Month: June 2006 Page 1 of 2

Before the four day, Fourth of July weekend, I thought it might be kind of nice to post some of the drawings we have completed while going through Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad:

I went to Jim and JoAnn’s house last night to work on her computer. It is amazing that getting some very simple items to work on a Windows XP computer is so much more difficult than if I were using a Linux box. Someday soon people are going to wake up to that. I downloaded the latest version of OpenOffice.org (2.03) today. It just keeps getting better and better. Last year, I did all of our homeschool planning using OpenOffice.org Calc.  It worked great and we have some super records for the year.  It encouraged me to start a program using the OpenOffice.org Database to manage all of our homeschool bookkeeping.  I am pretty excited about the whole thing and, after I have written it, tested it for awhile, and worked out the bugs, if I think it is worthwhile, I will post it as a GPL’ed program.

JoAnn was quite happy with my help, but she is always way to gracious with that kind of thing.  She does not realize that I would pay her to let me do it.  It is nice, though, that she is so appreciative.  She came to visit Lorena today and even bought Mark Kisler’s Draw Squad book after seeing some of Christian’s work.  We are really fired up about that and want to see her (and her grandkids) results from the book.  We think we have gotten a LOT better, but then, I am a clueless, non-artistic engineer type (think Wally from Dilbert).

We had Jim and Dana Hamilton over for dinner last night along with their two kids and Dana’s mother Kate.  We all had a very, very nice time.  I think the thing we enjoyed most was watching Christian play with the oldest boy, Reese.  Reese is a sweet and very inquisitive two year old.  What was particularly poignant was Christian’s gentleness and attentiveness to the younger boy.  Afterward, Christian described how he spent time building confidence and then led him through activities like building a “house” for the cat, watering the plants, drawing, and several other activities that kept them both occupied and happy for a couple of hours.  I think it was good for both of them.

I got a good lesson yesterday about what is important.  For the first time since 1961, Oregon State, my university won an NCAA national championship.  I from the same town as the head coach and one of the important players on the team.  It was an exciting series.  In the end, though, it was pretty anticlimactic.  All this took place while I drew with the kids, then read another chapter in How to Win Friends and Influence People, all with the radio off.  The war against terrorism went on around the world with people risking their lives for our freedoms, even while The New York Times and the LA Times were doing everything but apologizing for publishing national secrets that will cause people to die.  Our missionaries, oft forgotten in far-away places, quietly give their lives in truly heroic fashion so that others can live.  I listened to the players and announcers talk after the game, describing how important was this event in their lives.  It saddened me that my life gets caught up in such things.  It all seems so shallow and unimportant in the whole scheme of things that we have to find significance in such fleeting events.

We really had a great weekend. My old friend Mehrube from ESI and her husband Lifford came to visit us Saturday on their way to Crater Lake. We had a super time catching up on each other. They are doing just great as professors of electrical engineering down in Texas. I hope they come visit us again some day before too long. I am surely glad we have stayed in touch.

Sunday was great, too. It was really hot. So, after meeting, the Kelly and Christian went to swim with their friends, Hannah, Jacob, and Haley in a little above ground pool at Hannah’s grandparents house. They swam for about three hours. When they got home and changed, we all spent a couple of hours going through our school books for next year.

For the last two years, I have had to buy two Sonlight programs, one each for Kelly and Christian. Now, though, I only had to buy one program for Kelly for the seventh grade because Christian will be able to use the one I bought for Kelly two years ago in the fifth grade. We have been through this whole purchasing process several time now, so we have a better handle on what we need. I will have to go back and look, but I am pretty sure we spend significantly less than what we spent this time over the previous two years. I believe we were more thorough in our purchasing, too. I know there are a few things I will have to buy as we move through the material, but they will be small. I always had at least a couple of big items I needed to buy because I did not yet know how to plan properly or because a program or set of materials were not working like we wanted them to work.

The kids were pretty worn out from their swimming, so after we ate the steaks Lorena cooked up for us, they both took a bath. Then we did our artwork from Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad, read a chapter from How to Win Friends and Influence People and went to bed…

…and Oregon State still has a chance to win the College World Series in baseball.

We are starting to move things back into the living room from where they are all stacked in the family room to facilitate the remodel.  Yesterday before our bible study, we stopped in at K-Mart to by some felt feet to put on the furniture so it will not scuff the hardwood floor.  I hope we can get the piano moved back into the living room today, but will need the help of Mark and Clinton to do that because it is so heavy.  We are really going to need some rugs to put down on the floor, but do not know when we will be able to get them because they are pretty expensive.

My friend Mehrube with whom I used to work at ESI is coming to visit us this weekend with her husband Lifford.  Hopefully we will have the house a little more put together by the time they come on Saturday.  Mark said the main part of the living and dining rooms will be finished today, so we can start moving stuff back in.  It will be nice to get our family room back into a livable state.  We really need to get a few rugs, some things to put on the feet of our furniture to protect the floor, and a couple new stools so we can all eat together at the island counter in the kitchen.  I will call Lorena and have her look for that today.

Lorena is driving up to Sherwood today to take Christian and Kelly to their annual physical checkup.  I think they are both going to get a shot or two, but I am not sure.  Dr. Ju is about the only thing left in Sherwood for which we have a reason to return other than our friends there.  Dad and Mom came over last night for a visit.  Lorena made her famous caldo con elotes along with chicken tostadas.  It was very, very good.  I gave Dad my table saw, bench top router, drill press, dremel tool, compressor, jigsaw, Skilsaw, and I forget what else to use as long as he wants.  I think he is going to try to do a project with Christian later this summer while Kelly is off at journalism camp.  They should have a great time.

