Year: 2005 Page 9 of 12

Lorena just called and told me that Kelly had received a “Superior” grade at her recent piano adjudication. Mrs. (Jill) Hickenlooper, the kids teacher, told us that it was really a high honor that she had received because the adjudicator in this case was a very strict, award winning pianst from the University of Oregon. Christian did great, too. He received an “Excellent” grade and Mrs. Hickenlooper expressed her enthusiasm for how well he has been doing lately. Now, Kelly and Jill are planning to perform a Concerto at a big event in Corvallis in the autumn. We are all quite excited about it.

On another note, Grandpa Milo just called from a beach in Hawaii. He was sitting there thinking about how to make the trim saws at Quality Corners go a little faster. Unbelieveable.

Yesterday I downloaded the newly released version of a program called FreeCiv. It is a strategy game Christian likes to play on the computer. With the new release, I found versions for both Windows and Linux. FreeCiv is a game you can either play by yourself on a single computer or on a network against other players. I knew there were games out there it was possible to play using both Linux and Windows computers across a network, but never had the inclination to try them because they usually cost quite a bit of money. In this case, though, we have a whole evening to burn because Lorena and Kelly are going to be giving a Pampered Chef party for Sandra Ramey at our house on Friday night. We got FreeCiv going on our Windows computer yesterday afternoon. We tried to install it on the Linux box, too, but I downloaded files I could not figure out how to install. So I will download the right files today and try again tonight. That should be fun.

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Kelly finished her spelling for the year by finishing the “I” list in Spelling Power. According to the test I gave her after she completed the list, she is now spelling at a grade level of 11.7. Christian is still a couple of weeks away from finishing his list. I am just going to continue through the lists until both of the kids have finished them all. Kelly only has levels “J” and “K” left while Christian will have “H” through K still to go.

Yesterday, both of the kids got almost all of their work completely finished up. After I got home they cleaned up the bonus room and organized their work for me to correct while I was mowing the lawn. Both Kelly and Christian worked hard yesterday and were able to get back on schedule so they are not spending so much time and frustration just trying to get caught back up. If they stick with it today, I think they will be in very good shape through the rest of the year as there are quite a few things that are falling off the list of things they need to complete. I have backed off a little on Kelly’s math at least until the teacher’s manual arrives that I had to order last week. I probably will not do that so much with Christian.

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I thought this was a great picture of Christian demonstrating the crystal radio we finished building last Friday while Kelly was off at her friend Skyler’s birthday party.

We got the kit from The Xtal Set Society. The radio worked great. We had to hook it to the tubing coming out of the hot water heater for a ground and a long extension cord that we ran out into the yard for an antenna, but we got a very strong signal from a local AM radio station. Very impressive. This is actually the second crystal radio we have built. The first one was one of the ones that uses a coil wrapped around a toilet paper tube for tuning. This kit was really more of a soldering lesson than a crystal radio lesson, but it went great. I showed Christian how to solder a part and then handled a couple of the harder joints for him, but he soldered most of it by himself. He read the instructions, populated the board, trimmed the leads, and all that other stuff, too. What a great product. We had such a good time, we have purchased an AM/FM radio kit from another company that is quite a bit more complicated. We are going to put it together this summer.

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Lauro, Jr. sent us a couple of great photographs of Kelly and Christian’s cousins, Dayanita and Laurito. I loved the one of Laurito appreciating his birthday cake! That is Dayanita playing with the doll off to the right.

We had quite a nice weekend. On Friday night and Saturday, we really did not do much. I played around with Ubuntu Linux on the home school computer while the kids played and read. On Saturday, I bought a webcam for the the computer and it worked just great. I will be able to work way better now on my Linux machine vision project although I think it will be slow going for awhile because I have so many other things on my plate.

As a summer project, the kids and I have decided to do a short claymation. Christian has been reminding me to buy modeling clay so they can design the characters. I will pick that up today at Staples during my lunch if they have that sort of thing. I think I remember seeing it there, but I could be wrong.

Lorena planted tulip and daffodil bulbs both in front of the house and in the planter in our back patio. As you can see, they are fabulous!

There are more pictures over in the gallery here.

Christian’s crystal radio set came yesterday so Christian and I started putting it together last night. I taught Christian how to solder and he did a great job. We got a great little kit from the Xtal Set Society. It features a printed circuit board with wide solder pads that are not too close to each other for people who have never soldered before. I will try to get some pictures of Christian and I working on it to post in the gallery next week. We might have broken the diode when we bent the leads, but it should not be too hard to get another one. For $14.95, the kit was a real buy. We might try another, more difficult one later on.

