Month: January 2006 Page 1 of 2

Again, we had a very full weekend. We were invited to a high school atheletic event on Friday night, a birthday party on Saturday afternoon, and a bridal shower between our fellowship meeting and our gospel meeting on Saturday afternoon. These Texans are very social. The kids are enjoying themselves thoroughly. The only problem is that it hard to get a whole lot of exercise from a third story apartment where you have to tip-toe around to avoid making too much noise for the apartment below. I surely hope we can get out of our apartment before too long.

In addition to our busy social schedule, I was also able to get the MonoDevelop C# programming development environment installed and running on our Linux computer and perform a minor rework of the way we are managing our homeschool. I think that I am going to be refining our homeschool system until the day we quit. I also think that I am not going to be able to do any programming on my home projects unless I continue to snatch bits an pieces of time after the kids are in bed and on weekends. The good news is that Kelly and Christian are getting back into the swing of things just as we are finishing the catch-up from our homeschool slow down for the move from Oregon to Texas. Christian will be finishing a huge math unit (Singapore Math 4b) by the end of this week and Kelly will be finishing a huge math unit (Singapore Math 6b) by the end of next week. That will put us back on course with everything to finish what we had planned at the beginning of the year without killing ourselves in the effort.

Two days ago, my sixth grade daughter, my fourth grade son, and I read a couple of chapters in a wonderful textbook titled The Landmark History of the American People by Daniel J. Boorstin.  It was part of our Sonlight homeschool program.  We learned about FDR and his famous statement that “the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”  He made that statement while America was in the depths of the Great Depression in 1933.  Wasn’t I surprised when that very same quote became a topic of discussion on one of my favorite blogs.  Hugh Hewitt takes Eugene Robinson to task for misusing the quote to bash President Bush.  My daughter, Kelly wants to be a journalist when she grows up.  We will use this as an object lesson in our discussion tonight of why it is best not to go to J-School if you want to be a journalist.  Whether it was ignorance or dishonesty doesn’t matter.  Both make for a lousy product.  That is why we are telling her that, if she cannot study under someone of the caliber of Marvin Olasky at U.T. then it is better to get a degree in something else and then apply for an internship at World Magazine.

On Another Note…
On the way home for lunch yesterday, I listened to Stephen Covey of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People fame on the Laura Ingraham radio show. He talked about five things, actions really, that get in the way of leading a productive and happy life. I was in the car for just a few minutes and all I heard was the list, but I though it was a great list that could apply to our little family and homeschool. We had a family discussion about the list and agree that life would be better in our household if we practice avoiding these pitfalls.

1. Complain – A waste of your energy and an impediment to the progress of others.
2. Compare – Striving for excellence is a worth goal. Comparing oneself to another is just a measurement and could be an invalid one at that.
3. Criticize – Getting to the root of a problem is the path to the solution, not just articulating an opinion about what is wrong.
4. Contend – Misplaced anger and contention waste time, energy, and emotion that could be better applied.
5. Compete – Competition can be unhelpful in the setting of a family or a homeschool where people ought to be working together to accomplish common goals.

I just read an article by John Stossel on school choice (H.T. Olasky at WorldMagBlog). It seems that bureaucrats at many of the better performing government schools aggressively police their student bodies to assure that only the “right” kids be allowed to stay in those “good” schools to which they have been assigned. Stossel has some great points about the sorry state of our public education system when compared to places like Belgium. It turns out that the money set aside to educate children in Belgium does not go to a school assigned to them by the government. Rather, it goes to a school chosen for the children by their parents. His point is that, in America, it is often the case that petty bureaucrats assign the schools. Often, these bureaucrats take it upon themselves to enforce the assignments, too. My wife, Lorena and I had our children in one of those “good” government schools for several years. It was our experience that many of the parents bought into the authority of those petty bureaucrats. We chose to homeschool our children precisely because that mindset manifested itself not only in the actions of the administration, but in the actions of the teachers and even parents who were ostensibly at the school to help.

Parent involvement in government schools often appears to be a product, more of a parent’s desire for their own self acutalization, than a desire to raise productive and happy children. In “our” government school there were mothers who spent many hours per week, but were engaged in the system and totally disengaged with their children. It was not the main reason we left the system, but it definitely contributed to the decision. That is why it is distressing to see some homeschool parents with that same mindset. To our way of thinking, the purpose of a homeschool education is to prepare and edify children, not parents. It is not a mechanism by which parents can fulfill a desire for self actualization, a sense of community, or government school education without all the government and teacher union baggage. Self actualization and community often accrue to the homeschool parent, but homeschool is one of those cases where it truely should be about the children.

