Month: November 2006 Page 1 of 2

When our worker Kent Williston was staying at our house a couple of months ago he showed us a really cool newsletter made by these kids in Arizona. It was called the R Desert Times. We showed him our Kaktus Kids and he gave us the suggestion of writing to the “R Desert Times Kids” We did and have been corresponding ever since. (in fact the “R Desert Times Kids might be reading this right now) .  :-)  That was neat to make friends with some home schooled kids who also make a publication just like us!

Yesterday I went swimming and they timed me for a nonstop 200 lengths freestyle swim. (Oh the pain) But the good news is we only do that once a month and try to beat our time each month. The bad news is you have to dive into the pool and I haven’t really mastered that technique yet. 🙂 Tonight we have Bible study at the Myers’s house. I had better get back to work! Adios to Everyone for now!

Kelly and I had a great discussion yesterday about change while Lorena and Christian were off at their cub scout meeting. I remember when I was young that I was often sad that time was passing so quickly. I was afraid I was missing out on something or that I had not done what I should have done at certain stages in my life. It is funny that it took me until middle age to realize that that kind of thinking is a waste of time. It is one thing to want to make the best of the time we have, but entirely another to let our love for the past prevent us from moving into the future. I think the fact that Kelly has had such a wonderful childhood increases her angst, because she does not want to lose that joy. I am hardly one to talk about such things because I had much the same feelings.

It is amazing that it took me so long to realize that the very best we can do at any stage of our life is to love everything possible about our life. Right now, I have lots of responsibilities that would have paralyzed me fifteen years ago. They are not much different than the responsibilities of others who are at the same place in life as I, but I worry about them a lot. I would not give them up for anything. I love my age and the place God has given me. I think I learned that attitude from Grandpa Milo. He was in some very ugly and difficult situations, many, if not most, of his own doing. Nevertheless, he struggled on and enjoyed life. He took the attitude that how he got into any situation was not as relevant as the fact that he was there and it was a waste of time to bemoan how life was treating him. I am sure he is a much wiser man for having had to extricate himself from such difficulties.

One time when I was feeling sorry for myself he told me a story about when he was in the Army. It was during the Korean War and he had just finished Basic Training in Alabama. He had borrowed a car to go visit some friends from church who lived way out in the country. The car had a flat tire out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in an Alabama rainstorm that is a harder rain than we in the Pacific Northwest ever experience. He felt sorry for himself for awhile, but then it dawned on him that at that time the next day, he would be in a warm bed. When I get worried about where I am and any current difficulty, I often think of that.

Lorena and I both generally drink a cola drink every day. Lorena drinks regular Coke and I drink Caffeine Free Diet Coke.  As I was driving in to work this morning, I heard a commentary about cola drinks. It seems that cola drinks are very bad for women’s bones. Even in small amounts, the occurrence of osteoporosis increases dramatically. The study showed that, even if a woman drinks a lot of milk with her colas, she is way worse off than those who did not drink cola. When I got into work, I did a search for articles about the study on the internet. I found a good article here. Speaking about a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, it starts out by saying, “Their study of 2,500 people revealed drinking cola was linked with low bone mineral density in women regardless of their age or calcium intake.” I called Lorena after I read the article and we agreed that we are going to try to drop cola drinks from our diet. The article also suggested that it is important for women to drink plenty of milk and eat lots of dark leafy greens (like spinach) and beans. The benefits of such a diet are greatly diminished in terms of the prevention of osteoporosis with the regular intake of even small amounts of cola.

Literally EVERYONE showed up for our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.  It was ball, but we were running HARD for three days to make it all happen and then to clean up afterwards.  This is really the first time we used our new kitchen for a big event.  We had twenty seven people there and it went great!  We a postmortem on Friday and realized that we did way more work than was necessary and we had way too much food.  The turkey was a little dry.  We went on and on about the little things that we could do better next time.  The new kitchen saved us, but it also created a new problem because that is where everyone just hung out.  It was a great learning experience.  Next year, we are going to organize the food a LOT better.  I am sure we will find more ways to improve next year, too.  I think we are going to try to hire someone on Friday to help clean up if we have the money.

