Year: 2006 Page 11 of 15

It is going to be nice when our remodel of the kitchen is finished and school is out for the summer. My desire is to do some more serious homeschool and Linux blogging, but I have not been able to find the time, lately. There is time to write or to investigate, but not to do both. I hope that some of my future topics include the Teaching Textbooks math program we just got for Kelly. She has only done a couple of lessons so far, but she has enjoyed them thoroughly. We will probably have both Kelly and Christian do the program next year. In addition to that, I want to do a good review of the new Ubuntu that is coming out this fall for how well it serves us in our homeschool. We have been using Ubuntu for about a year and a half now for homeschool and it is great.

The kids are now using OpenOffice.org Write for doing their annual research reports. This year, they are using the automatic table of contents generator which works very nicely. Next year, Kelly will be doing either footnotes or endnotes that we hope to accomodate with the program. We already use OpenOffice.org Calc to organize our weekly schedule. I might take a look at one of the Calendar applications like Sunbird or Lightning, but the Calc method has worked so well that there is no significant reason to change at this point.

The hardwood floor and cabinet bases are now installed in the kitchen. The stove top should arrive early this morning followed by the quartz counter top people so they can take some measurements. There is still a lot to do on both the inside and the outside before it will all be finished. The porch, the fence, the upstairs window, several yards of concrete porch and patio, more hardwood floor and hardwood floor finishing, the rest of the new appliances, counter top installation, and the above the counter cabinets as well as a bunch of stuff I am sure I am forgetting still need to be installed.

We went to dinner at Ryan and Jeannie Harris’ house after work last night.  It was really nice because the kitchen iss all torn up at our house.  Jim and Dana Hamilton were there with their little son, Reese.  Kelly and Christian were sad because they thought there would be no kids there, but a two year old is much better than nothing.  Especially a cute one like Reese.  We had a great time and ate some great food.

I got a small job at the neighbor’s watering their plants for a week while they are gone to Cancun. That and my new mathematics program will keep me busy. The new program is called Teaching Textbooks and it includes a textbook, CD-roms that are really cool because it has a teacher that explains everything that is in the textbook really well, correction CDs that also have a teacher that explains the problem to me, and a teacher’s guide. I already have done the first lesson. Today I accidentaly got up almost a HALF HOUR late! (tee hee) so I am going to try and get everything done quickly. Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing! Dad talked to the Larsons last night and they said that they were planning on homeschooling their twins David and Daniel. They will be using Sonlight Core 6 next year. I have almost finished that and will go on to Sonlight Core 7 (which is World History Part 2) next year! Christian will be using Sonlight Core 5, the same one that I used when we first started with homeschool.

On Saturday morning, Christian and I walked up to Ryan Harris’ house to help him a little bit with the pouring of his new sidewalk.  After that, we went home and spent most of the day spreading bark dust.  Christian was not really feeling to well; I think there is some kind of bug going around because Kelly felt the same way last week.  Progress continues on the house and it is really fun to watch.  In addition, the kids are making progress on their annual research reports.  I will mail them out or post them here as soon as they are finished.

Yesterday everyone in Mexico celebrated Mother’s Day. We are supposed to do it on Sunday buuuut… Mom wants flowers but since we are getting a remodel Dad says that she can’t get her anything for five more years.(: Thanks to everyone in Mexico who reads this blog. (Gracias a todos en Mexico que leen mi blog.) I thought no one read it. Sorry it’s not in Spanish. Mi espaniol no esta muy bien pero estoy trabajando en eso. Adios!

The kitchen is all torn up with most of the electricity turned off for the remodel, so we got some Kentucky Fried Chicken and ate dinner up in the bonus room when Joe Layman and Dellas Waldo came over last night.  We had a great time.  The drywall is in place and the painting should happen today.  On Monday, the hardwood will go into the kitchen with the cabinets arriving there on Tuesday and the stovetop early Wednesday morning so the measurements can be taken for the quartz counter top on Wednesday at 9:00 AM.  It is a little bit of a mess, but it surely is fun to watch the progress.  We are still taking pictures and still planning to post them when we get a little time.

Christian has been taking some pictures of our home as it is being remodeled.  I have not yet showed Kelly or Christian how to prepare and upload photos to our website.  I need to do that and believe tonight would be a good night to start.

The house is coming along great.  The foundation for the little addition is in along with the walls and roof for that part of the house.  I think the next thing that will happen is the knocking out of the inner walls and the preparation of everything inside so the cabinet maker can come and install the cabinets.  Christian will take more pictures of that as we go along so it will be quite nice for all of us if both Kelly and Christian learn how to post them.

Marloncito

That’s our cousin Marloncito. I’m trying out posting up pictures. They are working very hard on the house now. The following is his big brother Lynncito.

Kelly is writing her annual research reports on the ancient pyramids of Egypt and Latin America.  Christian is writing his report on the internal combustion engine.  I will post them here as soon as they are finished.  They are shaping up to be even better than last year.  I talked to their uncle Lauro last night and he is quite excited to read the reports.  It was very neat that Lauro’s daughter, Dayanita is taking swimming lessons so that when we all get together again, all the cousins can have a great time swimming.  Kelly and Christian like that very much!

