Month: November 2006

Homeschool day 57 of 180
Government school day 46 of 170

Lorena went to take her second Calculus midterm exam yesterday. When I got home after work, she had just left to take the test. Kelly and Christian were just finishing up their homeschool work. After eating a bowl of soup, we spent an hour and a half doing correcting assignments and reading the next chapter in Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. We have to rush through things on Mondays because Kelly leaves for her babysitting job at 6:15, Lorena arrives a little after that (like a tornado when there is a test) with just enough time to eat a bowl of chili, then whisk Christian off to Cub Scouts at 7:00 with all the chasing around the house required for him to get into his uniform. Then the house is quiet and I am alone for a couple of hours.

You would think I would like a little quiet after so much turmoil during the day at work and the ongoing uproar of two tween age kids. Last night I told myself that the reason it does not feel so comfortable is that, after twelve years, I am used to the noise of kids in the house. On reflection, though, I realized that I never did feel so comfortable, even when I was a bachelor, to be all alone. I read a lot of books on a lot of weekends and evenings, alone in empty apartments. Many people are good with that. I even enjoy it for short stretches. For my part, it is much nicer when someone is there to read with me or go out for a bite to eat or go shopping or work on a yard project.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I am thankful for my family and the noise they make.

The last week or so, I’ve been writing a half an hour (more or less) on my book. I have been developing the characters, writing profiles, summarizing each chapter, reviewing the plot, and,of course, drawing my characters all over the margins of my math homework! Yes, I’m having a lot of fun with my book! In other news, Christian and I joined the swim team in Corvallis. We will start this week! They work you pretty hard but it will be very fun! All of the kids there are in 6th or 7th grade, just about our age! Christian and I are also preparing a way cool menu for Thanksgiving! We are having lots of fun preparing that. I have also started babysitting for the neighbors across the street. They don’t have kids but they have a church community group thing every week and the people keep their kids downstairs. Another high school girl helps me. She is very nice. I think that that is about it. Remind me to write on the blog more!
The Illustrious Kelly

Homeschool day 56 of 180
Government school day 45 of 170

All we have for today is Christian’s claymation of Grandpa Lauro fishing with his little dog Lobito.

Homeschool day 55 of 180
Government school day 44 of 170 ***students not in class today***

Kelly, Christian, and I continue to read Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. It is amazing how the themes in this book parallel life in modern day America. I am sure these themes parallel life any most times and places. The story takes place during a time of transition and a struggle for power between warring parties in different parts of China. Yesterday, a soldier in the story killed a man on a whim. The soldier wanted the man to carry some stolen rice. The man refused because his family would starve if he did not finish the task given to him by his master so that he would have enough money to buy food. The soldier shot him. He was left in a heap on the side of the road while Young Fu was conscripted to carry the load that was way to heavy for him. Only through the kindness of a stranger does he avoid the fate of his predecessor.

Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
Romans 3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
Romans 3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Romans 3:13 Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
Romans 3:14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
Romans 3:15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
Romans 3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
Romans 3:17 And the way of peace have they not known:
Romans 3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Sometimes, living in America with all its abundance and freedoms, we believe that America is somehow good. We are rightly thankful for the good, but we are wrong to believe that America’s goodness comes from any inherent goodness in America’s people, history, or system of government. Those things are gifts from God, not products of any efforts by America or Americans. To trust in such things is just wrong. We need to respect and support those in authority over us, but Jesus only is our king.

Homeschool day 54 of 180
Government school day 44 of 170

Wednesday afternoons are kind of difficult. Lorena goes to class right when I get home at about 4:30. It is my job to correct all the homework and get the kids fed before Lorena gets home so that we can get to our Wednesday evening bible study on time. The kids do a good job of getting themselves fed, but I struggle a little with decompressing from work and correcting the homework before Lorena arrives. If things are going to fall through the cracks, Wednesday is the day when that usually happens. Nevertheless, we did not do too bad last night. We were even able to eat some popcorn and apple slices while we read the second chapter of Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. The bible study is quite satisfying because we are forced to slow down and consider bigger issues than mundane minutiae of the day in a quiet setting with our friends.

Homeschool day 53 of 180
Government school day 43 of 170

The kids had their first practice last night on the swim team. They have been taking swimming lessons until now. The swim lessons lasted about 45 minutes, but the swim team practice lasts 75 minutes. When they came home, they were pretty tired. I thought they were going to be discouraged because of how hard it was, but they were in good spirits. I corrected all their homeschool work while they were at practice, so when they got home at a little after six, all we had time to do was have dinner and do our evening homeschool work. We have been wanting to read aloud together since the beginning of the year, but because of one thing and another, we just have not had the time. It was about 8:00 o’clock when we finished everything else and I just about sent them to bed, but on a last minute whim, decided to read aloud.