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Lorena took Kelly and Christian to swimming class yesterday. Then in the evening, we went to our Wednesday night bible study out in Jefferson at Steve and Elena Meyer’s home. There was time and to spare for both of the kids to get all of the homeschool finished, but Kelly has gotten a little behind again. I think it is procrastination more than anything. There are so many good things to read in the house, she tends to go off in a direction other than her programmed work. She loves the materials she is studying, but she loves a lot of other stuff, too. She should get back on track by the end of the week. We will remind her where she needs to focus. Tonight, Kelly will be going to a birthday party for her friend Skyler. It will be interesting to her what she has to say when she gets home.

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I cannot believe I did not remember to write in my blog yesterday. That is the first day in a long, long time. Everything seems to be going well. The biggest new thing is that we got our biggest order ever at Quality Corners. One of our biggest customers has given us a verbal commitment for 63,000 rosettes per week. That is a lot of rosettes for us and we will have to run a couple of shifts. Hopefully, I will be able to add even more to that when the CNC router we ordered has arrived.

Kelly and Christian had their piano adjudication at the annual Fall Festival in Salem. It sounds like it went quite well. Mrs. Hickenlooper (Jill) said she saw that the ajudicator had given Christian and “excellent”. She did not see Kelly’s result, but Lorena said that the adjudicator singled her out for praise for the Sonatina she played. They are doing well and enjoying their playing very much. We enjoy it, too. I am going to try to get full video of their spring recital to share with whomever wants to see it.

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Lorena got Kelly some new clothes with her birthday money and a new shirt for Christian. When they got dressed for meeting on Sunday, they looked so nice, we thought it would be good to take a few pictures. I put some of the pictures here, but thought one might look nice in my blog post, too.

This weekend was a little bit of a catch-up weekend although we did not really even get to much of that. Both of the kids are a little behind on a few things, but not too bad. Mostly, I want them to get caught up on a great little book titled Calico Bush they are reading aloud together. Other than that, they only need to do an experiment from RealScience-4-Kids and they are good to go. I had it in my head that we would stop with our math after finishing their current books in the Singapore Math series, but both of the kids want to press on ahead. The kids were a little bit starved for math having gotten such little good instruction in the local government schools. When they both finish their current books in the next week or two, they will have done the equivalent of a year and a half of work. We will still have about six weeks left, so that should take us through about half of one more book. They are really getting a solid grounding in the fundamentals and moving consistently ahead with lots of review, too. It will give them a good jump on their program going into the next year. Kelly will be in sixth grade next year and should be well into eighth grade math by the end of next year. Christian will be in fourth grade next year and should be well into sixth grade math by the end of next year.

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The kids were scheduled to take their standardized tests next week, but then we found out that we cannot take the tests due to a prior conflict. They are also scheduled to play in the piano festival. I decided to go ahead and reschedule the testing rather than the festival because there will be additional testing later in the year. That means the kids will only have to miss one of their swimming lessons next week, too. After today, there will only be seven weeks of school left for the year. Both Kelly and Christian have finished their Easy Grammar program. The next thing we will finish will be Spelling Power for Kelly. That will probably happen some time next week. Christian has quite a bit more spelling than Kelly, so he will not finish for another four or five weeks.

I left my cell phone at home today. We have to go over to Dean Sartain’s (our accountant) office to sign our tax forms today, so when Lorena comes over, she will bring my phone. I will be able to go and have lunch with the family. Then, Lorena is going to drop gifts off with Martha as Tony and Martha are flying Mexico this week and has room to take a few things to Lorena’s family for her. Today, Kelly is going to invite her friend Skyler from last year at government school to go to the home school play day. This will be the first time Kelly has gotten together with her home school buddies since the big party so it will be good to get a report on that.

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Now that Joe and Lyle are heading off, we have started our Wednesday night bible studies again as the gospel meetings have been shut down until this fall. We went out to Steve and Elena Meyers house in Jefferson. It was a really good study on judging and judgement from Matthew 7.

After I order Christian’s crystal radio kit yesteday, I got to thinking it would be a great thing to go ahead and get a subscription to Popular Science magazine, too. It is pretty goofy on some of its thinking on evolution, but it is generally a pretty good magazine on what is going on in the world of science explained in a popular (not too complicated) way. I think both Kelly and Christian will enjoy it a lot.

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Kelly got caught up on all her reading yesterday, but got behind in a couple of other things. They did experiment #4 in their RealScience-4-Kids, but did not answer the questions after the experiment. It was an absolutely great experiment on bases and acids using paper treated with juice created by boiling a red cabbage as pH strips. The next experiment will use the same juice. Then, they did not do their reading out loud in Christian’s book, Calico Bush. They really should be able to get all caught up over the next few days. It looks like Kelly will be finishing her Spelling Power toward the end of next week or the week after. Christian will take another three or four weeks.

