31 July 2022

 Gibson led a superb Come Follow Me lesson on Sunday. We each made a finger puppet and acted out the story of Esther. From the left are Esther, Mordecai, King Ahasuerus and Naman.

On Monday, Becky dropped Helen and Gibson and their friends, Emma and Aidan, off at a For the Strength of Youth week at Southern Oregon University.

This is a photo of Helen's dorm room for the week.

Gibson shared a room with his friend, Jason.

This is a photo of Gibson's photo which was named "Work and Glory."

And this is Helen's company which was called "Sent Forth By Power."

Helen was happy to be in a company with her friends, Elizabeth and Grace.

Thursday was their spiritual day and they wore church clothes all day. Here is Gibson's company.

And Helen's.

Helen and Gibson joined the choir and participated in a musical program on Thursday. Helen is in the center back of this photo and Gibson is in the front row on the right.

Helen woke up at 5:30 am several mornings to go play ultimate frisbee before the scheduled activities started. This is a photo taken after frisbee. From the left are Melanie, Helen, Lexi, Adele and Gillian.

On Thursday, Brandan attended a retirement party for Dr. Karen Kronman, his friend and supervisor as an area medical director. Karen is the woman in the light blue shirt and white pants in the front row of the photo. Brandan is in the back of the photo in the middle.

Anticipating Karen's retirement, Brandan asked her permission to research her family history. He discovered her Norwegian, Finnish and German ancestors and compiled a book that contains the documents and photos he found.

Here's photo of the inside of the book. Brandan spent countless hours researching and creating the book which arrived just in time for Karen's party. We hope she enjoys this unique and personal gift.

  

We picked Helen and Gibson up from FSY before 7 am on Saturday. We took them out to breakfast so we could hear all about their week away from home. They had an amazing experience and both stretched and grew. Sadly, a fire in Northern California brought smoky skies Saturday morning. Becky covered her water glass with a napkin to keep ash from falling into it.

Back home, Gibson helped Brandan hang lights on our patio. It's too smoky to sit outside right now, but hopefully we can enjoy them later this summer.

24 July 2022

Three cheers for Gibson who passed his board of review on Monday and is now officially an Eagle Scout! We're proud of him for enduring to the end. Check out the photo of 13 year old Gibson on the cover of his application binder. 

Here is a photo of his board of review committee along with his parents and scoutmaster. From the left are Ed, Matt, Brandan, Gibson, Andy, Becky and Mark. Gibson met alone with the committee for over an hour, answering their questions about scouting and his application. We were surprised and delighted that the scouting district asked our good friend, Andy, to be on the board of review committee. Andy served in our ward's scout troop for 41 years. He was the advancement chair when Gibson started as a scout. When troop 102 disbanded in 2019, Andy gave Gibson detailed instructions to follow as a roadmap to achieve the rank of Eagle. 

Helen and Gibson slept outside one night this week. Becky went out at 5:30 am the next morning to check on them. Helen came inside because she got cold. Gibson was also freezing and came inside shortly after this photo was taken.

Gibson made a name tag at Craterworks.

Helen picked Gibson, Ed and Jason up one day after work and took them to get smoothies.

Brandan's Uncle Jim and Aunt Carol stopped by to say hi on their way home from a vacation on the Oregon coast. We're off the beaten path and coming to see us added a few extra hours to their drive, but we're so glad they came. Jim and Carol have delightful senses of humor and are great storytellers. We enjoyed catching up with them. 

Ed and Jason came with us to the temple on Saturday morning.

Kate and Helen planned their Young Women's lessons sitting in the hammocks.

Becky's mom has been in the hospital all week with a UTI. She is quite weak and unable to answer the phone herself. Sarah visited her on Saturday and called Joe and Becky on FaceTime so we could all talk. We're so grateful Sarah thought of a way to connect us!

17 July 2022

On Thursday, July 7, Becky, Helen and Gibson set off on another road trip, this time traveling to Idaho and Utah. With 28+ hours on the road, Helen and Gibson took turns driving. 

Our first stop was visiting Sarah and Joe. They took us to a nature conservancy spot in Picabo on a beautiful evening.