The point: Remember why we started to homeschool in the first place. It is not about duplicating government school. It is not an end unto itself. It is about raising our children up in the way they should go. It is about denying ourselves for the edification of our children. It is about giving them a base from which they can live fruitful lives. It is about modeling and practicing how to participate in the community at large and contribute to society. It is about teaching our children by example that life is not about them, it is about others. We do this by making homeschool be about them, not us. When we keep that mindset, then all that stuff we think we are missing will accrue to us anyway.

I uploaded a couple of very cool pictures last night.  Christian took one of them as Rubix and a squirrel out on the apartment balcony eyed each other.

The second one is even better!  It is a picture of a soon to be famous Mexican guitar player.

The last one speaks for itself!

The Women

We are doing well in homeschool now, but I read an article today that might change our approach to the way we are teaching Christian. He is doing just a great job, but I think he gets pretty frustrated by the end of the day at just sitting and doing book work. The guitar is really good for him, but I think we need to add more hands on stuff so he can get up and move around. Maybe what we can do is start in on a bonsai project or some other plant growing project as well as an electronic project and a few other things like that. I really should get him involved in making a CNC router. We need a garage before we can do too much, but we might do something like build ourselves a mini greenhouse that he can work in out on the balcony while we are waiting to sell our house in Oregon and get another one here. I will have that discussion with him today.

We picked up a fellow from Bangalore, India to take to meeting with us on Sunday.  Lavan Jampa is a fellow with whom Tio Rigo has corresponded over the last couple of years.  They used to work for the same company; Rigo from Monterrey and Lavan from Bangalore.  They took care of the same accounts, Rigo during the day (in the U.S. and Mexico) and Lavan during the night (in the U.S., but during the day in India).  Over time, they got to talking about religion.  Rigo explained how we are and what we believe.  Lavan wanted to go to meeting during his first visit here to the U.S. where he is getting some training at Perot Systems.  We took him to Sunday morning meeting and then out to dinner on Sunday afternoon.  Next week we plan to take him to meeting followed by a potluck and then gospel meeting in the afternoon.  We enjoyed our time with him very much.  He seems to be a very nice man.

Last night, I got my financial analysis program running to the point where I can actually do the Analysis I want. It is not pretty, not particularly fast, there are some missing elements, secondary checks need to made for data that is not found on the first pass, and the GUI needs to be cleaned up a ton, but I have enough data now to get started with my testing of the program. It felt pretty good to be able to at least accumulate a comma delimited list that I can evaluate in an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet until I can get the functionality put into the program itself.

Lorena will take the kids to their music lessons today and then go off to have a cup of coffee with Roya at Starbucks and discuss the house we want to buy. This is the first evening in a long while that we do not have any huge thing planned. I am going to make a big effort to focus on the kids. Maybe we can get a new game or I can teach them how to play spades tonight! That is it! I will teach them how to play spades.

Rigo called yesterday and told us a friend of his from India will be working in the Dallas area for the next month. Rigo has really never met him in person, but they talk just about every day via email and instant messaging. It sounds like they have gotten to know each other fairly well. I tried to call him at his hotel last night, but could not do anything other than leave a message. I will try again later today. The man is a Christian and would like to come to some of our gospel meetings. We would like to invite him over for dinner with the workders, too. He sounds like a very interesting man.

We had a very small Wednesday night bible study last night. There were only two famiies and two additional people. Everyone else was either sick or out of town. We missed them, but also had a very good meeting. Because neither Ray Nerple nor Craig Parrish could be there, I was asked to lead the meeting, so I did that for the third time in my life.

My plan to teach the kids how to invest for the long haul is coming along quite nicely. I am writing a program that searches through stocks within a range of market capitalizations on the internet to rank them according to their “cheapness” and “goodness”. So far, I can download a list of stocks and retrieve their cheapness, goodness, and market capitalization automatically. Next, I am going to do the ranking and generate an HTML table that is automatically ftp’ed up to a website or emailed. Then, I am going to do a test run with my program and the kids to see if the methods work as advertised. I will try to set up some specific rules for them to follow in evaluating how they are going to invest and start in on a year of practice trading.

Aunt Jean called last night. She is in Dallas for a week. We are hoping to see her tomorrow, but she is really over an hour away (with the traffic) at the time we have available to go see her. I had a great talk with her last night and it sounds like she is really doing great.

