and admired the ingenuity of the organizers for making the event happen virtually.

21 February 2021

 Craterworks continues to be a high point of our week. In this photo Nathan is talking about the bluetooth receiver prototype he is building. Once he figures it out, he'll show the boys how to make one for their wooden boomboxes.

Jason is holding one of the speakers they are going to use.

The boys spent most of their time designing the front facade of their boombox. Each boombox will house two speakers and a bluetooth receiver.  This is Gibson's design.

Then they used the laser cutter to cut and engrave their design in plywood. Jason was able to cut his design out before we ran out of time. They should finish their boombox project in two weeks.

Abe filed his taxes for the very first time.

We hiked Lower Tablerock this week. The girls wanted to walk out to the edge, but the boys didn't. Here are Gibson, Jason and Sam looking for bugs in the chilly rain puddles while they wait for the girls to get back.

Brandan was released as the bishop of our ward today. He has served since July 2016. It's been a soul stretching experience, especially for Brandan. All of us have grown and it's easy to see how our family has been blessed because of his service. The Lord is generous and gracious!

14 February 2021

 Abe made extra large pancakes for breakfast this week.

This is a photo of Gibson looking wise while on a hike.

7 February 2021

Our biggest news of the week by far is that Helen got her driver's license on Monday! This is a big accomplishment for any teenager, but Helen had to work extra hard because of the corona virus. Since drivers' ed classes were canceled, Helen had to log 100 hours of supervised driving with a licensed adult (mostly Becky) instead. She passed her driving and written tests with flying colors and is happily driving herself around now.

The next biggest news of the week is the beginning of in-person school!  Our kids get to go to school for 2 days per class each week. They have a shortened schedule, but in-person school is a big improvement over virtual school. Gibson is in a 10th grade math class so he rides to the high school with Abe in the morning and then walks over to the middle school for the rest of his classes.

At Craterworks, the boys wanted to build a wooden boombox, that is, they wanted to cut out a piece of wood and make it look like a boombox. Nathan took their idea to the next level and is teaching them how to build speakers so they can use their boombox as a speaker for their phones. They started out by building prototype speakers from paper, cardboard, magnets and wire. In this photo are Gibson, Eddy, Andrea, Nathan and Jason.

In this photo, Nathan is explaining how the electrical energy from his phone is being transformed into mechanical energy by the speaker which creates sound waves that are detected by our ears. The boys spliced aux cords onto their paper speakers and then they could play music from Nathan's phone, which seemed incredible.

Helen's first day of school was Thursday this week. She goes on different days than Abe and Gibson and got to drive herself.

Here is our new school schedule for the next 5 weeks. Overall, it is much simpler than the strictly online schedule was. Helen and Abe now only have school in person. Gibson still has online classes on the days when he is not in person