We had a really nice night last night. Lorena made us a wonderful dinner of fresh corn on the cob, a seafood salad, and some quesadillas for the kids. After dinner, Kelly, Christian, and I worked on our drawing while we listened to classical music. It really is a wonderful drawing program for beginning artists (Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad). We are getting to the point where we might want to post some of drawings here to show everyone what we are doing. If we have enough time, we are going to try to continue our drawing during the school year.

Christian and Kelly (especially Christian) has expressed a strong interest in earning money, so I have given them some extra stuff to do. They washed the cars so far, but I think I am going to have them start spreading barkdust, too. At the very beginning of the school year, Lorena is going to take the kids down to Washington Mutual Savings and Loan to start savings accounts. I am going to teach them how to administer their money using GnuCash on the Linux system. We will start out by teaching them how to divide their money judiciously . Fifty percent of their money will go in the bank for college, ten percent will go to charity, ten percent will be saved for retirement, and the will be able to spend the remainder.

We are starting to work on getting the bonus room ready to start for the new school year. I have already prepared the lesson plan for the first day of class. I am going to start trying to do a week at a time. At the beginning of each week we will put all of the plan and the necessary materials for the week in each of their binders. At the end of the week, we will file their work in the filing cabinet so they do not have to carry all their work around with them all the time.

Today, I am going to try to get us a hotel room for Saginaw convention in Cottage Grove. We are very much looking forward to going to convention. I got the approval on Monday for the time off at work. Lorena is going to buy new outfits for all of us. Christian, Kelly and I will go to Staples to buy school supplies and notebooks for notes and drawings at convention this weekend.