Month: September 2005

Lorena is taking Financial Accounting from Linn-Benton Community college, but the class is in Bexel Hall at Oregon State. That is the main business college building there where I took many of my classes. At any rate she is feeling like quite the college coed these days. She is going to take Managerial Accounting next term and her last math class during spring term. At this rate, she will have here Associate Degree in a couple of years. I am quite proud of her. She started out in very remedial English and has taken all of her English and writing classes except Technical Report writing.

I am very much looking forward to the latest version of Ubuntu (5.10) to come out. The prerelease version is already available, but I am going to wait for the release version due to my current massive work load. When it arrives, I want to get the new computer for which we have been planning to go along with it. This time, I am going to set the machine up only for homeschool. We are currently running Fedore Core 4, but Ubuntu just appears to be getting better and better.

Homeschool has been going pretty well lately. The kids have been enjoying their vocabulary program, “Wordly Wise”, but I think we will try to find a different one next year because of some fairly obnoxious left wing political correctness in parts of the material. It would really be OK to a certain extent, but a lot of it does not even appear to be based in reality. At any rate, Kelly and I talk about it. She is pretty good at spotting the nonsense, but it is such a waste of time to have to deal with that kind of thing.

After a long hiatus, I am back. My posting might still be a little spotty because things are still pretty crazy at work. Since I last posted, Lorena has started an accounting class, Kelly and Christian have started their piano, choir, and swimming classes and we celebrated my fiftieth birthday. Over at Quality Corners, we are starting in earnest on our new style decorative rosettes.

Apple rosette

Everyone to whom we have showed these things really loves them, but it is going to take quite an investment to get them into volume production. We really think it might increase our business dramatically.

Our agenda is pretty fixed for the next little while, but some of our projects are changing. The biggest homeschool project is to try to get the new Ubuntu Linux up and going on a new computer as soon as a) the install disks are available in October, and b) we can afford a new computer. The normal stuff includes our bi-annual family week long vacation with Lorena’s family in Mexico in December and our annual week long homeschool ski trip to Mount Bachelor with the Rizos in March.

I am going to be very busy at work for the next month or so, so I expect my blogging to be pretty sparse up until Thanksgiving. Everything is going well in school. Kelly and Christian are both finishing a half year unit (that was partially started last year) and will be moving on to another unit in Singapore Math. Igniting Your Writing and Wordly Wise are the very interesting new sets of materials we are enjoying the most. As always, the Sonlight reading and history are also stellar.

As soon as I am a little bit more confident that I have a stable work situation, Lorena and I will probably buy a cabin in the mountains in Idaho. We do not think that we will really use it very much, but will keep it as an investment. There is one up close to a town called Lowman that is unfinished that we can get for a fairly good price. I am thinking about buying it if I can be sure that I will have work over the next four or five years. Maybe Quality Corners will take off to the point where I can work there.

Christian’s birthday party was quite rambunctous. The party consisted of kids from the neighborhood. All of them are government school kids. As are many parties of homeschool kids, it consisted of a variety of ages from five to eleven, and about half girls and half boys. There was a huge difference in the attitude and respect of these kids and the kids from a very similar party Kelly had on her birthday. The only difference being that there were only homeschoolers at Kelly’s party. It was very much an eye-opener for us.

The big event is on Saturday. Christian’s friend Micah will be coming down from Beaverton. I will try to get some pictures up after the party is over. I will continue to be a little overextended for the next month or two, but should be slowing down come December.

We got a note from Cousin Julia this morning. She is a student (and rugby player — a star I am sure) at Darmouth. She sent a great article from the Dartmouth on homeschoolers getting admitted there. The accommodations Dartmouth makes during admissions for the homeschooler’s is very cool. Hopefully, Kelly and Christian will now be able to write to their cousin on a more regular basis.

I am about to jump into a huge project at work, so my writing will continue to be sparse until I complete it. In the meantime, we are working on getting ready for Christian’s big birthday party on Saturday and we are thinking about getting a vacation home in Idaho as an investment with our college savings. It is very close to a nice fishing river. I will find out more over the next few days.

Well, we had a relatively quiet Labor Day weekend. Christian turned ten on Monday. We went to Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah’s house to celebrate with our entire family. It was quite nice. The real party though, is going to be next Saturday. That is when he will get all his presents and the kids in the neighborhood will be over to party.

The kids are getting into the swing of homeschool now. Yesterday went quite well. We start into a three day weekend tomorrow, but it feels like we are in some kind of a holding pattern. I do not know why. God truly is good to us, but for some reason, it feels like the other shoe is about to drop. I spoke to my cousin Merle for about an hour and a half last night. It was the first time in a long time that I had spoken to him at length. It was great.

We went to the Myer’s house last night for our Wednesday night bible study and Christian, for the first time, both prayed and gave a testimony. He did great and everyone appreciated it very much. The kids continue to do great in their homeschool. We keep working out a few odds and ends, especially with our new programs. We are still tweaking the math a little. The exercise sections of the Singapore Math workbooks are generally too short to just do one a day, while the workbook review sections are about right and the textbook review sections are generally too long to do in one day. We are getting it all worked out, though. I want the kids to work at least until noon everyday and preferably up until about 1:30 or 2:00 in the afternoon. If they have to go until 3:00, that is OK too, if they take some time off for a break to go outside. This will all work out better when swimming and piano lessons start up again.