Last night Kelly, Christian, and I read another chapter of How to Win Friends and Influence People. It was the chapter about listening. I think that is something on which our little family needs to work. The ability to listen well and with great interest is an extremely valuable tool. I truly believe whole careers have been built on the ability to listen well and with interest. I am going to ask the kids what they did tonight in their effort to apply some of the tools described in the book. At whom did they smile? Whose name did they use? Who is someone to whom they listened intently and what did they learn while they were listening? These are things we need to remember and practice daily.

The new kitchen is only one day from completion. Here is a link to some photos.

Lorena’s new kitchen

Today is the first day of summer vacation for the neighborhood kids but I have looked outside the window and no one seems to be running around. Maybe that’s because it’s cloudy. My friend Ethne in Texas says that it’s HOT down there, 80’s or 90’s. We are sure waiting for the summer to start. I forgot to mention in my last entry that William D. Burt (that’s the name of the author of the King of the Trees) signed the first two books. Thank you Aunt Julia! That’s all for now.

I had a great talk with my cousin Trisha last night.  She is finishing up her Associate Degree and working on getting scholarships to go on to a Bachelors Degree.  It sounds like she is doing just great.  One of the ladies with whom she works wants to help here get a scholarship given out by the Catholic Church, but is having a little trouble understanding about how our church does not have a name and makes every effort to follow the New Testament model.  It is a really neat story; I hope she gets the scholarship.  We might try to run down to Klamath Falls for the Fourth of July weekend to see Crater Lake and visit a little with Trisha’s parents, Merle and Carolyn.

The lights went out at Dad’s work and we all know how much he uses the computer so he’s pretty bored right now. I suggested that he practice drawing like in our Draw Squad book and he thought of writing a letter to the workers. All for now.

Mark and Clint put the new dormer on the house today. It made a pretty big change to the appearance of the outside of the house, but it made a huge and very positive change inside. There is a beautiful view from the master bedroom of the garden and many of the beautiful trees in the neighborhood. The opening lights up the room and gives it a much more airy feel.  We love it.  It looks fine on the outside, too, but it will look a lot better when the siding and shingles are in place.

It’s almost done and we (mostly Mom but us too) are very excited about the whole thing! No more cereal and cold pizza! No more McDonalds and hamburgers!! Not that I don’t like McDonalds, I have nothing against it. But after 5 bazzilion yogurts, sausage biscuits, and orange juices, I really, really feel like eating some steamed broccoli.

I have a job! Bigger than last time. Now I get to water a thousand pots and walk, feed, water, and clean up after a big golden retriever! The neighbor kids will be glad to help me walk the dog for a week, they like Kona. (I remembered the dog’s name! see below) I hope everyone liked our reports! Thanks to all that posted comments. We appreciate that a lot.

There is something that I have to tell everyone about but no one will listen. Aunt Julia got me these awesome books last Christmas. They are by a guy from Oregon and they are a series called The King of the Trees by William D. Burt. I have tried countless times to get Dad, Christian, and my friends to read them but they are too interested in Harry Potter. I mourn for them… oh well, life goes on and I guess I’ll just have to enjoy them by myself. (sigh)

Last night, we read in How to Win Friends and Influence People about how important it is to remember and use people’s names as well as possible.  In the morning when I got up, I tried to remember what we had read, but had already forgotten.  I had to ask Kelly, who, of course knew.  The smile chapter was much easier to remember.

Kelly’s and Christian’s Stanford Achievement test results for the year arrived yesterday.  Both of them were well over the 90th percentile.  I think this test is much better than the California Achievement test they took last year where they were both in the 99th percentile in everything.  At least this test showed us the areas where they tested well.  The programs we are using for the homeschool appear to be preparing them quite well for these kinds of tests.

Christian, Kelly, and I read the chapter about smiling in How to Win Friends and Influence People. What a great concept. We tried it out on Mom (Lorena) and it worked pretty well. We are going to try it out more today. Our new laptop computer came yesterday, so we set that up in the kitchen so that Lorena can talk to her mother down in Mexico on Skype while she is working in the kitchen. We tested it out and it works great. I took the Linux computer and the desktop off the internet and moved the wireless router downstairs. This way, when people come to visit us, they can connect up to our wireless network anywhere in the house. More importantly, we will have good control over use of the internet. The computers upstairs can be used for schoolwork, but any internet access will have to take place in the kitchen. The bluetooth headset works OK, but Lorena liked to talk just using the speaker in the webcam better, so we will try to find another use for the headset. Maybe we can set it up to work with Rosetta Stone Spanish!

Kelly, Christian, and I started back in again yesterday on our drawing program.  We are using Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad and we just love it.  Yesterday we drew some planets with rings, a silo holding dry cereal, and the letter T, all using the various shading and shadowing techniques we learned last summer.  We kind of forgot how great it was to sit together, listen to some nice music, and draw.  Before we sat down to do that, we read the fourth chapter of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.  When we finish that we are going to start on a book about the historical evidence about the Jesus called Reinventing Jesus.  It is going to be a great summer.

We talked last night about what Kelly and Christian are planning to do this summer. The main things include Kelly’s annual Fourth of July parade, the local library talent show, and lots of reading. Next year, they are going to take singing lessons from Bryce Cloyd. I mentioned that a good goal for their class might be to get something prepared for next summer’s talent show. Kelly could play the keyboard, Christian could play the guitar, and they could both sing. I think it would be very nice.

Tony, Martha, and Josh came over with us last night to get gas going to our new range top.  We now have everything working in the kitchen except the range hood.  After that, all that is needed are the backsplash, pot filler faucet, replacement counter top for the one that is bad, the hood, the cabinet doors, and a little touch-up work on the hardwood floors.  After that, I think the only thing left is some stuff under the house, the fence, the new door and window, and the porch!