I have been 12 for one month now. Tommorow is my birthday party! Yesterday we went to meeting with the Myers and we heard that there is going to be a potluck for the whole field on Cindo De Mayo. The construction kids started digging holes in our yard for starting the remodel. Trappy is running around everywhere! We keep him outside in his doggy cage and right now he is sleeping. He is so cute! Trappy went to the bathroom outside today (good). We went swimming yesterday. It is going well, Mom might put us in swimteam.
Sorry for the haste in writing this. I will write more (and better) later. Ciao
Month: April 2006
Yesterday, Mark started the remodel of our house. It will be great when it is finished and the process will be fun to watch, but I expect the household to be quite chaotic. Especially when the new puppy is added to the mix.
As Dad said, we got a nice widdle puppy named Trapito (or Trappy for you English speaking people) Our neighbors grandma who lives on the next street bought him but unfortunately for her Grandpa doesn’t like dogs. She gave him to the neighbor kids but they already have a whole bunch of fish, a lizard, a cat and a dog (they also used to have about 6 birds, more cats, and a guinea pig) They couldn’t keep him so they showed Trappy to us and (of course) we wanted him.
My birthday party is this week and I am inviting the neighbor girl, a girl I met in government school, and the homeschool gang. It is a scrap booking party and it is also a sleepover. Dad and Christian will be well out of the area once the party starts (or so Dad says) and I can’t wait, but I guess Christian can.(:
We were given a dog this weekend. He is a funny, funny little dog, half Shih Tsu, half Yorkshire Terrier. He is not yappy and he is paper trained. What a deal! Grandma Sarah came over and told us we should call him Ragg Mopp, so we went ahead and named him Trapito which means rag in Spanish. We are enjoying him very much. I try to put up some pictures as soon as I can.
I have to go to Livermore, California for a few days. I am sure the family will feel much suffer now that we have an attack dog in the house.
Our friends Joe Layman and Dellis Waldo are coming to stay with us for the weekend. We will have a nice dinner tonight. Joe really likes to eat tacos or burritos and salsa, so I am sure that is what we will have. We have some paperwork left before we can start on the remodel of the house, but we are getting closer to finishing that up. I will try to get a series of before and after pictures going. Our good neighbors across the street have put up a basketball hoop that the kids have been using with great joy. I do not think we will have any basketball stars, but we might have some lively neighborhood basketball fun.
Things are just now starting to smooth out a little again here in Oregon. It is a little tough to get stuff back under control after having made a big move. Add that to the fact that we moved in the middle of tax season, the kids had to take the Stanford Achievement Test (three days), we are doing a major remodel, and I had to travel to Toronto for a week and it has made for a relatively chaotic April. We are starting to get caught up on a few things, but we have more coming up–guests at the house for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, Kelly’s delayed birthday sleepover with eight girls, the need to communicate better with our friends in Texas after their incredible hospitality during our too short, three month stay in Texas, etc. etc.
That all being said, Kelly and Christian are making great progress on their annual research reports, blasting away at their math and Spanish, back into swimming and music lessons, and, very importantly, integrated back into the neighborhood kid society.
Yesterday was full of planning and preparation. We found Christian a guitar instructor. Christian is interested in learning how to play flamenco and classical guitar. I hope this guy is not too rock and roll oriented for him. We can try it out for the rest of the school year and then change if necessary, but after having discussed it at length, I think it might be good. Both Christian and Kelly got back into swimming lessons yesterday and Kelly has her first lesson today with Mrs. Hickenlooper today, so we are pretty much back into the swing of things for homeschool now.
Yesterday morning, the remodellers came by to measure stuff so we can get an idea how much it will cost us to do all the work we want. I do not know whether we will be able to do it yet, but Lorena and I are very hopeful.
I found out yesterday that I will need to go up to Canada for a week, next week. That is really a good time for me to go because the kids will be taking their Stanford Acheivement Tests at that time. I will keep them going with math, reading, science, and their research reports, but then I will have a ton of correcting to do when I get home. Kelly will start her piano again tomorrow with Mrs. Jill Hickenlooper out in Jefferson. What a great piano teacher! I will start trying to find a guitar teacher for Christian today. Jill gave us a place to call that might be able to help us in our search. Also, we are going to try to get the kids back into swimming lessons for this month so they can get some more exercise.
We are now back in Oregon, I am back at my old job at ATS and everything is moving toward normalcy. We had a great trip across the country from Texas. We spent a lot of that time remembering our wonderful friends there. We met some truly incredible people with whom we plan to stay in close touch. We should finally get phone and internet service at home today, so we will be able to start calling and writing everyone to check in. Kelly and Christian started homeschool again yesterday. We will be full speed ahead by mid-week. They will take their nationally normed Stanford Acheivement Tests next week. I hope these test are more comprehensive than the California Acheivement tests. Hopefully, my posting will be more regular again, from here forward, too.