On Saturday, we drove to George, Washington for a special meeting of our church.  One of our ministers from Mexico who had been in Lorena’s area when she was growing preached and we had a chance to sit and talk to him for a half an hour or so.  It was great.  We met a whole bunch of new people.  The only down side was that we had to miss the second meeting because we were afraid we would get stuck up on Satus Pass on the way home if we did not leave early.  It was a pretty good idea.  It was little icy on top of the pass at 4:00 PM.  It would have been really ugly if we waited until later.  There was snow on the ground in Albany when we got up this morning and the Washington and Oregon DOT websites showed lots of snow and ice between here and Yakima.

The FreshMeat website features a list of newly released, open source software.  I periodically browse through the site to see if there is anything new and interesting.  Earlier today, I found a link to a piece of software named Notalon.  Their website describes the application as one that is “designed to make taking Cornell notes faster and easier. It is written specifically for the task of taking Cornell notes, unlike a word processor.”  I had never heard of Cornell Notes, so I looked that up on the internet and found something that was very cool.  It is a method for taking notes in a class.  There is a good little explanation of how to take Cornell Notes at lifehacker.  I think I am going to have Kelly and Christian start taking hand-written notes at Sunday afternoon gospel meetings.  I am going to start doing that myself, too.  Then on Mondays we can do the post sermon review to finish the notes.  It will be great practice for when they get to college!  Of course, in college they can use a laptop computer to take notes for most of the classes.  I do not think it would work very well to use a computer for chemistry or math classes because of all the symbols, but the format still works and it would be great for just about everything else.  It almost makes me want to go back to college.  Almost.

It’s wonderful!  It’s terrific! It’s spectacular!  It’s astounding!  94.5 FM already has Christmas songs!  ‘Tis the season!  Hurrah!  Have a wonderful day and don’t forget to turn on the radio for great classic Christmas songs!  Boy this just about made my day!

Christian and I cannot wait for Thanksgiving (even though this is probably the third time we have cleaned up the bonus room). 🙂 We are making special little books for our cousins. These books are traditions now. This is Julia’s third book and Kylee and Charlie’s first book. They contain “versions” of the subject. So in Kylee’s book there could be rock ‘n’ roll Kylee, Santa Kylee, turkey Kylee, Martha Stewart Kylee, anything! They are really fun to make. We are also looking forward to seeing Julia. I don’t think I have seen her in two years! I wish she was staying a little bit longer. And Tim, David, and Valerie Meecum are coming! They are cool. Miss Turbone and a friend are coming. Tony, Martha, and Josh are coming. Lot’s of people! Christian and I will be making the ambrosia salad I think, and we will be setting the table, putting together some of the cold vegetables, and other odd jobs that Mom and Dad don’t feel like doing. 🙂

I found a couple of very interesting articles yesterday. They pretty much speak for themselves. The first one, I found in an article by J.P. Holding responding to a silly, but widely read little book titled Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. The second is an article in World Magazine that now that secularists have lost the argument about the truth of Christianity, they are now trying to argue that Christianity is evil. Alone, each of the articles is very interesting. Together they make a powerful statement.

• Philanthropy Expert Says Conservatives Are More Generous — H.T. Tektonics
• Anti-Christian paranoia — H.T. WorldMagBlog

Update:  And here is a third that also seems to fit:  Atheism Kills, Jesus Saves — H.T. Free Republic
 

Homeschool day 62 of 180
Government school day 51 of 170

We are having around 25 people over for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. Lorena is working really hard and has done a stellar job of getting ready (Thank goodness for my dear wife!). The house is almost ready. We have a new table and will bring in some chairs to make up for what we do not have from Jim and JoAnn because their big party is not until Saturday (Thank goodness for the Waldos, again!). The turkey and the ham are bought. I have to cook them and will do a little investigation about that tonight as I we have never before used our convection oven to do such a thing (Thank goodness for the internet!). Aunt Julia is bringing pies and Aunt Jean is bringing her famous cinnamon rolls (Thank goodness for sisters who know how to cook desserts–or, in Aunt Julia’s case, buy them at CostCo! It should be noted that Aunt Julia is an establish cook of some renown, just too busy to cook for the next month or so.). If he gets over his flu, Grandpa Milo will be here with his signature fruit plate and whirlwind organizing influence. Grandma Sarah is making the stuffing and the green beans (Thank goodness for experience). Uncle Ron and Aunt Wonlyn are bringing a vegetarian dish that we will combine with Portobello mushrooms for the vegetarians among us (Thank goodness for some very interesting eats and good company to help make and eat them!).