We saw lots of nature being conserved along Silver Creek, including a bald eagle, heron, ducks and a beaver.

And millions of mosquitoes which feasted on poor Gibson.

We helped Sarah make some paper cats which she is going to use for her first bulletin board for school in the fall.

Here are all of the finished cats. We think her class will love them.

Sarah also had a paper piecing project for us: making pincushions with a log cabin design. None of us had done paper piecing before, but we watched a YouTube video and quickly caught on.

Here is a photo of Helen's project in progress.

Here is a finished pincushion. The pieces of fabric are so tiny that they would be very hard to sew together without paper piecing.

We stopped to visit Grandma and Grandpa Larsen on Saturday and then drove to Utah to see Sofi.

Sofi's garage door opens and closes by pushing a large red button that looks a panic button.

So of course you have to hit the button like you're being chased by a pack of velociraptors or something.

Saturday night we went to Cherry Hill with Wade and Steph's family and Becky and Aaron's family.

Cherry Hill is the perfect place to spend a hot summer afternoon. It was great to catch up with cousins we haven't seen since last summer.

We stopped for ice cream at a cute shop in downtown Bountiful.

After church on Sunday we drove up to Brighton and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

We walked around Silver Lake, no relation to Silver Creek in Idaho.

Sofi invited Brandan's family for dinner on Sunday. From the left are Salem, Maggie, Drue, Sutton, Becky, Helen, Haley, Parker, Emma, Sofi, Logan, Dallin, Xander, Maks, Dan, Martha, Wade, Steph, Kaylee, Niko, Gibson, Becky and Aaron.

Here's a selfie with Haley, Kaylee, Helen and Emma.

Dan and Martha are leaving on a mission to Birmingham, England the end of the summer so we were glad to get a photo with them.

It's hard to say goodbye! Helen and Dallin demonstrated their secret handshake.

We drove home on Monday and Helen left for Girls' Camp Tuesday morning.

Helen served as a Youth Cabin Leader (YCL) for the second year. She served with a bunch of her good friends. Back row: Molli, Helen and Mary. Middle row: Molly, Elizabeth, Lexi and Emma. Front row: Kayden and Annie.

The Girls' Camp is on the shores of the Lake of the Woods and the girls enjoyed swimming and kayaking. From the left: Kayden, Helen, Olivia, Mary, Molli, Annie, Molly and Lexi.

The YCLs are busy all day helping the younger campers, teaching classes and assisting the adult leaders.

Then they stayed up way too late at night after the camp activities were over for the day. We love these girls and are so happy Helen could go to Girls' Camp.

Meanwhile, back at home, Gibson went back to work at Craterworks. In between helping school groups and designing projects for future classes, Gibson, Nathan and Bob are working on a prototype for building brakes for a walker. A middle school student in our district uses a walker for mobility. She doesn't have enough strength in her hands to operate normal hand brakes. Craterworks is trying to design a braking system that she could activate with her body weight. Nathan, the shop teacher, found an abandoned walker to experiment on. Craterworks has a complete metal shop. Gibson is using a metal drill press which spins more slowly than a wood drill press. We'll provide updates on the progress of their project.

A few months ago, Brandan received a bonus at work for quality care. Brandan is part of a team of health care providers including physicians, nurse practitioners, medical assistants and office staff. The company he works for only gives bonuses to physicians and nurse practitioners, with the rationale being those providers generate income for the entire group. Brandan wanted to recognize the hard work of all of the employees so he decided to use his bonus to buy a massage chair for everyone in the clinic to use. A shipping company dropped a giant box off in the entryway of his clinic this week. Brandan and Becky went over Wednesday evening to unpack the chair and set it up.

We set the chair up in a corner of the break room. Becky was the first one to try it out, getting a massage from head to toe to fingertips. This is going to be a popular spot for breaks at work.

On Friday, Becky took Gibson and Eddy to Applegate Lake to kayak.

We were so happy to see that the lake is full this year. Gibson and Eddy are the specks in the middle left of the photo. Becky planned her Sunday School lesson on shore while the boys paddled until they were worn out. It was a beautiful day to be at the lake.