29 October 2023

 

This is a photo of Abe and Camden walking across the BYU campus on Wednesday afternoon.

With their backpacks, white shirts and ties, they were headed to the Provo temple.

Abe and Cece went swing dancing on Thursday.

On Friday they painted some ceramics. Abe made a new container for his cactus, which we are glad to hear is still alive.

On Wednesday we met Delia and Felipe for ice cream. Delia worked with Brandan several years ago and they have remained friends. Felipe is only 13 years old and is already over 6 feet tall. It was great to catch up with them.

If you look at a map of our area, there's a large piece of land  between an industrial area and rural properties labeled the Denman Wildlife Area. Originally the land belonged to the US Government and was used as a training facility. Most of the land the government owned was sold at the end of World War II. A local attorney, Kenneth Denman, lobbied the state in the 1950s to have a portion of the land set aside for fishing and hunting. The land is managed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and was the perfect destination for a late October nature walk.

Sofi shared this photo of herself and Nate dressed up for a Halloween party. They went as Greg and Wirt, characters from a TV show called Over the Wall. Sofi and Nate made their costumes. Nate's sister, Lily, crocheted the adorable frog.

This is an image from the TV show. 

22 October 2023

 

Gibson had two days off of school this week for parent/teacher conferences. He went hiking at Forest Park with Emma and Jason on Thursday.

Helen shared a few photos from her week. This is a photo of friends ice blocking on Friday night. From the left are Hannah, Paige, Helen, Kristen and TJ.

On Saturday she went to a Fall Festival. From the left are Paige, Hannah, Kiley, Lilly, Kristen and Helen.

This is a photo of Hannah and Helen riding a trolley to a pumpkin patch.

Abe shared some of his photos, too. These photos span several weeks. Abe went camping at the salt flats in Utah with friends from his mission.

Here's another salt flat photo. It was a cold night and Abe barely slept, but he had a wonderful time.

Spencer is one of their ward service committee chairs. Abe worked with Spencer, his other roommates and ward members to spruce up the grounds of the Ogden Temple before a photo shoot.

This is a photo of Abe getting ice cream with his family home evening group.

Abe and Ashton cooked some Korean beef for his roommates. From the left are Spencer, Cece, Malachi, Abe, Ashton, Camden and Jake.

This is a photo of Abe and Cece at a BYU volleyball game. Helen was also at this game and we shared her photo wearing a pink shirt last week.

Abe headed back to the salt flats with a group of roommates and friends. 

This is another photo from his second salt flat trip.

Abe's intramural volleyball team ordered t-shirts. 

The last photo is from our friends, Jared and Christine, who were in Provo for a BYU football game. From the left are Abe, Spencer, Jared, Christine, Ashton and Malachi. We love seeing photos of Helen and Abe and hearing about their adventures.

15 October 2023

We pulled the vegetable plants out of our garden this week. We had a great tomato harvest, but the tomatoes stopped ripening with cooler temperatures and less sunlight. We also grew lots of jalapeños, but we only ate a couple of them. Even though we don't normally eat jalapeños, we'll probably keep planting them because they are easy to grow and pretty to look at. We have a forest of basil this year which we are keeping until frost kills it. We eat a lot of basil and it's nice to have fresh basil on hand.

 

Friday was a school holiday and Becky took advantage of the break to go hiking with Andrea and Angel. We had a wonderful afternoon hiking up Lower Tablerock. This is the view from the top.

Emma Gee visited Sofi in Washington this week and they explored all directions around Wenatchee. Sofi sent this photo of herself with a pig statue at Pikes Place in Seattle.

Here's a throwback photo to Sofi with a similar pig, also in Pikes Place, back in 2002. Time flies! Sofi looked cute with a bob back then, too.

We've been looking forward to the annular eclipse and made plans to watch the eclipse with some friends in our stake at one of the church buildings about 20 minutes from our house. Our home was on the edge of the path of totality and driving east increased our chances of getting a good view. Saturday morning was fairly cloudy, but we hoped the clouds would move away before the eclipse.

By the time the eclipse started, the clouds were still too thick to see much. We got tantalizing glimpses of the sun as the clouds moved east across the sky.

Unexpectedly, the cloud cover thinned so we could see the sun clearly. Now it was bright enough that we needed our eclipse glasses to safely look at the sun. It was a beautiful and exciting experience to watch the moon move across the sun until only a ring of orange appeared around the edge of the moon. Without the glasses, the sun was too bright to look at. It seemed the clouds were blocking more light than the moon was.