There is much more, too. We are glad Lorena’s cousin Martha and her husband Tony and son Josh will be with us this year along with our cousins Tim and David Mecum and David’s wife Valerie. All the cousins on the Chapman side will be there–Amy (with husband Mark), Charlie, Julia (with a friend from Dartmouth), and Kylee (maybe with one of her school friends). Our good friend Warren (Miss Turbone) will be there with his friend Isabel from Miami, too. We should be able to eat ourselves sick and be thankful for it all!

On Friday I went to a little sleepover at my friend Skyler’s house.  It was… interesting, but I had fun.  I brought my special hair book and we all went into the living room to do hair.  We were talking about what we were going to be when we grew up.

One girl said, “I wanted to be an orthodontist, but I found out that you have to go to school for like, seven years.”

I said, “So what do you want to do now?”

“Well, I think I’d rather marry an orthodontist than be one. That’s what I want to do.”

And then everyone started talking about what their weddings were going to be like and that they were going to get married in only seven years and they had better start planning. Then they talked about middle school. I didn’t know half the things that they were talking about so Skyler interrupted everyone to let them know that I had a “sheltered” life.  Uggghh… They were also listening to this awful “hip hop” thing. They asked me what my favorite music was.

“Enya, Hayley Westenra, and Classical,” I replied.

Everyone was silent for a little bit.  But fortunately I have Skyler.

She said “I LOVE Enya! This stuff is not really my FAVORITE.”

I had lots of fun though. One girl came at nine just when all the other girls started doing this weird psychological brain trick game. The new girl was very nice and noticed that I didn’t like the trick. She took me into the kitchen for some candy. I found out that she just quit the swim team a couple of years ago. She gave me some tips on how to do a good dive and she told me that she might join the team again. That was a good point of the sleepover. I did have fun, but if I had a sleepover then it would be a little different. 🙂

Yesterday night we went to the pool for another day of swim team practice. I was doing all right (though a little bit slow) nearly the whole time but then we came to the diving practice. You all know that I’m an exceptional diver and that I am very talented and all that. I guess this time my talents failed me. My stomach and head hurt so hard after I was done I nearly fainted 🙂 It was fun though! My coach was nice, she was teaching me how to do a perfect dive (which you all know I can do. It just wasn’t my day 😉 ) And the children were all kind. I’m actually having lots of fun!

I forgot to post the other day when I went baby sitting about an incident that I had had with a little girl there. Boy is she a handful. The whole time her arm hurt and we had to take her upstairs to her mother at least 80 times. Finally, the girl who was helping me, Rachelle, said no to her going upstairs. Sidney, the little girl, went into a tantrum. Rachelle got her calmed down after a while but pretty soon Sidney went into tantrums again. Rachelle was busy with the other kids so I went down to talk to Sidney. “Where does it hurt?” I said, and she jabbed her finger at her arm.

“Right HERE and my tummy hurts tooooooo!!!”

“Do you want to color?”, I asked “NO!!”, Sidney shouted.

After a little bit of coaxing I got her to color with me and then I went off to help Rachelle while Sidney colored. After maybe three or four minutes Sidney started bawling again. It seems another little girl had accidentally hit her lightly in the stomach.

“WAAAAH!!! I WANNA GO WITH MOOOOOMMMY!!!!”

I asked Sidney if she wanted to color again, “NO!” she replied angrily.

I got out the Winnie the Pooh coloring book and started to color Kanga’s scarf while humming a little tune. The other children soon joined me and we all had a terrific time coloring Kanga and Roo ice skating.

“Oh I’m having LOTS of fun, are you guys having lots of fun?” I asked the other kids.

“YES!!” they all said.

Sidney stopped snuffling. “Can I color too?” she asked.

“No, I thought you didn’t want to color!” I replied.

“But I really, really want to!” Sidney pouted.

“Sidney, I thought you said you didn’t want to color!”

“But I really, really, REALLY want to!”