Kelly went and made some popcorn. One of our little luxuries is Orville Reddenbacher Extra Butter Popcorn. On her own, she decided to cut up some apple slices, too. We try to eat the popcorn very, very slowly, taking small bites of individual pieces so we can make it last for the whole reading session. We all got piled up together in front of the fireplace and started to read. The book we are reading is one Kelly read two years ago called Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. Kelly loved the book and was excited to be reading it for the second time. It is more fun to read it aloud with Christian and I. This book richly deserves the Newberry Award it won in 1933. The kids were a little tired from their swimming, so they were not as restive as when they do not get much exercise, the fire felt good, and we had one of our best readings ever. I need to remember this joy the next time I think about skipping our reading session

Homeschool day 52 of 180
Government school day 42 of 170

Christian brought home a small (about 18″) cord from his cubscout meeting last night. Everyone tried their hand at tying a Turks Head Knot. It seems that everyone failed. There was a set of instructions that the people tried to follow, but it is a complicated affair that is pretty hard to illustrate. When Lorena and Christian got home, they showed me the instructions and I tried my hand at it, failing miserably, too. I did a search for the knot on the internet, but still could not find anything that made tying the know any easier. Finally, Christian showed me a website he had found that features animations of how to tie a variety of knots. It is VERY cool. You can find it here. That got us off center and we were able to tie the knot. It is amazing how such small things can bring such a feeling of accomplishment.

Homeschool day 51 of 180
Government school day 41 of 170

Kelly and Christian exercised their creativity this weekend. Yesterday evening, Kelly and I were sitting at the upstairs computers. I was not doing anything on the computer, just using the desk for homeschool corrections. Kelly was at the Windows computer working on her book. I do not know whether she only works on her book when she is content or working on her book makes her content. After we had been there awhile, Kelly stopped typing, looked over at me and said, “Do you think that being able to type fast is a big advantage?”

I thought about if for a second and said, “Yes, but maybe in a little bit of a different way from what you are thinking.”

She said, “Why?”

“Well, do you know how we have taken a systematic approach to learning stuff? Both you and Christian started very young with reading, writing, typing, bicycle riding, swimming, drawing, and a bunch of other things. When you started you were pretty bad, but little by little you got better by practicing every day for just a little while. It does not take too long to get good if you are consistent and do not get discouraged. Attitude is everything.”

“Yes.”

“It is a big advantage to be able to systematically learn things. It requires patience. That you can type 60 words per minute when you are twelve is probably not as important as the fact that you spent fifteen minutes every day of every summer since you were seven doing Mavis Beacon Typing.”

“That is true.”

“It does help to be able to type as fast as you can think, though.”

She has a great little book coming together. She has not started writing the book yet because she has been describing her characters, refining the plot, outlining the chapters, and working on her illustrations. I think it would be great to put up one of the illustrations for her book up here on the blog tonight. It is the one that shows all of the characters. It might not be the final illustration for the book, but it is nice and really gives a flavor for where she is going with her book writing efforts.

Kelly’s book illustration

Christian had a major breakthrough in his creative endeavors this weekend, too. He has been doing claymations. His two main themes have been ridiculing the self organization of molecules into human beings and tank and artillery battles. The “evolution” themed claymations are pretty hilarious, but so are the tank scenes. There has really been a limited number of people involved in these scenes. The main one being the person that is formed as the molecules self-organize. The tank battles have generally featured a tank and a cannon moving around shooting at each other. The problem with doing people is that it is hard to get them to move in lifelike ways. He had a major breakthrough last night right around bedtime. It is a fishing story that gets around many of the technical issues while still providing for a funny and succinct plot. I will try to put it up here when he gets it finished.

Muchas de las ojas ya han caido, pero todavia hay bastante color. Antes, esos arbolitos tuvieron ojas de color un verde vibrante. Que disfruten.

Foto numero uno–La casa en el otoño veindo del porche para afuera

Foto numero dos–La casa en el otoño por el lado

Foto numero tres–La casa en otoño por en frente

Homeschool day 50 of 180
Government school day 40 of 170

Anyone who reads this blog at all knows that my wife, Lorena is from Mexico. When I got home from work yesterday, Lorena was standing at the cutting board with a mountain of potatoes, carrots, celery, cabbage, garlic, tomatos, and onions. She had the stew meat cooking in a big pot on the stove and a small stack of 3-inch pieces of corn on the cob off to the side. The wonderful invention of the Mexicans is the addition of those pieces of corn on the cob to the stew. It adds an incredible flavor to the broth and soaks up all the flavor of the stew into the kernels. A real win-win deal. I had never had corn on the cob in stew until I went to El Paso to get my Masters Degree. My major professor, Carroll Johnson took me down to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that just served caldo. It has been one of my favorite foods ever since.

When I was growing up, Grandma Sarah made almost exactly the same stew, but being gringa, she did not add any pieces of corn on the cob and it seems like she put in more potatoes. It was still incredibly good–especially with home made bread. The other thing she did was add peas, use a little bit different kind of meat, and maybe add something to stiffen the broth. Those stews are both awesome, but surprisingly different from each other. There seemed to be a bit of a different consistency between Mom’s stew and Lorena’s caldo. Boy, I need to remember to ask her about that at Thanksgiving. The other thing I can do is try getting Lorena to add peas to her caldo. Maybe that is another cooking project Kelly, Christian, and I can take on. That’s it! We could invent the perfect synthesis between Grandma Sarah stew and Lorena’s caldo!

