11 April 2021

 This week at Craterworks the boys continued working on their blue tooth boombox speakers. It took longer than they thought it would to program the speakers and fine-tune the sound quality. It looks like it will be another week before they finish.

Crater had the opportunity to play in a soccer tournament this week as the culmination of the brief season. They beat the number 2 seed in the tournament. Abe scored a goal during regular play and another goal in the shootout that decided the game. The newspaper printed a long story about the game and Abe is in both photos. You can see his legs behind the goalie in the top photo and he is in the top right of the bottom photo. 

Helen took a live photo of Abe's shootout goal and the next two photos are stills from the live photo. Here's Abe preparing to kick.

And here the ball flies past the right of the goalie as the goalie dives to the left. We have so much sympathy for goalies in these high pressure situations when each goal comes down to guessing which way to block. It was a super fun game to watch.

Helen, Gibson and Becky hiked Lower Tablerock with Angel and Jason on a gorgeous Friday afternoon. Helen hiked out to the very edge.

Becky got her first dose of a COVID vaccine on Saturday morning. She was a little nervous (would she find the vaccination clinic, would they have enough vaccines, would she feel woozy afterwards) so Brandan came along for support. She didn't expect the intense rush of gratitude she felt after receiving the vaccine, for the travel nurse who has spent 2 months away from home to help staff the clinic and for the faith and prayers that led to the creation of vaccines in record time. This is a photo of Brandan and Becky in the observation area afterwards.

Brandan and Gibson tuned up our sprinkler system on Saturday, replacing broken parts, uncovering sprinkler heads that grass had grown over and adjusting the spray patterns. We're ready for warmer weather!

We've had a bumpy couple of weeks as our schools have prepared to increase the amount of time kids spend in person at school. Their new schedules start tomorrow. The middle school is going to have in person school 4 days a week and online school on Wednesdays. The high school decided to leave schedules the same unless parents or students requested more in-person class time. They are going to use the extra days to make up missed classes or offer fun electives like PE or Art. Abe was already going to school 4 days a week before the changes and Helen feels like she has plenty to do with her core classes, work, piano and violin. The only change to their schedules is school now begins and ends an hour later. Each of our kids does a good job remembering when and where they have classes, but Becky needs a chart to keep them straight. There are 9 weeks of school left and hopefully this is the last time the schedules change.