30 April 2023

 

Helen spent most of the week in Orlando at the International DECA competition. From the left are Helen, Rowan, Bryan, Cason, Collin, Mary, Noah, Erik and Danica.

The competition began with testing. Student final scores are a combination of their test scores and their role play scores.

Here's a fun sign at the conference center.

Here's Helen ready for her role play.

This is Bryan, Helen, Cason and Erik. The carpet is unfortunate.

In between events, the team studied and practiced for their next event. They also changed clothes several times a day. They are required to wear professional clothing for their events, but change into casual clothes as soon as possible.

On Monday night, all 23,000 DECA students went to Universal Studios.

Helen liked the Harry Potter section of the park the best. The group had dinner at The Leaky Cauldron.

Mr. Rogan likes to pull the students in for a team huddle.

Here's the final night. The team had a great week. Rowan finished in the top 10 in her event. They worked hard, played hard and came home exhausted.

One last team huddle in the Medford airport. This ends Helen's DECA career, from a sophomore competing on zoom during covid, to a three-time state winner and three-time competitor at ICDC, to supporting her team as the chapter president.

A highlight of Gibson's week was using a riding lawnmower. Brandan and Gibson minister to a widow who usually mows her own lawn. When she started her lawn mower recently, clouds of smoked billowed from the engine and she was worried it would catch fire. When BRandan and Gibson started the mower this week, the smoke cleared within a few minutes. The mower is probably burning a bit of oil, but it still runs and cuts grass well.

23 April 2023

We ordered a cardboard cutout of Abe for Sofi's wedding. Our plan is to sneak him into a few photos on her wedding day. In the meantime, he's chilling in our family room. 

 

We thought about taking Abe along when we took the missionaries to dinner Saturday night. We could have propped him up next to the table. Jaspers is legendary in our area for their gourmet hamburgers. Or, if cow is too ordinary, you can substitute boar, bison, camel, elk, or kangaroo.

Helen left Thursday after school for ICDC, DECA's international competition, in Orlando. From the left are Rowan, Colin, Helen, Danica, Noah, Mary, Cason, Bryan and Erik.

Here's their team huddle before taking off.

They took a red eye from Seattle to Orlando and dropped their suitcases off at the hotel. Their advisor, Mr. Rogan, is in the bottom left of the photo.

First stop was the beach! These Oregonians hadn't seen the sun in 9 months and loved the sunshine and warm water.

This was a great way to say hello to Florida.

They've enjoyed a few good meals so far, which is good. Typically once the competitions get going, they don't have time to eat and survive on snacks scavenged from the bottom of their backpacks.

On Saturday they went to Disney World. They were a little sunburnt, but still had a good time. From the left are Helen, Danica, Rowan, Cason, Mary, Collin, Erik, Brian and Noah.

Here they are on Saturday night, all cleaned up and ready for the opening ceremonies.

This is the testing hall. On Sunday these chairs will be filled with testing students.

Time to get to work! These students worked hard to get to ICDC and they will keep pushing, practicing and strategizing throughout the event.

16 April 2023

Gibson is taking Wilderness Survival this term at school. His teacher told his class that the first person to start a fire using a bow drill they made themselves would get an A for the class. Gibson practiced starting fires in our backyard until he was confident he could do it in person for his teacher. He was the first person to successfully complete the challenge and could take his A without doing any more work for the term.

But Gibson likes Wilderness Survival and enjoys the projects. Here is his next backyard creation: a water filter built from a plastic water bottle and layers of materials like rocks, sand and charcoal. Gibson used it to filter water from Jackson Creek which runs near our house. The water looked clear after being filtered. Gibson wisely did not drink it.

Becky was a last minute hire for school this year, and her classroom furniture choices were limited to whatever could be cobbled together from leftovers. Her principal asked her for a shopping list of things she would need for the classroom. A top priority was bookshelves. Seven and a half months later, a bookshelf was finally delivered. Brandan came to school before work on Wednesday to assemble it. Becky appreciates the extra storage space that keeps books easily accessible. Maybe there's hope the other items she requested will arrive as well! 

Gibson is a newly licensed driver! Brandan and Gibson tried going to the DMV two weeks ago, but the DMV closed about 100 numbers before their number was called. This Thursday they got in line for the DMV an hour before it opened. This time they were 5th in line and got in and out in no time at all, unless you count the hour they waited for the DMV to open. After driving over 100 hours with Gibson in all kinds of conditions, we are confident he is ready to drive on his own.

Here's a photo of Gibson driving away on his first solo drive.

9 April 2023

Happy Easter! Helen and Gibson were good sports about posing for our annual Easter Sunday photo. Easter reminds us of our blessings piled on blessings. Because of Christ we will be resurrected, along with our beloved families.

We got home from our Spring Break road trip on Thursday a week ago, then Helen and Becky left Friday afternoon for Utah to spend the weekend with Sofi. The main event was celebrating Sofi's upcoming wedding at a shower hosted by Nate's aunts. We enjoyed a lot of other fun activities during our visit, including a fantastic general conference weekend. On Friday we went dress shopping at a giant mall in Farmington. Utah has experienced record amount of snows this year, but the snowstorms stopped while we were in town.

We found a dress for Helen for the wedding. Becky shopped online while Helen tried on dresses and found a dress she liked. We ate delicious rice bowls and falafel for dinner.

On Saturday we went to a used bookstore in Bountiful between conference sessions. Becky generally resists buying books, but found some amazing books at bargain prices that she'll have to squeeze into our overflowing bookshelves.

