March

Scott and I went to see Jim Gaffigan (a comedian) in Portland one evening.  Very Fun!!

Celebrating Scott's birthday at Ma2 and Pa2's house

And celebrating at our house.

Happy Birthday Scott!!

Emma finished her basketball season and was the big ticket winner at their pizza party.

I've been chipping away at some classes for my graduate degree program - I completed two classes this spring - both on algorithms and data structures.  The classes are hard - here's a pic from the middle of a video - it just looks confusing, doesn't it?  And sometimes all the writing is hard to read - but I'm getting through it.  I am really enjoying the algorithms classes but some of the concepts can be really hard to wrap your head around.  Even when I'm writing the code its hard to keep track of everything.  That's one reason why we get computers to do it  - our meat brains can't handle it all.  Trying to be kind to myself when I get confused.

Emma's drew a picture for Girl Scouts and it got to be displayed in the library - exciting!!

Baby stepping through Book of Mormon reading this year - I liked this Instagram post

As the weather gets drier we've been hiking a little more.  Here we are going up Beacon Rock

John was nervous about the heights but persevered - it was windy at the top that day!!

Having nature fun going back down

Big boy game time

Anna applied and was interviewed to be on the yearbook staff next year - and she got accepted!  She is excited about it although she didn't have extra room in her schedule for that and choir - so she is planning to take a zero period so she can do both.  Hoping it works out for her schedule.  The yearbook staff had a welcome gift delivered to her class to tell her she got in.  Woohoo!!

Matthew got his braces off - here he is before

And after - he'll do a retainer for a bit

This is Matthew just before getting his braces on in the fall of 2022.

He's grown a lot.

Matthew was in the school play as a ghost/ancestor - they got to pick their characters back story and he chose conquistador - the costume department went all out on his costume - he looked so cool!!  And he did a great job!!  Matthew was recently accepted into the school's theater honor society - he has been involved with every play the school has put on since he has attended high school.

Another hike at Multnomah Falls this time.

We hiked to the top of the falls - its a bit of an uphill trek.

 Getting to the top was an emotional and physical struggle - John was feeling sad by the time we got up there - and also was nervous about the heights - so we did a quick pic then he moved far away from the edge.

He was a lot more perky on the way down - we all were.

Grant made this self portrait for school - it was based on a picture from when he was little

This is the inspiration picture - when Grant was little he liked to save time by wearing his clothes in layers.  So here he has pajamas, on top of church clothes on top of school clothes...or something like that.  Then he can just peel off a layer and be ready for the next thing.  He was in kindergarten in this picture.

John has been doing a lot of swimming - he recently passed off some skills and is now ready for the "pre-comp" swim level.  After that he can be on the swim team if he wants.  Way to go John!!

We had a little health scare one morning - Scott passed out twice.  It looked a little bit like a seizure - so I was scared and we went to urgent care where they recommended going to the emergency room.  After some nausea medication, an IV and many hours in the ER, Scott was feeling kind of better.  The ER did a bunch of scans and test as well and couldn't find anything alarming.  They decided it might have just been dehydration - so we headed home.  No more incidents since.  Also I'm told we are supposed to say ED as in "Emergency Department" since it is much more than just a "Room" but old habits are hard to break.

Another hiking day - just me and the younger kids this time so Scott could recover from his not feeling great days.  Camas lilies are not quite in bloom yet.

Fun hiking!

the kids got creative with their Easter egg decorating.

Matthew made a Megamind egg and Anna had a Despicable Me/Minions theme this year - see all her yellow minion eggs on the plate?

Anna has been making lots of cute crocheted creations lately

This one is a frog

Easter egg hunt

And we had lots of company for Easter dinner - and when we have company I forget to take any pictures of it.  But it was a nice evening with family and lots of food.  Happy Easter!!

February

Winter is ticking on...here are some pictures from February

 

We made some Groundhog Day cupcakes

We made a king cake for Mardi Gras - I started celebrating this holiday after living in the Florida panhandle where it is more of a thing.  This king cake is just a big cinnamon roll before being cut into individual pieces.  It turned out very tasty!

John is a deacon now (he passes the sacrament at church) so I've been trying hard to get him a more grown up church outfit - here he is trying on an outfit

Scott recently was called to be our Ward Clerk (at church) so he has meetings before church every Sunday.  So I have to help John tie his ties now and I'm not very good at it.  On this day I think Scott helped with the tie and it looks a little crazy here but was nicely tied.

Anna made this Taylor Swift cake for her friend's birthday and left this note to keep everyone away

Enough dry days to play outside a bit - sidewalk chalk is a favorite activity

John had an assignment to make a Valentine box that included a simple machine.  John used a lever to make the dog's mouth open and close.

Nice job, John

A lot of people had really complicated boxes with axles and pulleys and things.

We did the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) design method this year

Emma decorated this pink shirt to be festive for Valentine's Day

Matthew won an award at school for chemistry.  My science loving heart is so proud.

Emma has been busy selling lots of girl scout cookies - mostly at booths this year.

Kind of exhausting

She also played a season of basketball - they've been learning more and more about the game.

