Month: August 2004

Grandpa Lauro, Grandma Conchita, and Hectorin have come and gone. Convention is over (except for one more weekend of Saginaw II. Last night, I made a list for both Kelly and Christian to do a practice run on their homeschool. We are missing some of the Handwriting materials we need, but everything else is on track.

The big surprise was that when I gave Kelly and Christian their Spelling and Placement Survey tests, they had did much better then I might have expected. We are using a book called Spelling Power. I am not sure who is the author, but the tests I gave the kids, put Christian at mid-seventh grade level and Kelly at mid-tenth grade level.

The table we purchased for homeschool turns out to be way to high for writing comfortably, so Lorena went down to Costco and bought a couple of smaller tables and folding chairs to go with them. Everything is set up in the living room, but we have decided to set everything up in the Bonus room for now.

I wrote out the lesson plan for today for each of the kids. They have a light math assignment, some reading, and a couple of other things to do while I am here at work. After work, I will spend time with them on spelling, math, dictation, and anything else they cannot do themselves. Lorena will listen to Christian read from a couple of different books.

Yesterday, Lauro, Conchita, Hectorin, Lorena, and the kids ran down to the mall to do some shopping, cleaned up the house, and shoveled gravel from the driveway. I had to stay late at work to fix a device driver written in QNX for a machine we are making for Raytheon. I did not get it last night, but when I came in this morning, I figured out what the problem was based on some messages that were printed out from my work last night. I really DO love my work. That is a blessing I hope I can pass on to Kelly and Christian.

On Friday night we invited my cousins Tim and Dave Meekum over to our house for dinner along with Jim and Joanne Waldo. Jim is the elder of our Sunday morning meeting. On Saturday, we ran over to spend a little bit of time at Nye Beach in Newport, then ran up to Depoe Bay to have some clam chowder at the Chowder Bowl. The chowder was not to good, but the day was a lot of fun.

On Sunday, the Ramsdells and the Meyers came over for dinner after meeting. Mark had to run to Portland so he could catch a plane to Singapore on Monday, but the rest of us went down to Saginaw to gospel meeting at the convention grounds. Christian got sick on the way home, but the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We did see Tony and Martha at the meeting who are back from their wedding and honeymoon in Texas.

Here are some pictures of our visitors from Mexico as well as the work that is being done on our new patio.

Everything went as scheduled yesterday. The patio is poured and all of us went to Dorothy Harris’ funeral and then on to our Wednesday night bible study. We still have to pressure wash down the patio in a few days and we still have to do something about a fence between the properties, but the whole patio area looks a lot bigger now and more complete. Today the kids are all going swimming at the really nice Corvallis swimming pool. Hopefully, Lorena will bring me some lunch on the way there, too.

Grandpa Lauro, Grandma Conchita, and Cousin Hectorin all made it to Albany in fine shape yesterday. I ended up working until about 9:00 pm, so I really did not get to see them much. I will try to get some pictures of them up on the web in the next couple of days. Today, we are going to all go to the funeral of Dorothy Harris. It seems like every time Lauro and Conchita show up, we have a funeral. Coupled with that, we have the good news that Grandpa Milo is going to come up with Cayatano to pour our patio TODAY!! I will have Christian take some before and after pictures to post here.

The big event of the day today is that Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita are arriving at the airport today. Lorena and the kids will go to pick them and Cousin Hectorin up this morning at Portland International Airport. The sad news today is that Dorothy Harris died two nights ago. Her funeral will be tomorrow. She was 93 years old and a great christian woman. We will miss her. If we can get concrete to the house, Dad will come up and finish our patio tomorrow. I surely hope we can get that to happen.

Grandpa Milo turned 75 years old today. He is in great shape and very, very active. He has slowed down a little, but not so the normal person could tell. This weekend, all we did was hang out the whole weekend. On Saturday we ran to Salem to go to the Borders bookstore. I bought myself a book on Fedora Linux and four books on Space, Bugs, Gardening, and History for the kids. It was really nice just to spend time with them.