Homeschool day 49 of 180
Government school day 39 of 170

Thank goodness, Halloween is over and we are moving on toward Thanksgiving. It is well known that the senior male member of our household (yours truly) is not a big fan of Halloween. That certainly cannot be said for Thanksgiving. Of Thanksgiving, I am a very, very big fan. There is no downside to Thanksgiving. It is the gift that just keeps on giving. It starts with a lot of food, ends with leftovers, and there is a lot of sleeping, food, and creative memory recounting in-between. I can hardly wait. We are having all of my immediate family over. Cousin Julia is bringing a friend from Dartmouth. Our friend Warren is brining a friend from Miami. The kids enjoy this very much. They used to call him Mr. Bone, but ever since they read Louis Sachar’s book Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes, they call him Miss Turbone. Those of you who have read the book will understand. Those who have not can read the book or just google it. Cousins Tim and David Mecum and David’s wife Valerie will be there. Uncle Doug, Aunt Julia, Aunt Jean, and all their families should be there, too. Of course Grandpa Milo and Grandpa Sarah will be there. Grandpa Milo is visiting our missionaries in Ecuador right now, so he should have lots of amazing new stories to tell at the dinner table. Some of them might even be true.

Our big challenge, as always, will be to decide what we are going to cook. Why this should be a big challenge, I can never understand. We will have roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans, olives, portobello mushrooms (in deference to Aunt Jean, the vegetarian), cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, etc., etc. The only real decision we have to make is whether we cook a ham along with the turkey. It does not seem too difficult to me. Christian is going to cook some of his new candies. We probably should do those up a couple of days ahead. We will see how he does with big batches. He has only done small batches before so this should be fun and interesting. The cooking part will be fun. How much encouragement he needs to clean up will be the part that is interesting. 🙂

P.S. I just ordered a Ring of Fire Hot Sauce Collection specifically to go with Thanksgiving appetizers!

Homeschool day 48 of 180
Government school day 38 of 170

Kelly and Christian are doing a music/science program this year called Lyrical Life Science that is turning into one of the big highlights of the year. How we got to this will require some explaining. I wrote last year about a little program that we started, not so much because I thought it was going to be any good, but because it was part of Christian’s fourth grade program from his Sonlight curriculum. That program was called Wee Sing America. It consisted of a little book and a CD that contained a whole bunch of traditional and patriotic songs and famous quotations. There was one song assigned by Sonlight for each week of the school year. I set aside a little time each day for the kids to memorize and sing the songs together. It was a wildly successful program. They sang one of the songs together at our local library’s talent show and won second place. They still sing the songs all the time, usually while we are travelling in the car, but at other times, too.

I wanted to do something similar this year, but most of the Wee Sing materials were for younger kids. As I was putting together my purchase list in the summer, I noticed a program called Lyrical Life Science from a little company called Lyrical Learning. Sonlight offered it as an optional item to go with their normal, very good, fifth grade science program that deals with the human body. Sonlight did not use a song for every week, but one every two or three weeks when there was matching material in the other part of the program. When I looked up the Lyrical Learning on the web, I saw there were three Lyrical Learning volumes available for the life sciences. That was more than enough songs for one per week, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger and bought all three volumes. We started out doing one song per week.

The idea was for the kids to memorize one song per week. There is a wonderful workbook and CD (with the music) that goes along with the song/text book, so we had the kids work through the materials in the workbook during each week as they worked on the songs. As we have been going along, I have noticed that the kids were really picking up and remembering the science they were getting in the program. I also noticed that the songs were hilarious in a very intellectual, but campy sort of way. Last night we had a talk about how the program is going. It started when I listened to the kids sing the hilarious and very, very interesting song about viruses to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”.

I noticed that, while the song was interesting and fun, but too long to memorize in one week. Christian and Kelly know most of the tunes quite well because they sang them last year in their Wee Sing America program. We are almost at the end of Volume 1 of the series with only one more week to go before it is finished. It is kind of a lousy deal, though, if you have a really cool song to sing, but cannot remember all the words because you have had to go on to learn another equally cool song. The right thing to have done would have been to have given them two weeks per song. That would give enough time to memorize the songs, but not so much time the songs do not stay fresh.

Our plan going forward is to go back through volume one a week at a time so the kids can get those songs memorized well enough to sing them in the car without having the book with them. Then, starting with Volume 2-Mammals, Ecology, and Biomes, we will give each song two weeks. We should finish Volume I and two thirds of Volume 2 this year. That will leave us the rest of Volume 2, Volume 3-The Human Body, and, if we get that far, Lyrical Earth Science Volume 1-Geology.

The funny deal is that after we bought the books, we noticed that the author is from Corvallis, the next town over from where we live and the town where I work.