1 December 2024

Becky had parent conferences on Monday and Tuesday this week. She put a crackling fire on the screen and set out snacks and student projects to make her room more inviting on wet, cold days.

We set up our Christmas tree and started decorating for Christmas on Monday night.

We left home early Wednesday morning to drive to Idaho. The sun was up by the time we got to Diamond Lake with a view of Mt. Theilsen.

At the same time we were driving across Oregon, Abe and Helen were driving up from Utah. We met in Meridian, just outside Boise.

We spent Wednesday and Thursday with Joe and Keri's family and with Sarah and Joe. Abe showed everyone the recipe website he designed for his computer science class. From the left are Keri, Olivia, Sawyer, Kolter, Gage, Abe, Helen and Gibson.

This is a photo of Gibson trying out a mechanical hand.

Helen braided Abe's hair which is longer than it has ever been in his life.

Gage showed Helen how to play the electric guitar.

Abe played around on Hayden's drum set.

Joe had a turkey in the oven so he cooked the ham on a barbecue.

We had a pickle ball tournament while we waited for dinner to cook. From the left are Abe,  Joe, Gage, Brandan and Hayden.

Here's a photo of the brackets. With 4 teams, we had time for a double elimination tournament.

Brandan and Hayden won the tournament.

We enjoyed a lovely visit and holiday. Here's a photo of everyone: Backish row: Hayden, Sawyer, Sy, Gage, Gibson, Helen, Abe, Sarah and Joe. Frontish row: Joe, Keri, Kolter, Becky and Brandan.

This is a photo of Gibson in the middle of a play structure outside our hotel.

We stopped to see Becky's dad for a few hours on Friday. Joe picked up a Bunker Hill mining hat at a mining convention. Larry worked at the Bunker Hill mine as a young mine, along with his dad, uncles and cousins.

We spent Friday and Saturday night with Dan and Martha. They invited Brandan siblings to brunch on Saturday morning. Back row: Dan, Brandan, Becky, Xander, Abe, Helen and Maggie. Front row: Maks, Aaron and Martha.

Larry gave us a box of family history that included a couple of video tapes. Brandan made an appointment at Family Search to digitize the tapes. The rest of us went with him downtown.

The first floor has many activities to engage families. These screens designed a coat of arms based on a series of questions patrons answered.

Here is Gibson's coat of arms.

And Helen's.

And Abe's. The activity explained the meaning of each coat of arms, which we didn't take note of. Basically, each coat of arms represents courage, strength and compassion with the colors, animals and decorations on the shield.

We walked around the City Creek Center and Temple Square.

Temple Square is minimally decorated this year because most of the space is under construction. We looked for the languages spoken by people in our family displayed on luminaries. Here is one with Chinese.

And one with Russian.

This is Catalan, which is spoken in Spain.

Abe is sitting next to a luminary with Korean on it. We didn't find any bags with Finnish. Helen and Abe stayed in Utah to finish their semesters at school. Brandan, Becky and Gibson drove home on Sunday after a very nice visit in Utah.