Saturday we gave back Trapito the Attack Dog back to our neighbor’s grandma. It was quite sad, but Dad says that we might get another one when the remodel is over or something like that. My birthday party was great! We stayed up till two and then the next morning I was sick with allergies (and I was tired) so they played hospital with me. Three girls couldn’t stay the night. I want to have a pool party this summer with the same group of friends. The construction group worked all day yesterday and I think they will today too. Mr. and Mrs. Waldo came over yesterday and Dad helped them pick out a computer. I don’t know if Dad has posted any pictures of Trapito or my party in the Gallery yet.

I have been 12 for one month now. Tommorow is my birthday party! Yesterday we went to meeting with the Myers and we heard that there is going to be a potluck for the whole field on Cindo De Mayo. The construction kids started digging holes in our yard for starting the remodel. Trappy is running around everywhere! We keep him outside in his doggy cage and right now he is sleeping. He is so cute! Trappy went to the bathroom outside today (good). We went swimming yesterday. It is going well, Mom might put us in swimteam.
Sorry for the haste in writing this. I will write more (and better) later. Ciao

Yesterday, Mark started the remodel of our house.  It will be great when it is finished and the process will be fun to watch, but I expect the household to be quite chaotic.  Especially when the new puppy is added to the mix.

As Dad said, we got a nice widdle puppy named Trapito (or Trappy for you English speaking people) Our neighbors grandma who lives on the next street bought him but unfortunately for her Grandpa doesn’t like dogs. She gave him to the neighbor kids but they already have a whole bunch of fish, a lizard, a cat and a dog (they also used to have about 6 birds, more cats, and a guinea pig) They couldn’t keep him so they showed Trappy to us and (of course) we wanted him.

My birthday party is this week and I am inviting the neighbor girl, a girl I met in government school, and the homeschool gang. It is a scrap booking party and it is also a sleepover. Dad and Christian will be well out of the area once the party starts (or so Dad says) and I can’t wait, but I guess Christian can.(:

We were given a dog this weekend.  He is a funny, funny little dog, half Shih Tsu, half Yorkshire Terrier.  He is not yappy and he is paper trained.  What a deal!  Grandma Sarah came over and told us we should call him Ragg Mopp, so we went ahead and named him Trapito which means rag in Spanish.  We are enjoying him very much.  I try to put up some pictures as soon as I can.

I have to go to Livermore, California for a few days.  I am sure the family will feel much suffer now that we have an attack dog in the house.

Our friends Joe Layman and Dellis Waldo are coming to stay with us for the weekend.  We will have a nice dinner tonight.  Joe really likes to eat tacos or burritos and salsa, so I am sure that is what we will have.  We have some paperwork left before we can start on the remodel of the house, but we are getting closer to finishing that up.  I will try to get a series of before and after pictures going.  Our good neighbors across the street have put up a basketball hoop that the kids have been using with great joy.  I do not think we will have any basketball stars, but we might have some lively neighborhood basketball fun.

Things are just now starting to smooth out a little again here in Oregon.  It is a little tough to get stuff back under control after having made a big move.  Add that to the fact that we moved in the middle of tax season, the kids had to take the Stanford Achievement Test (three days), we are doing a major remodel, and I had to travel to Toronto for a week and it has made for a relatively chaotic April.  We are starting to get caught up on a few things, but we have more coming up–guests at the house for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, Kelly’s delayed birthday sleepover with eight girls, the need to communicate better with our friends in Texas after their incredible hospitality during our too short, three month stay in Texas, etc. etc.

That all being said, Kelly and Christian are making great progress on their annual research reports, blasting away at their math and Spanish, back into swimming and music lessons, and, very importantly, integrated back into the neighborhood kid society.

Yesterday was full of planning and preparation.  We found Christian a guitar instructor.  Christian is interested in learning how to play flamenco and classical guitar.  I hope this guy is not too rock and roll oriented for him.  We can try it out for the rest of the school year and then change if necessary, but after having discussed it at length, I think it might be good.  Both Christian and Kelly got back into swimming lessons yesterday and Kelly has her first lesson today with Mrs. Hickenlooper today, so we are pretty much back into the swing of things for homeschool now.

Yesterday morning, the remodellers came by to measure stuff so we can get an idea how much it will cost us to do all the work we want.  I do not know whether we will be able to do it yet, but Lorena and I are very hopeful.

I found out yesterday that I will need to go up to Canada for a week, next week.  That is really a good time for me to go because the kids will be taking their Stanford Acheivement Tests at that time.  I will keep them going with math, reading, science, and their research reports, but then I will have a ton of correcting to do when I get home.  Kelly will start her piano again tomorrow with Mrs. Jill Hickenlooper out in Jefferson.  What a great piano teacher!  I will start trying to find a guitar teacher for Christian today.  Jill gave us a place to call that might be able to help us in our search.  Also, we are going to try to get the kids back into swimming lessons for this month so they can get some more exercise.

We are now back in Oregon, I am back at my old job at ATS and everything is moving toward normalcy.  We had a great trip across the country from Texas.  We spent a lot of that time remembering our wonderful friends there.  We met some truly incredible people with whom we plan to stay in close touch.  We should finally get phone and internet service at home today, so we will be able to start calling and writing everyone to check in.  Kelly and Christian started homeschool again yesterday.  We will be full speed ahead by mid-week.  They will take their nationally normed Stanford Acheivement Tests next week.  I hope these test are more comprehensive than the California Acheivement tests.  Hopefully, my posting will be more regular again, from here forward, too.