I do not know why I am surprised so much that our little family is so blessed. I am very thankful for those times when I am reminded that God truly is in control and all that our lives, while good, will continue to get better as we exercise ourselves in obedience, love, belief, humility, kindness, patience, faith, and all those other qualities that God values in those who serve him. It happened again yesterday. A huge reminder of God’s care for his own and I am thankful. It reminds me that I need to have more patience and love for those in my own family and circle of friends. It is easy to forget that we are all in this together, God is working things out, and we do not have to have knowledge of exactly what or why things are happening in outlives; we just need to have confidence that God is in control.

Lorena’s birthday was on Saturday. We did not do much other than drive up to McKinney to look at a piece of property and eat out three times. On Saturday, we went to Boston Chicken for lunch and then to a chain place called Chipotle for dinner. Someone tried to convince us that it way way better than Baja Fresh, but it is not even close. Baja Fresh is awesome. Chipotle is not, in my opinion, even on the good side of average. Then after meeting, a bunch of our friends got together to go to Red Robin. It was especially nice because Kelly got to meet two other girls about her age. The plan for today was for Lorena and the kids to go with Rebekah, David, and Daniel Larson to the Science Place, but that fell through due to the weather and a couple of other things.

Kelly and Christian start music lessons again today. We found a very interesting homeschooled lady who got a degree in Music from SMU and married a fellow homeschooler after her graduation from high school. This will be Christian’s first guitar lesson while Kelly will continue with her piano. Christian has enjoyed his guitar very much, even before he started in on his lessons. The teacher has not had much experience with guitar, but will at least be able to get Christian going this year. We really want him to study classical guitar, but want convenience over just about everything else until we get out of our apartment and into a house again.

Today is January, Friday the 13th. That means tomorrow is Lorena’s birthday. Our plan is to run up to McKinney to look at some property and then take Lorena out to Red Lobster for dinner. We heard that we might be receiving another offer on the house in the next few days. If that is true, it will be great to actually think about buying our own place. If it is not true, it will help us get a little bit more of a sense for what is available.

Last night, I ordered the history book Christian was missing and I also ordered Rosetta Stone Spanish. I think I am going to have Kelly go through that for the rest of this year and then move over to French (possibly with me) while I will have Christian stick with Spanish for at least a couple of years before he moves to French.

Lorena will take Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita to the bus station in Garland so they can catch a bus that leaves for Monterrey at 8:00 this evening. It has been nice having them here. Last night, Christian, Kelly, and I went to our Wednesday night bible study while, Lauro, Conchita, and Lorena went over to Lorena’s cousin Beto’s new house. Beto’s wife, Denise cooked up some enchiladas for them. They had a nice time. The piano and guitar lessons will start tomorrow with a new teacher. I do not know how good is the teacher, but we are looking forward to getting them going again. The next thing I need to find is some place for them to get some exercise.

We have been working hard at our homeschool and we are starting to get caught up. I think that in about a week we will back it off a notch so we can start doing some other things.

The people who made an offer on our house found another one they liked better, so we are back to waiting mode.  God has his plan for us and we are going to work within that plan with the best spirit possible.  We have an amazing apartment, we love Dallas and our friends here are really quite amazing, so we have nothing about which we can complain.  We are working on our homeschool in earnest now.  I forgot how much work is required to do it right and I have only been away from it for six weeks.  We are missing one book for Christian which I need to get coming today.

Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah have decided to move out of their second story apartment into a single story, small house because Grandma Sarah has a bum knee and has a struggle getting up the stairs.  We are going to give them our washer and dryer as they will need one when they move.  I have wanted to buy Lorena a new set anyway.  I might do that before we move if everything comes together financially.  Lorena found that there is a bus station close to our apartment that can take Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita directly to Monterrey.  That means we are all set up for them to visit us whenever they would like!

We got an offer on our house yesteday and sent back a counter offer. Finding a place to live here in Texas will be much easier if we do not have to think about making two house payments. They are supposed to respond to our counter offer by 5:00 PM Pacific Time today. That will be 7:00 PM our time. If it goes through, Lorena and I will start looking for a place in McKinney area. We visited the Larson family up there on Saturday and enjoyed ourselves very much. The drive really did not seem to be too bad either. The only problem might be the traffic, but that can be avoided most days if I leave for work early enough.

Lorena’s parents came to visit us on Friday night. Lorena’s cousin Beto, his wife Denise, and their new little daughter Dayana, drove them up from Monterrey on their way back from visiting Denise’s family in Vera Cruz. They talked a lot about meeting with Lauro and Conchita, so now, the workers are planning to visit them in the next little while. It would be really great if they could find the truth for that multitude of benefits that derive from such an epiphany.