Chapman Kids Blog
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I love going to the library. I always have. I love the process of picking out books, the comfy chairs where I can sit and read comics and magazines. Saturday mornings at the library are one of the highlights of my week. 

But lately, my love for the library has waned a little. The library I go to has a “children’s” section and a “young adult (read: teenager)” section. Having presumably outgrown the children’s section, I have moved on to the cozy little corner of the library that contains books about dragons, vampires, predictable teenage romances and. . . nothing else. I don’t mind the occasional romance, and I’m certainly not against fantasy, but when the entire library is filled with books that have titles like these:

• Mates, Dates and Sleepover Secrets
• Gossip Girl
• The Clique: Best Friends for Never
• Here, there be Dragons
• Operation Red Jericho

It’s tiresome. Oh there are certainly a few gems among the rubble, but every week it gets increasingly harder to find them. I can tell if they’re worth a try if their covers aren’t pink and don’t have a mystical creature on the cover.

I have ventured into the adult section of the library before, but too many of the books that I have found there are adulterated by salty language and things that would make my Mexican grandmother blush (and that’s a tricky feat) I sometimes wonder why some people enjoy those books, but there it is! I have asked my wise and well-read father for book suggestions countless times, but his idea of light reading is stories that involve lawyers, cowboys, or uncureable diseases. I’ve read every Agatha Christie that they have. I’ve ready every Arthur Conan Doyle that they have. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings at least five times. I need help! Please?

It is going to a little bit of a small post today, because we are only half way there in the resolution of the problem we are trying to solve at work. We made good progress yesterday, though, and I expect it we will have our head above water again by today or tomorrow.

There are a couple of fun things going on at home. First, since the summer is over and Kelly is on a regular schedule again, she is much more consistent on her piano practice. The teacher noticed at her lesson yesterday and gave her a new, much more difficult book of Bach pieces. Lorena and I are very musically challenged, so we have quite a struggle when it comes to finding a good piano teacher for Kelly and a good guitar teacher for Christian. Kelly’s old teacher, Jill Hickenlooper, from Oregon is the one who found Mrs. Bruce for us via internet forums and email. We very much appreciated her help and believe Mrs. Bruce is a magnificent teacher. It took a year for Kelly to get into the system–Mrs. Bruce wanted to fix a few things with Kelly’s technique before she had her do hard pieces. That was frustrating for Kelly, but now that she is well into the process she understands the need to establish the right technical base so she can play hard things well as opposed to just play hard things.

The other thing that is happening at home, is that we have ordered a new computer for Christian for his birthday. We needed to get another one because the old one is just worn out. Christian invested a hundred dollars of his own money into the computer. We bought one toward the inexpensive end of the spectrum, but still very, very nice. It is a computer for both of the kids so they can do their school work on the way to lessons, the store, the YMCA, etc. Kelly pretty much just uses the laptop for reports as she checks her email and blog on the desktop computers at home. Christian uses it for his experiments and programming lessons. It came to the house yesterday, but no one was there to receive it, so he is suffering through another day of waiting. I have told him he cannot even open the box until he has finished all of his homeschool, which is very painful. It is also very necessary. The temptation is just too great.

May 21, 2004 – More yardwork
May 24, 2004 – Big weekend