Month: September 2006

Homeschool day 12 of 180

We have had about 30 rolls of undeveloped film sitting around the house for as much as ten years. Lorena took seven of the rolls down to Costco to be developed last week. She is going to do that every week until we have them all developed. I am scanning them into the computer so we can make some photo CDs of them to send down to Mexico. The photos are really pretty incredible. I took rolls and rolls of film while the kids were small and I am really glad that I did. I hope they are not wrecked by waiting too long to develop them. In general, though, they are not too bad for snapshots. We love the memories and have had a chance to reflect a little on how truly blessed we are.

JoAnn–read my comment from yesterday!

Homeschool day 11 of 180

Kelly, Christian, and I started reading Call It Courage last night. It is a grand book. For the last two years, Christian’s third and fourth grade homeschool programs were ones that Kelly did not use because she started back into homeschool in the fifth grade. Now that Christian is in the fifth grade, he is doing the program Kelly used for that grade. Our read aloud books were all books that Kelly had not yet read. This year though, most of the books we will read aloud are books that Kelly already read to herself. Call It Courage is one of those books. Because it is a grand book, Kelly is having a grand time with it for the second time. I was a little bit worried about whether this would work, but the books are Newberry Award books, Caldecott Award books, and such. I believe we are going to have a grand time reading them all.

Homeschool day 10 of 180

For the first time in awhile, we have a free weekend with nothing that I really have to do other than three or four hours work on Saturday at my desk. The only downside is that Kelly will be gone to a friends house for the weekend. Lorena, Christian, and I should manage just fine.

Homeschool day 9 of 180

We had someone break into our business the other night, steal some equipment, and break some windows. We have been in the business seven years now and this is the first time something like that has happened. It is a funny deal. We are working to make the place a great place to work for the employees by making improvements to the working environment, sending employees to training, giving out quarterly profit sharing bonuses (rather good ones here lately), providing insurance options, and actively looking for ways to make our little company a great place to work. That this might have been a disgruntled employee or ex-employee has crossed our mind and it saddens us. We have had to initiate some new security measures. The need to do that also saddens us.

Homeschool day 8 of 160

We are back in the saddle with our homeschool now. After the first full day of homeschool with all the neighborhood kids back to their government schools, it is dawning on us again how great are our materials. The math is grand, the literature and history are grand, the music is grand, the science is grand; all of it is grand. We are finishing up reading How to Win Friends and Influence People and will start reading Call It Courage later this week. We started in on the Spelling Power program. Life is exciting the the Chapman household.

We ate shrimp and sang Happy Birthday yesterday for Christian’s eleventh birthday, but the real party will not be until a little later.  We have decided that we will have a family party up at Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah’s house and then invite Christian’s friends Seth and Kendall to go with us to the Wildlife Safari down near Roseburg in Winston.

Homeschool day 7 of 180

Today is Christian’s birthday. The day he was born in Tualatin, we could see the most beautiful sunrise we have ever seen out the hospital window. He is truly a joy and a blessing in all of our lives–Lorena, Kelly, and I. Other than a cake and a couple other little things, we are really not going to start celebrating until next week or so. The plan is to go up to Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah’s house for a party with the aunts and uncles, spend the night, and then go to some cool thing in Portland. It will not be the zoo or OMSI because the kids just went to that, but there are tons of other opportunities up there. Stay tuned.

Homeschool day 6 of 180

Going into the three day weekend, we are on track with our homeschool plan. School will start in earnest on Tuesday of next week. By the end of that week we will have two weeks behind us. I think I am going to spend Labor Day itself working on the garden. We need to haul some dirt and blocks to the house to extend the flowerbed around the porch. That sounds like a very good project for one day in late September. We will probably go to convention one day–either Saturday or Sunday.