Grant - the builder - is making a lot of house creations.  He's also been using TinkerCad (a simplified version of Cad for kids) to make some house creations for school.

Scott has made all the birds in the area happy by keeping our bird feeder full.

Also one large squirrel is happy about it too.

Emma making creations - she loves making crafts to celebrate holidays and to give to friends.

John has been making good progress on his trumpet lessons.  He can play the main theme from Legend of Zelda and Star Wars now.  Good work John!!

The youngest two have been doing some outdoor hiking in the evenings.

Anna made this clay ballerina for a school project - she made it in a really short time too - it looked so cute.

We celebrated Matthew's birthday - he is 17 this year!

Next year he will be a legal adult!

He got a large gaming monitor for his birthday

He is about 6'1" now - so tall!!  Happy Birthday Matthew!!

January

January found us and then sped on by

We un-Christmas-ed our house

On the same day we did this a winter storm came

It was a Saturday and we ended up losing power for 4 hours.  We ate dinner in the dark/dusk and played some board games by candle light.  We were happy when the power came back on

We enjoyed the winter weather - but school ended up canceled for the whole week

The snow was pretty icy but the kids still had fun sledding

Grant said he even took a few "naps" in the snow at the sledding hill - we did see him from the house laying in the snow for a while.  Here he is "napping" in the yard.  He reminds me of Randy from A Christmas Story who can't get up off the ground in his puffy winter snowsuit - "I can't get up!"

Several days our back gate iced shut - so getting to the sledding hill involved some work.  I had to hack the ice away with a shovel one morning.

Matthew made some nice loaves of multigrain bread for a friend's birthday because we couldn't get out to the store in time with all the ice to get a proper gift.  The birthday party still happened and the friend loved the homemade bread.  This is the recipe Matthew made - Multigrain Bread. And here is a new basic white bread recipe I've been loving lately.

I scheduled a final for the week of the snow and ice thinking my kids would be in school that day - but they were not.  The final was take home, so not proctored, and I had 24 hours to complete it - it took me 10 hours!!! So it was a rough day for me, mentally, emotionally, visually (my eyes!!!) and a rough day for Scott trying to work and keep everyone else quiet while we were stuck in the house.  I got 100% on the final - it was a programming final so if you get the code to run and it runs in a short enough time you get full credit.  But the whole thing was very traumatic.  This latest class I finished was on searching and sorting algorithms - a computer science class for my data science program.  I feel like I'm quick on the uptake of the theory and math of my classes but slower than average at the coding - since I have less experience with that, although I'm getting faster.  I do feel like I am picking up a little momentum with my classes so I hope it lasts.  After that final, I still have a 4.0 so trying not to be too hard on myself.  Here's me reviewing some notes.

I've started taking most of my school notes on my computer. rather than on paper.  It's great but getting math equations typed in correctly is painful sometimes on my word processing app.  Subscripts, superscripts, Greek letters!!  But I still like doing it this way for now.

Grant made some cool things while we were stuck in the house - this is a tiny arcade game.  He even made a little cord and plug coming out of the back of the machine.

His Lego gameboy creation

These were his own designs

We measured all the kids - Matthew is 6'1" ...and Anna is mad she is not 6'1"

Earlier in the month we got to hang out with my brother-in-law's family.  They are really fun and always so nice to us.  And great food!!  And fun cousin times.  They have what they call "cracker feast" (or was it cracker fest?) as a New Year's Eve thing and I love the name and the concept and all of it.  Glad we got to get together.

And John was ordained a deacon - both sets of grandparents were able to be there.

We have 4 kids in the YM/YW program now

Scott and I went on a quick trip to San Jose - he had a work party and I got to be his plus one.  I always feel really anxious and guilty leaving the kids so that's hard but thanks Ma2 and Pa2 for watching our gang while we were gone.  The party was nice - held at a fancy country club in Palo Alto - much fancier place than I normally visit.  And I got to meet lots of Scott's co-workers so that was cool.  Social skills are not my forte - so I usually just struggle/suffer through all social events but somehow we survived it.  While in CA we also got to have In&Out Burger and Dish Dash - a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant in San Jose that Scott and I like.  And I had a quiet day alone to work on class work and read Lord of the Rings.  Here we are on the flight there.

And Emma greeted us at the airport on the way back.  She saved up all the things she wanted to say to us over the two days and told them to us (firehose style) on the 30 minute ride home.

We also got to go to a comedy show.  Scott and I saw Nate Bargatze (a comedian) in Portland.  It was great!  And after the Blazer game last month we now have a better handle on parking at the Moda Center. 

John has been doing a lot of swimming - he's trying to pass off the level he's in so he can (maybe) do swim team.  He has to get butterfly down and we're not quite there yet, but he's doing great!

Waterslide day at swimming

Anna working on a craft creation

Emma started piano lessons - the 3 younger kids all do music lessons right now.  Not sure if we can afford to continue with that but they are all doing great right now!

John made a pamphlet for school on the tundra biome

Grant making some kind of contraption from his bed to the door

Matthew dressed up as a nerd for a school spirit day - it was jocks vs. nerds and most people dressed up as jocks - Matthew was representing for nerds!!