25 December 2022

While not officially engaged, Sofi and Nate are planning on getting married in May in Oregon. Sofi made appointments to look at a few reception venues while she was in town and the rest of us tagged along to give our opinions. This is a photo outside the lovely Wildflower Inn. That's a shed in the photo, not the inn.

This is inside Paschals Winery, a sentimental choice for Sofi who loved going to guitar society concerts here in high school, but a little alcohol centric for her wedding reception.

This is a photo of some alpacas outside the winery.

Sofi is also looking for possible caterers. We got lunch from a taco truck that looked promising to sample their food. The owner was super friendly and we left with a medical referral and his sister's phone number, besides lunch.

His tacos were quite unusual. It seems like he uses a tortilla as a vehicle for interesting flavors and not to make tacos in the traditional sense. We tried barbecue chicken, blue cheese and chicken, lamb with goat cheese and dukkot crusted cod. Sadly, it turns out the owner is catering another event on the day Sofi and Nate are getting married. We'll try out more caterers next week while Sofi is still in town.

Helen found out on Sunday that she was the sole person in charge of the joint YM/YW white elephant gift exchange party on Wednesday. A while elephant exchange is pretty easy to organize, but the Young Women have A LOT of parties. Helen planned a super quick service project to add some depth to the activity. Earlier this summer, a group of Venezuelan immigrants moved to our valley. Some of them are members of our church and the entire group, members and not, attend the Spanish branch in our stake. Helen got supplies to make a New Year's Eve party package for some of the immigrants. Sofi went to the activity to help out by supervising the kids making a party snack mix.

On Thursday night we went to a Celtic Christmas program, featuring music, stories and dancing. Gibson was pretty sure he'd hate it, but we made him go anyway. The rest of us enjoyed a beautiful evening, feeling transported to western Ireland.

On Friday we went to the temple to do baptisms. This time, everyone was happy to be there. Christmas time is family time so it felt good to spend some time in behalf of family we've never met.

Helen asked to be in charge of decorating the Buche de Noel for Christmas Eve and did a beautiful job decorating it with meringue mushrooms, sugared cranberries and sprigs of rosemary.

Christmas Eve dinner.

After dinner we read and acted out the nativity story. This is the part where the angel comes to the shepherds.

Here's a photo of the wise men with Mary and Joseph.

Here are Gibson, Sofi and Helen.

We ended the evening with Gibson putting baby Jesus into the manger and Helen and Gibson playing music on the piano and cello.

18 December 2022

We made sugar cookies on Sunday. Gibson used his lay out skills from using the laser cutter at school to minimize the amount of wasted cookie dough. 

Then he decorated a candy cane cookie to look like Peppa Pig.

Gibson received his Eagle award at a Court of Honor on Monday night. It took longer and was harder to complete than we anticipated and we're proud of him for getting it done!

Gibson earned most of his advancements as a member of Troop 102, which disbanded in 2019. His old scoutmaster, Bob Lebel, and old advancement chair, Andy Dekorte, came to celebrate Gibson's Eagle award. From the left are Brandan, Gibson, Andy and Bob.

Brandan also helped shepherd Gibson through his final years, navigating completing his Eagle project during covid and a fair amount of disorder in our local council. Gibson has grown a lot as a leader in the intervening years. Way to go, Gibson!

Brandan's employer, still maintains a small trailer park, three Christmases after a devastating fire destroyed thousands of homes. Affordable housing is still challenging to find in our area. As he has for the past three years, Brandan set up a Christmas tree for the residents. Gibson helped him stake the tree down and Brandan strung lights on the tree. The residents appreciate this shared decoration and the message that someone in the community is thinking of them.

Helen is a TA for Becky this trimester. It's a win-win: Becky appreciates her help and Helen appreciated a class with no homework. This is a photo of Helen dressed like a reindeer for spirit week before Christmas break.

Becky had lousy technology in her classroom, but the portable she is in temporarily has an 86-inch TV. Watching the World Cup semifinals on Tuesday and Wednesday seemed like a good use of the resource.

Before moving to the portable classroom, Becky would send students who needed band-aids to the office. Now it's a long walk across campus to the office. When a student asked for a band-aid this week, Becky finally opened the school-provided first aid kit she has been storing since the beginning of school. It contained a tourniquet, face shield, duct tape, a sharpie, gloves, a trauma field dressing and scissors, but no band-aids. What exactly is this first aid kit for?

On Thursday, Helen played with the Siskiyou Violins at a benefit concert for Ukrainian refugees held at a local synagogue. We learned so much about the many things people in our community are doing to support refugees. About 8 families have relocated here because of local support and they are learning English, getting drivers' licenses, jobs and homes. Some of the Ukrainians attended the concert and one played the piano as part of the concert. We know they would prefer to be in their own homes, but many of their homes no longer exist. We admire their courage to start over in a new country. We didn't take any photos of the concert, but this is a photo of a beautiful window in the synagogue.

Helen and Gibson and friends finished a nativity puzzle Sarah sent us. They mostly worked not he puzzle in the 45 minutes they have between the end of seminary and the beginning of school.

