29 January 2023

 

Gibson was ordained a priest on Sunday. His friends, Cason and Jason also advanced to the office of priest.

The priesthood ordinations happened during priesthood meeting so our family attended the Young Men's opening exercises. Helen sat with Gibson and their friends and even played the piano for the opening song.

We didn't realize our public library kept copies of all of the past yearbooks from the high school until Becky saw the yearbook with Helen's cover design on the shelf this week.

Helen also designed a logo for DECA that the team made into T-shirts.

Helen was Rotary Student of the Month for January. She attended their weekly meetings where she met the members and led the pledge each week. She also represented the high school at January's school board meeting and at a city council meeting. Her responsibilities ended on Wednesday with a 10 minute speech to the Rotary members. This is a photo of her school principal, Scott Dippel, introducing her before she gave her speech.

She gave a terrific speech about success only being meaningful if it is achieved in an effort to help other people.

Brandan and Becky attended the meeting to celebrate Helen's achievement and hear her speech. We were impressed with her confidence and generous remarks.

Becky's Algebra I students learned about scatterplots so we made a giant scatterplot on the wall, comparing the heights of students to their shoe sizes. The shortest student she has in class is 4 foot 8 inches tall and wears size 2 shoes. The tallest student is 6 foot 5 inches and has size 18 shoes.

This weekend has been our stake conference. Elder Hal Hunsaker was the area authority who presided over the conference. He lives in Wenatchee, Washington, where Nate's family lives. He served as stake president when Nate's Dad was on the high council. It's a small world!

22 January 2023

 

Helen got some great college news this week. She was accepted to the University of Utah with admittance to the Honors College and accepted to the University of Oregon along with the offer of a $20,000 scholarship. She has 6 more universities to hear from before she'll make the decision where to go. 

Gibson's Mandarin class got ready for Lunar New Year this week by decorating their classroom and the main hallway at school. This is a photo of Jason and Gibson and a few of the decorations.

The Mandarin class also made dumplings. Gibson's teacher, Zheng Laoshi, sent Gibson over to Becky's classroom with a plate of dumplings to share. They were delicious!

Our friend, Masood's, mother died this week. Her sons immigrated to the US from Iran after the fall of the shah in 1979. They brought their mother over in 2001. We knew her as Grandma June, which is what her American grandkids called her. She mostly spoke Farsi and her favorite American phrases were "Thank you" and "I love you." She would smile and nod when we visited Masood, enjoying the company even if she didn't participate in the conversation. Although she was a tough, stubborn woman when she was younger, she mellowed into a sweet, gentle woman as she aged. Her family honored her desire for a Muslim burial, not an easy request in Southern Oregon. Muslims must be buried within 48 hours of death, which doesn't allow for a lot of notice for friends and family. The family held a private burial Thursday morning and met with some friends for dinner later to share stories and memories. Brandan was unable to attend because of prior commitments. She leaves behind a beautiful family and legacy of love. From the left are Kathy, Joe, Becky, Kit, Desi, Zach, Travis, Ari, Holly, Masood, Sahid and Lynne. Grandma June's photo is in the middle of the table.

Our friend, Angel, asked Helen on Friday morning if she could paint a birthday cake for her daughter, Elsa after school. Helen had never painted a cake before and it turns out she is quite good at it. She can add cake painting to her long list of talents. Angel bought edible paint for Helen to use. Elsa had an art themed birthday party. Her friends met at an art studio where an artist taught them how to paint a sunset themed painting, very similar to the cake.

15 January 2023

 

Helen painted this watercolor as a final project for the book The Alchemist in school. The book tells the story of Santiago, a shepherd from Spain, who seeks treasure in Egypt.

Brandan helped a large group from out stake rake up branches that had been pruned from the pear trees at the pear farm. Together they raked about 8 acres.

Sofi and her roommate, Emma, went wedding dress shopping on Saturday. They took lots of photos and Sofi called us before she made her final selection. This is a beautiful dress and not the one Sofi picked. We'll post lots and lots of photos of her real dress in May. The shop used large, white binder clips to temporarily make the dress fit. You can see a row of them in the mirror behind Sofi. You can also see Emma in the mirror.

8 January 2023

Our New Year started out right with a family call including Sofi and Nate from Washington and Abe from Busan. Abe is a time traveler and was already enjoying January 2. It was such a treat to connect with everyone, hear all the details of Nate proposing to Sofi and spend time together.

Brandan's colleagues decorated his office for his birthday.

We celebrated his birthday at home by trying out a new Mexican restaurant in town and having brownies and ice cream.

Here's Brandan's birthday problem. Becky made a slide show to go with it, describing a scenario where you need to use a code to get into a spaceship. The puzzle is to eliminate all of the wrong codes. Of course, the right answer is Brandan's age, but you can still solve it without knowing how old Brandan is.

Helen had some friends over on Friday night to play the Pride and Prejudice game and watch the Pride and Prejudice movie (the 2005 version with Keira Knightley). She made herself another birthday cake to share. We have an abundance of cake in our refrigerator and freezer right now: leftover Buche de Noel from Christmas, Helen birthday cake #1, birthday brownies and Helen birthday cake #2.

1 January 2023

Here's one more Christmas photo for 2022: Brandan bought a tablecloth with the Morrison family tartan while he and Gibson were in Scotland. The tartan has beautiful Christmas colors.

We watched plenty of Christmas movies this week, but Helen was the only one who got Christmas Movie Bingo.

Sofi gave our family a box of murder mysteries to solve. The mysteries are arranged to make you work for the clues. It took us several hours to find all the clues. We solved part of the crime, but not all of it.

We continued our quest eating at food trucks for wedding research purposes. Sofi thinks it would be fun (and delicious) to have a taco truck cater her reception. The Peruvian Point makes delicious tacos and rice bowls.

The Prickly Pear would be another good option. Sofi got collected contact information to follow up on, but if she needs us to try out more menu items or other food trucks for research purposes, we are on the job!

Helen turned 18 on Thursday! Helen has always been extraordinary and continues to shine. She's motivated, organized, perceptive, hard-working, creative, helpful, a great friend, an agile student and very honest. She is excited to leave home for college and direct her own course in life and we're excited to see where she goes and what she does.

Happy birthday, Helen!

We took Sofi to the airport on Friday morning. It was such a treat to have her visit for 2 weeks! She left southern Oregon and flew to Seattle to spend the New Year's holiday with Nate.

We were delighted when Nate's dad, Robb, sent us photos and videos of Nate proposing to Sofi on New Year's Eve! We don't know all the details, but we can tell from the data attached to the video that this is Rocky Brook Falls on the edge of the Olympic National Park in Washington.

Later Sofi sent us a photo of her and Nate and the ring he proposed with. Three cheers for Sofi and Nate!

Gibson and Helen spent part of New Year's Eve watching Psych with their friends.

Then they headed to the stake New Year's Eve Dance. About 250 youth from three stakes attended. Brandan went to the dance for a short time to show his support and thank all of the people who organized it. Becky was in her pajamas by 9 and asleep at 10:30. She woke up at midnight to the sound of fireworks and then had a short nap before Helen and Gibson came home. From the left are Gibson, Cason, Helen, Chase, Grace and Crew.