16 May 2021

Three cheers for Sofi who organized a road trip to Southern Oregon to visit us along with Nelson, Erik, Lauren and Nate. We have met Nelson and Erik before. Lauren was Sofi's roommate this year and Nate was Nelson and Erik's roommate. Their finals ended May 5 and they planned the trip to celebrate Nelson and Erik's graduation and the beginning of summer. This photo was taken at Secret Beach.

 Sofi and friends came on Monday and stayed for a week of fun. Helen and Gibson joined them for a trip to the Redwoods and the coast on Wednesday. From the left are Helen, Sofi, Lauren, Nelson, Erik, Nate and Gibson.

This is a photo of Helen swimming across the Smith River near Stout Grove in the redwoods.

They stopped for smoothies at Dutch Bros, an Oregon original. We let Gibson skip school for this worthy adventure. Helen never has school on Wednesday because of the school's pandemic schedule. Thanks to Helen for sharing these photos from their day.

Helen also took this photo of herself and Sofi at an outdoor concert on Friday. It feels great to be able to attend community events again. Things are slowly opening up after over a year of being closed down.

Erik served a mission in Busan, South Korea, the exact mission Abe has been called to. We're a little fuzzy on the reason why, but Erik and Nate have been carrying around a can of silk worm larvae from South Korea for some time, waiting for an opportunity to eat them. Erik never ate silk worm larvae on his mission, but he was curious to try them. They decided it would be fun to cook the larvae and share them with us.

Here are Erik and Nate, sautéing the larvae with some green onions, ginger, garlic, salt and pepper.

Here are the brave souls who ate a larvae: Nate, Lauren, Abe, Abigail, Helen, Erik and Nelson. The rest of us couldn't overcome our gag reflex. The consensus was the larvae were chewy and tasted like mulch. Most people were content with eating just one and then trying not to retch after thinking about what they ate. Nate stir fried the rest of the larvae with leftover rice and ate them all with plenty of sriracha sauce and sour cream.

Here are some other photos from the week. This is Gibson styling Abe's hair with the leaf blower.

Abe couldn't go to the beach on Wednesday because he had his first AP test of the year, AP Language and Composition. Becky took him out to lunch to celebrate being finished and then he went home for a three hour nap. He has one test down and two to go.

We were super excited when the Pfizer vaccine was approved for everyone ages 12 and up this week. Becky took Gibson to get his vaccine after school on Friday. Besides a sore arm where he got the shot, he didn't have any side effects. This means our entire family will be fully vaccinated by June 18.

Brandan installed some supports to help hold our new dryer vent in place. Gibson helped him caulk the supports before painting them to match our house.

We noticed a new phenomenon: Gibson has a mask tan line. Generally, we don't wear masks outside, but he is required to wear a mask to soccer practice and games. He now has distinctive stripes on the sides of his face.