Our ward celebrated Christmas together at a party Friday night. One wall of the gym was decorated with heroic sized posters for each of the 10 missionaries serving from our ward. Our entire ward feels a lot of pride in this little battalion of missionaries. 

There was a photo booth set up along one wall. From the left are Reese, Ed, Helen and Gibson with Jason lying across the group.

11 December 2022

A member of our stake organized an interfaith Christmas concert which was presented Sunday night. Helen and Gibson played in a strings ensemble as part of the concert. This is a photo of them before the concert started.

Brandan got the Christmas decorations down and has spent his free time this week decorating inside and out. 

St. Nicholas Day was Tuesday so everyone woke up to find treats in their shoes.

Gibson got his braces off on Wednesday!

Crater High School has strong FFA and other agricultural programs, including an offsite collection of classrooms, barns and animals called the Land Lab. Our weekly staff meeting was held at the Land Lab this week and Becky visited the site for the first time. It's an extraordinary education center, very different from the typical classroom back at school and valued by the entire community. These longhorn cattle belong to a local family who loaned them to the school.

The FFA held a Christmas fundraiser over the weekend, combining a Christmas tree sale, petting zoo and camel rides. The school borrowed the camels from a different family. The Land Lab provides unique opportunities to students who are passionate about agriculture, rural life, conservation, forestry and other related subjects. 

4 December 2022

 Brandan and Becky attended the gala opening for Providence's Festival of Trees on Wednesday night. The annual event raises money for programs at the hospital. This year the event honored Father Jim, the recently retired chaplain for Providence, and raised money for a behavioral health fund. This is a photo of Brandan and Becky with Father Jim.

Becky gets to move classrooms for the third time in three months. Each move has gotten a little tougher to navigate. She had 3 days to move the first time and one morning the 2nd time. This time she had 2 hours on the last day of finals week. Instead of finishing grading and submitting final grades, she was madly piling everything into boxes. Brandan came to help after work. The school is upgrading the heating and air conditioning in this part of the building and Becky will get to move back in a few months. To increase the difficulty next time, she'll probably have to move while walking backwards over hot lava.

We're following the World Cup and watched the Argentina/Australia game on Saturday. It's been an exciting tournament with lots of unexpected upsets.

On Saturday we went back to the Festival of Trees to watch Helen perform with Siskiyou Violins. 

Here's of photo of Helen, Becky and Brandan after her performance.

The Siskiyou Violins played later on Saturday night at out stake Light the World event. It was very cold, but dry.

Helen and Gibson warmed their hands up with a cup of hot cocoa. This is a photo of Gibson, Mary and Helen.

During the event,  our stake collected donations for several local agencies that serve vulnerable populations. In addition, there was a station to assemble mini care packages for people who are unhoused. Each pair of socks is filled with a toothbrush, toothpaste and chapstick.

Our stake presented awards to individuals in our community who have been lights through their good deeds. Brandan presented an award to Pastor Christine Quitt for her work as the chair of the Jackson County Homeless Task Force.

Gibson and Helen participated as part of a live nativity. Gibson was asked to help several weeks ago. Helen stepped in at the last minute when they needed a person to play Mary. The participants swapped out every 30 minutes, but they still sat in the cold for a long time. Gibson was a shepherd, Gib and his sisters were the wise men and Jason was Joseph.

27 November 2022

Brandan came to Becky’s class on Tuesday and gave a short talk on the ways he uses math everyday as a doctor. He talked about unit conversions, dosage instructions and statistical analysis. 

The rest of the photos are very much out of order. Brandan, Becky, Helen and Gibson took a whirlwind road trip to Idaho and Utah for Thanksgiving. We saw lots of family and enjoyed spending time with each of them. Gibson played basketball with some of his cousins. Gibson, Dallin and Xander played 3 on 1 against Parker. 

Even though most of Temple Square is under construction, a small corner is decorated with lights for Christmas. We stopped by on our way out of town Sunday morning to see the lights. 

We spent Thanksgiving at Sarah’s house. Joe and Keri’s family also came. This is a photo of the cousins. Back row from the left: Gage, Hayden, Sy, Zina and Helen. Front row: Kolter, Sawyer, Sofi and Darius. 

Temple Square was also decorated with 4 or 5 nativities representing cultures around the world. Becky liked the animals in this nativity. 

This is a photo of Gibson setting the table for Thanksgiving. 

On Saturday we gathered with Brandan’s siblings for lunch. Back row: Becky, Wade, Gibson, Nate, Sofi, Brandan, Helen, Becky, Maggie and Salem. Middle row: Dallin, Sasha, Emma, Halie, Logan, Emma, Xander, Sutton. Front row: Parker and Maks. 

We went to Wade and Steph’s house Saturday night and played Nertz. Playing with 10 people was pretty challenging, but still fun. 

Here’s a photo of Helen and Gibson at Temple Square. 

And a photo of Nate, Sofi and Helen at Sarah’s house. Nate flew from Seattle to Salt Lake City to spend the holiday with Sofi and drove up with her for Thanksgiving.