One of the women with our group took the next two photos. She took this photo with her phone, using her eclipse glasses as a filter.

She took this photo without her glasses and captured a remarkable image of the sun.

Of course we remembered watching the total eclipse back in 2017 and Becky found this throwback photo. We feel super lucky to have experienced two eclipses close to home and understand why some people travel around the world to see them. It will be 2045 before another total eclipse comes our way.

Helen sent this cool photo taken in Provo during the eclipse. All of the shadows from this tree are eclipse shaped.

This week Helen had fall break, a delightful invention which more schools should adopt. She spent the Saturday until Wednesday in San Diego with friends. This is a photo of Helen trying a gluten free wrap, her first wrap which was delicious.

Here's a photo from the beach. Left to right are Jake, Rowan, Layla, Kristen, Lilly, Detrek, Paige, TJ, Hannah, Helen and Kiley.

This is Helen and Hannah.

This is a photo from a hike. Back row: Detrek, Layla, Kiley, Hannah, Lilly, Paige, Kristen. Front row: TJ and Helen.

This is Kiley, Helen, Hannah and Paige on the beach. Helen had a fun and relaxing time.

Back in Utah, she rode the train down to Provo and met up with Abe. They hung out together for a couple of hours and made brownies.

Helen then met up with some Oregon friends. This is a photo at a BYU women's volleyball game with Abby, Annie, Helen and Kadyn.

She drove back to Salt Lake with Gib in time for a Utes football game, Gib moved from Oregon to Utah with his family this summer. Fall semester picks up again on Monday for Helen.

8 October 2023

 

Gibson stayed home sick from school on Monday and finished the 1000-piece puzzle we started while watching General Conference. This may be a new record for time it has taken our family to finish a puzzle this size and indicates how bored Gibson was.

Gibson made tacos for dinner Wednesday night, which also happened to be National Taco Day.

Brandan built and hung doors on our shelves in the mudroom. He built the same style of doors that we have for the rest of the cabinetry in our house, but painted them white to keep the narrow space bright.

He also created a "living wall" for our bathroom. Living wall is in quotation marks since these plants are all artificial. While we admire true living walls, the risk of water damage from hanging plants on the wall steered him to a safer alternative.

1 October 2023

Helen went to Homecoming with a group of friends. From the left are TJ, Hannah, Kiley, Lilly, Helen and Kristin. This is a photo of them thrifting before the dance to find an outfit for TJ.

This is a photo at the dance which was held at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. From the left are Lilly, Helen and Kristin.

Another dance photo.

 

These are photo booth photos from the dance.

One of the surprises of teaching math is many students really, really do not want to learn math and won't even try. Becky spends a lot of time finding and planning activities to meet kids where they are and make them think. This poster represents a success from this week. Each group had 4 equations to solve. Becky gave them the steps to solve the equations, but they were scrambled. Some of the equations could be solved in more than one way. The groups cut out the steps and glued them in the right order to solve each equation. She loves this poster because every person in the group worked together and they even left a positive math message.

Angel sent us a photo of an Abe sighting this week. Her family was in Utah for general conference on the same day that Marcus was entering the MTC. Abe and Jake met the Prices's and Marcus for lunch at BYU. From the left are Scott, Jake, Marcus and Abe.

This week Koreans are celebrating Chuseok, their mid-autumn festival. Abe's Korean class drove up to the University of Utah to attend a Korean event on campus. Abe and Helen met up while he was visiting.

TJ, James, Paige, Helen, Hannah and Kiley went camping in East Canyon on Friday night, along with a bunch of other friends.

The fall color is stunning! This is Helen and Lilly.

Abe and Camden watched the Saturday morning session of general conference at Camden's sister's house, and played with Kelise and Kelani, her 5 year old twins.

He met up with friends to attend the Saturday evening session in person. 

Everyone in this photo except the person in an orange tie served in Abe's mission.

On Sunday morning, Abe and his roommates watched conference at Ashton's grandma and grandpa's house. Clockwise from Abe are Camden, Malachi, Spencer and Ashton.

Helen has been watching conference with various friends. Here is a photo of her getting breakfast and watching the Sunday morning session with Lilly and TJ.

After getting photos from Helen and Abe, we took our own conference watch party photo, Here we are on Sunday morning.

Sadly, Gibson has been sick this weekend. Despite not feeling well, he and Brandan made a good start on a jigsaw puzzle while we listened to conference. This conference was memorable for the many talks pointing us to Jesus Christ, helping us refocus and realign our priorities. We're thankful for Jesus Christ and living prophets who help us be better disciples.