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Kelly had a very busy day yesterday with a little more work than she could handle. Thankfully, today is a lot lighter and she should be able to get caught up. Grandpa Milo went is over in Caldwell, Idaho at Quality Corners working on a machine with the help of Del Weber. The took a part over that transitions from a trim saw to a routing machine that is pretty impressive. Our routing machine works well for half of the process, but the second half of the process does not work at all so we are going to have to make some modifications to it that will take some time. That is a little frustrating, but at least we believe we can make it work. We received the financial statements for the first quarter today, too. They look great, but more than half of our sales are to just one company. We have a couple of other pretty good size accounts, but we are going to have to work on getting even more or we will be in big trouble if our biggest one quits.

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We just hung out and had a very good weekend this weekend. On Friday night, we stayed home, had dinner and spend the evening with just the family. On Saturday, Christian and I hung out at Borders in Salem while Kelly and Lorena shopped for clothes with Kelly’s birthday gift certificates. I mowed the lawn when we got home and then worked on my Linux machine vision project while Kelly and Christian played with the neighborhood kids. The Ramsdell’s invited us for lunch on Sunday to a Mexican food place in Corvallis along with Sandra Ramey after union Sunday morning meeting at Conrad Tull’s house. Of course, we took my cousin, Tim Meekum to meeting with us and afterwards, we went to the 7-11 on the way home to buy him a 64 ounce soda and some salted peanuts. Tim’s brother David Meekum professed at gospel meeting on Sunday night and we heard that his wife Valerie is going to get baptised this Thursday evening at Crystal Lake near Corvallis. We got caught up on our homeschool between meetings on Sunday. We are getting better and faster at our homeschool program all of the time.

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We are arriving at our first weekend in a long time when we do not really have anything planned. I am looking forward to hanging out with the kids, working on my Linux programming project, mowing the lawn (if it is nice), going to the library to get books for Christian’s report on flight, taking some pictures, and generally just relaxing a little. I have lots of projects here at work, so I got up pretty early this morning. When I got in, I called Dad. He was driving back from Seattle where he had visited Uncle Bill and Aunt Betty Barlow. They are getting old and not really doing so well. Dad is worried about them because they are thinking about buying a smaller home rather than finding an assisted living arrangement. I think it was a little bit of a reality check for Dad. It makes me realize that they really are great folks. They are going to start identify assisted living places for themselves so they will be ready when the time comes. That time might not come for another ten or even twenty years, but they want to be ready.

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The day before Kelly’s birthday, Christian started on a project to build a piñata for her. The piñata did not dry in time for the party, but it has turned into quite a good little art project. I am completely amazed on how well it is turning out in as much as he had NO help at all from Lorena, Kelly, or I. He found the project in a book, bugged us until we let him do it, then went to work. It is coming out great as can be seen below:

Christian making his piñata

I also took some pictures of Kelly, now officially age eleven, and put them up in the photo gallery here.

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We had our last neighborhood bible study last night. The topic was problem resolution. We particularly enjoyed having our neighbor Hank Whitsit there. We are very sad that he and his wife are moving across town. After the study, everyone stayed for chips, salsa, cake, and cookies. We found that there will be only two more Sunday evening gospel meetings and then the Lyle Waldo will be leaving to help Dave Nealon for the rest of the year and Joe Layman will be going to help at the convention grounds and then on to Canadian and other conventions until next fall. That is a pretty long dry spell. We will really miss them.

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Kelly and Christian started back into homeschool again yesterday. We are up to speed and running fine. Kelly called her friend, Skyler from last year at government school and it turns out that she is now doing homeschool, too. It is too bad Kelly did not invite her to her party. I am sure she would have enjoyed being with the other girls very much. Kelly invited her to the homeschool play group, so hopefully they will get together again soon.

We have our last meeting tonight. We are going to have salsa and chips after the meeting. Tony and Martha are coming over after the meeting for the express purpose of just eating the salsa and chips. We might have some cake, too. Martha told Lorena she has a little something for Kelly for her birthday. I have posted photos of Rigo and Minita’s last trip to San Luis Potosi. They are nice. You can look at them here.

Kelly had two great parties. The first one, we had at our house in Albany with four girls from Kelly’s homeschool play group. They are absolutely super kids. It is truly amazing how sweet were these girls. Kelly says it is the best birthday party she has ever had and I believe her!

Kelly shows her prowess with a stick of bubble gum

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Today is Kelly’s big birthday party. Four of the girls from her homeschool play group are coming over to our house for several hours of fun, frolic, and food. They are going to paint and hide Easter eggs, draw, eat, and, if the weather permits, roller blade. It should be a lot of fun. I should be able to report back on either Sunday night or Monday morning with photos and stories. By then, we will have also gone to the family birthday party at Aunt Julia’s house, too.

On another note, Al Rizos sent me a great photo from last years ski trip. I thought I would post it here.