Month: December 2006

We started a new read aloud book yesterday. The House of Sixty Fathers is about China in the late 1930’s shortly after Japan invaded. A young boy gets separated from his family and must find his way back to them with only his lucky pig for company. The first chapter last night got us off to a great start. Again, Kelly read the book to herself a couple of years ago when she was in fifth grade and recommended that we read it aloud now as it is part of Christian’s curriculum.

She said, “It made me cry once, but it is a great book.”

The best of the books have made us cry. I think that is a lot like life itself. The stressful situations that make us cry are the ones that make us grow. We got a nice note from a couple of our dear friends in Texas yesterday congratulating Kelly for winning the VFW essay contest. It got us to talking about our time there, how well we were treated, and how much we love the people and the time we had with them. The move to Texas was really put quite a stress on our family in many ways, but none of us would trade the experience for anything. We made some wonderful new friends and reconnected with some old ones. We felt a sense of community there that is truly rare and to be highly valued. The people there were not perfect, but they cared for each other and loved to be together. How much better can it get than that. We would not have experienced that community if we would not have gone through the stress of the move. Even the sadness of leaving at the end of our stay was a small price to pay for the kindnesses shown to us.

You know, it’s hard to write about stuff when DAD covers everything there is to know about everything so I think I’m just going to talk about school. I’m studying World History, just out of the French and American Revolutions. It is quite interesting. In fact I’m reading a book about a boy in French Canada who decides to be a “voyageur” on a canoing trip. I’m reading another book about a boy in London who discovers Methodists. Math is good. Science is interesting. Writing and Poetry are awesome. Grammar and vocabulary are good too. I got a couple of nice e-mails from my friend Alyssa who I met at convention. I haven’t seen her in a long time! I hope that they will come up to convention next year! (Oh Alyssa, my birthday is March 27 if you are reading this!) Well that’s about it.
Kelly

Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita will be here in just under three weeks. The whole family is excited for them to be here. School is out for Lorena after today for over a month. Many in the neighborhood have put up their Christmas lights and the weather has turned decidedly colder. It surely is starting to feel like the holiday season. My goal is for this year is to cook a great turkey. I think I am going to try to do one for dinner for all the grandparents on December 23, and then another for New Year’s Eve at the Joyce’s. Last time I heard, we were still invited, but who knows, they might be getting fed up with such an opinionated and obstreperous crowd as us.

Here is the letter Kelly received yesterday from the VFW.  She wrote a wonderful essay on “Citizenship” that she will read at the next meeting.  Her essay will now go on to the regional contest.

We have a bridal shower and a marriage reception tonight. Kelly has a piano festival in Salem and Christian is scheduled to solicit cans for a cub scout Christmas food drive on Saturday. Of course, we have a couple of church meetings on Sunday. Lorena has her math final on Monday. Christian has cub scout meetings on Monday and Tuesday. Kelly has piano lessons and both the kids have swim team practice on Tuesday. Meanwhile the local government school kids have another day off today. Our homeschool has currently been in session for two and half weeks longer than the government school and we started at about the same time only three months ago. Sometimes I think those kids are home more than ours; It is an amazing thing. There are some nice families in our neighborhood. Of the families that have school aged kids, both parents work in all of them. It seems to be quite a struggle for those families when the schools are closed because they depend on them as a baby-sitting service. I just do not see how some of them do it. With the low quality of education, inconvenience of so few school days in the year, and the bad socialization, a parent has to make a herculean effort and many compromises to raise children in the government school system. Doing it well must be close to impossible. Our family just could not meet those challenges and raise our kids the way we would like, but we are truly amazed by those who try.