I let her color and for the rest of the night, Sidney didn’t give us any trouble.

Homeschool day 60 of 180 (One third of the way done. WOO-HOO!)
Government school day 49 of 170

We are going to have the family Thanksgiving at our house this year. There will be lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends at the house for dinner–about 30 in all. We were not together for Thanksgiving last year. I was in Texas while Lorena was here trying to get the house sold. I was pretty sad to be away from my family, but actually had a very, very nice time at a community Thanksgiving there. Many of the people with whom I met for Wednesday night bible study and Sunday morning fellowship meeting did not originally come from Texas. One of them, Ray Nerpel, rented the hall in the housing community where he lived and invited everyone who did not have family to go there for a Thanksgiving dinner potluck. At that dinner, I started getting just a small picture of what a tight-knit community my family was going to enter when they got to Texas a couple of weeks later.

There were the Larsons from Minnesota and Michigan, the Nerpels from one of the Dakotas, the Krigbaums from Canada and Oregon, the Parrishes from California, etc. etc. They were rich and poor, blue and white collar, and of every type of personality you can imagine. All of them welcomed me to the party with open arms. All we did was sit around, talk, eat, and watch the kids play. It was not about what we were doing, but the fellowship we enjoyed. It was an exceptional group of people who had no other connection than their love of Christ. What I did not know is that this group did not just get together for church meetings and special occasions. They got together whenever they got the chance and everyone was included. I was in Texas for only six months this time and the family was there for only three, but we feel a great debt of gratitude to those people for the example they gave to us in their hospitality and kindness in including them in their “family”.

It’s cloudy, it looks like rain, and it’s a beautiful Oregon November morning. I hope that everyone is happy today because November 16, 2006 is a special day. It must be someone’s birthday today, it’s extra special because I wrote an ultra-cool blog post, and perhaps today someone will make an important scientific discovery. Yes, today is a wonderful day. In other news I hope that everyone looked at my poem about the French Revolution and the Bastille and all. It is very clever if I do say so myself. 😀 I have decided to write ballads, historical poems, limericks, and funny poems. Those are the interesting ones. The ones about flowers and spring and love and death and oranges and birds and all that are all right but the ones that I like to read are the funny ones or the ones that tell a story and I know that I am running a really long sentence here and I’d better get back to home school so thank you very much for reading and Bye bye!
Oh wait! The power went out at the Ramsdell’s last night during meeting an it was Mabel’s birthday (Happy Birthday Mabel!) and the lights came back on and Jordan found a huge black beetle with red eyes that bugged out and I got my sneakers back that I had left at their house at the cabin trip and I am going to a sleepover at Skyler’s tomorrow! Bye now!

Homeschool day 59 of 180
Government school day 48 of 170

My sister Julia tells a story about when she was 12 or 13 years old. There was a neighbor that was about Julia’s age. She was a bright and beautiful girl who was really quite a talented musician and student. I do not know if I have the story quite right, but it seems about that time that they both started learning to sew. The neighbor girl’s sewing was simply amazing. She chose relatively difficult patterns and worked hard to sew them right. Everyone marveled at her creations. By her own admission, Julia’s first efforts were pretty bad. She started with simple patterns and worked hard, but sewed them badly. The neighbor girl gave up sewing completely in less than a year. Years later, Julia continued to sew both as a professional seamstress and to make beautiful clothes for her family and friends.

I remember Dad and Mom raving about some of the first items Julia produced. The rest of we kids thought her first dress looked pretty much like a badly sewn potato sack. Dad and Mom could find nothing wrong with it, badly irritating the rest of us with their effusive praise. They had her wear the dress to Sunday Morning meeting and raved about Julia’s brilliant sewing skills to everyone there. The neighbor girl’s first dresses were beautifully sewn and much more complicated than Julia’s first dresses, but she rarely wore them because her mother always found some reason to berate them and her. The hem was a little off. A stitch was in the wrong place. Why could she not get them right? The poor girl found no joy in sewing because the person most important to her who should have been providing encouragement focused on what was wrong about the dress and the poor girl. Dad and Mom made a serious effort to find something right about what Julia had produced and about Julia herself. I think the fact that she had used the sewing machine, something new that she had never tried before, might have been about the only thing she did that was worthy of praise. But that is worthy of praise. If you do not start, you cannot improve.