After general conference, we drove to Lehi for Sofi's shower. Lots of family came to celebrate. Spending time together was a highlight of the party. In the back row from the left are Becky, Maggie, Salem, Sutton, Helen, Becky. In the front row are Sasha and Sofi. Sasha dislocated her arm earlier in the week when she tripped and was wearing a sling.

Sofi's best friend since middle school, Johanna, also attended the shower.

Nate's mom, Debbie, woke up at 3 am and drove all day to make it to the shower. Sofi is joining a special family. The more time we spend with them, the more we like them.

Here's a photo of Sofi with Debbie's sisters and one cousin. From the left are Rebecca, Camille, Sofi, Debbie and Autumn. Autumn hosted the shower at her home with her other sisters and her mom's help. Grandma Judy left before this photo.

On Sunday afternoon, we played conference squares as we listened to conference, a very portable conference tradition. Brandan and Gibson played conference squares at home. Helen was the first one to get 5 in a row.

Brandan and Gibson started a very challenging puzzle which the Hatches sent us. All of the timbered pieces of the puzzles look the same.

Gibson made a tree from a rock and some copper wire while he listened to the talks. Conference was a spiritual feast. The talks on becoming a peacemaker were the exact messages we needed to hear and learn from to navigate challenging circumstances at work.

Helen was inducted into National Honor Society on Thursday night.

Several conference talks encouraged us to make our Easter celebrations meaningful, expansive and Christ centered. We have always used Easter as a time to teach and talk to our children about the Savior and now we are motivated to up our game. For this year we kept to our original traditions. Becky prepared an Easter countdown for the week before Easter before we left town so it was ready to begin on Monday of this week. The countdown was inspired by a terrific talk by President Thomas S. Monson called "Ponder the Path of Thy Feet" from October 2014. Every night this week we have studied part of the Savior's life, teachings and attributes and talked about how we can become more like Him. We wrote our ideas and impressions on footprints to symbolize our desire to follow Him.

2 April 2023

This week we continued our spring break adventure to Washington State. On Sunday we drove to the Dungeness Spit in Sequim. It's the largest natural spit in the world and curves out into the Juan de Luca Strait for 5 miles. The spit is growing longer by 15 feet a year.

 

We celebrated Gib's 16th birthday with cake and candles on the roof of our hotel. And chocolate ship cookies since Gibson doesn't like cake. We had to light the candles several times because the wind kept blowing them out. We love celebrating Gibson. He's understated, efficient, hard working, inventive, curious and kind.

On Monday we drove to the Hoh Rain Forest, a temperate old growth rain forest that is part of the Olympic National Park.

The air in the forest felt extraordinarily clean and healthy to breathe. The water in the creeks was crystal clear.

The tree trunks dripped with moss, life upon life upon life.

Becky counted the tree rings in a newly toppled tree. She counted to 210 before the rings became indistinguishable from the tree bark. 

We had to drive through Forks to get to the Hoh Rain Forest. Before 2005, the biggest thing to happen in Forks was the spotted owl controversy. After 2005, Forks became famous as the location for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series.

La Push, another tiny village near Forks, is also famous because of the books. An enterprising restaurant set up a wolf/vampire treaty line in their parking lot.

This is the other side of the sign.

Becky's mom and Uncle Mike used to go deep sea fishing out of La Push. As far as we could tell, fishing is literally the only thing that happens in La Push. Fishing and Twilight fan photos.

The beach at La Push is beautiful.

The region contains the ancestral and current homes of a group of indigenous people called the Salish tribes. There are dozens of different tribes that share related languages. Some Salish languages have gone extinct and others are only spoken by a few dozen people. We saw several signs with a distinctive Salish alphabet. This sign from a gas station is written in Klallum, the traditional language of the Elwha tribe.

On Tuesday we left the Olympic Peninsula and drove to Seattle. Helen applied to and was accepted at the University of Washington. We toured their beautiful campus. This is the reading room in the main library.

UWs world famous cherry blossom trees were blooming during our visit. Besides a beautiful campus, UW offers a world class education and made a very favorable impression on Helen.

We headed east from Seattle, stopping at Snoqalmie Falls for a short hike and a few photos.

Here's a view of the falls from the bottom. We then drove to Wenatchee, Washington, famous for being home to Nate's family. Brandan and Becky met Robb and Debbie last year, but this was our first time to meet his brothers and sisters and for them to meet Helen and Gibson. They are a delightful family, but, sadly, we took no photos.

On Wednesday we explored Leavenworth, a charming German town near Wenatchee.

The mountain setting is stunning and the buildings are adorable.

We stopped at a Danish bakery in the middle of all the German-ness.

Brandan and Becky left Helen and Gibson in town while we hiked the Tumwater Pipeline Trail recommended by Robb and Debbie.

Melting snow had flooded the bridge across the Wenatchee River. We used stepping stones and chunks of ice co cross and stay mostly dry.

The trail was covered in packed snow. Most of the time the snow was hard enough to walk on top. Breaking through the snow crust unexpectedly added a little adventure to our hike. We can see why Nate's family chose to live in such a beautiful spot.

We explored a little around downtown Wenatchee.

Sofi recommended a burger stop to us that looked like a dive, but served excellent burgers for Helen and Gibson and beet falafel for Brandan and Becky. We drove home on Thursday and Gibson met the requirement for 100 hours practice driving, a goal he has been working on for 10 months. We had a fantastic trip, met up with great people, and enjoyed each other's company along the way.