(Forgive me, I do not know how to spell Burgoyne.  The historical accuracy might also not be perfectly historically accurate also 🙂 )

The French Revolution
By Kelly Jean Chapman

France!
France!
The people began to dance! dance!
To dance and to sing
and make the streets ring,
and fight and revolt for France! France!

Bastille! Bastille!
The peasants danced to a reel! reel!
They reeled and rebelled!
They cried and they yelled!
They brought down the prison Bastille! Bastille!

Revolt! Revolt!
The Burgoynes began to jolt! jolt!
to jolt the great jail
and try to prevail
and cry to the jailer: Revolt! Revolt!

Powder! Powder!
They shouted yet louder! louder!
They took all they could
and made off with the goods
and started a war with some Powder! Powder!

Rebel! Rebel!
France began to tell! to tell!
of hunger and need
of a movement to lead
great France to begin to rebel! rebel!

Done!
Done!
The people had fought and had won! won!
They defeated the king
and beheaded the queen!
now the revolution is done! done!

Moral of this story (Christian’s Idea): Off with her head
                                                        Marie is now dead 🙂

Last night, Christian was working on a program that Dad downloaded.  Dad said that Mr. Harris from meeting (who also is a mechanical engineer that goes to Dad’s work) had a more complex version of the program that Christian was working on.  I said “But that’s just drawing pictures!  I thought that engineers made cars and stuff!”  Dad said “How do you think they make cars?” (grooaan) I got beat on that one!  I don’t think I would make a very good mechanical engineer.  I also had a good time at swim team yesterday.  They worked us out, really, really hard but I learned a few new things and I love being in the pool. 

Homeschool day 58 of 180
Government school day 47 of 170

It was a fairly typical homeschool evening last night. I thought I would write down what happened to give a sense for our normal evening schedule. Lorena passed me going the other way as I came home from work last night. She was taking the kids to swim team practice. So, the house was empty again when I got there. I had a snack and sat down to correct Kelly’s homeschool work. I could not find her math, but was able to correct everything else before the family got back home. They were dead tired when they arrived, so rather than jump into any corrections, we made some popcorn and read a chapter of Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by the fireplace. We almost finished when Lorena called us for supper. For some odd reason, she decided that we absolutely had to have some Jimmy Dean’s Sausage. Every now and then she gets a whim like that. We are glad she did. I do not know how healthy it was, but at that place and time, it tasted very, very good.

After we ate, I finished the page and a half we had left to read in Young Fu. Kelly then found her math for me so I headed on upstairs to correct it forgetting that we were supposed to do Spelling Power. We will have to make that up tonight or Friday. We cannot do it on Thursday because that is another normal Spelling Power night; it is almost impossible to double up and do two Spelling Power sessions in one day unless you do one in the morning and one in the evening. Finally, I got to Christian’s homework. He had done three days worth of very hard Singapore Math work in one day due to a misunderstanding about the schedule, so he was justifiable frustrated with all that math. Normally, I correct his math and then go through the stuff he missed so he will be ready the next day. Because of the misunderstanding, he will do his math corrections today for me to correct tonight. If we get it all finished up tonight, he will be a day ahead of schedule and will have some extra time for his claymation, probably on Friday. He had way fewer corrections on the rest of his homework than usual and an especially good write-up on a book he is reading about Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner on which the movie “Chariots of Fire” is based.

Kelly fixed her math, but had not yet gotten to her twenty Rosetta Stone Spanish for the day. She also needed to play an additional four minutes to finish her piano practice. Her improvements testify to the fact that she is so scrupulous in spending the required amount of time practicing. We all marvel at the new things she learns to do on the piano every week. Kelly was going to try to take a math test yesterday as she has finished a major section of her text. The math test is the equivalent of doing an entire daily math assignment. She was only able to complete the first half yesterday and will try to finish the rest today. The highlight of the day for Kelly (this is just my opinion) was the poem she wrote. She promised that she would post it to the blog when she has a chance later today. She made quite an interesting comment about her poetry. She likes to read and write poetry a whole lot more than study it as an academic subject. My sentiments are the same, but her poetry surely does seem to have improved since she started studying it earlier this year.