It was a very busy but rewarding weekend this weekend. We spent most of our time hanging out with Kelly’s friend Skylar. When we were not doing that, we worked on the yard. We got the first load of bark dust down and Lorena trimmed the edge of the lawn. Tonight we will put another load of bark dust down.
Month: April 2007 Page 1 of 2
For a bunch or reasons, I was unable to make a stock pick in April, but that being said, we are still doing fairly well with the first three months of picks. I hope to be able to make another couple of picks in May. Here is a graph of how well I am doing up so far against the S&P 500:
Note to Bryan: I need your status tomorrow!
Lorena and Christian only spent a few minutes at the Boy Scout meeting last night because it turned out to be mostly an award ceremony for the older boys. While they were gone, Kelly and I had a great talk. We listened to music on Pandora while she wrote a letter to one of the workers and I corrected homeschool work. Note to Kelly: Do not forget to mail the letter you wrote! We are still very busy with finishing up our homeschool year and plan to be so for a few more weeks.
It is about the time of year when we need to start thinking about working in our garden again. We need to put in a few patio bricks, haul in some dirt for the back patio planter, put down some plastic and bark dust, and I am sure we will find a few other projects, too. Our little willow tree has its summer leaves already and the maples around the property are really starting to come in now, so the time to enjoy working outside has finally arrived. It is especially evident when we look at Lorena’s tulips:
Lorena’s purple tulips
Pink tulips on the back patio
We had a birthday dinner for our favorite cousin, Tim Mecum on Sunday between meetings here are a couple of pictures from that fine event.
Tim and Dad with the new zebra print throw, Laurel bought for him on his birthday.
Lorena and our dear friend Laurel talking in the Kitchen after dinner.
We are all pretty excited around our household because we had a good weekend. The kids played outside when the weather was nice, went swimming at the Corvallis pool, we drew, did some homeschool, and, to top it off, we had Laurel Nelson and Tim Mecum over to celebrate Tim’s birthday between meetings on Sunday. Christian is going to send some pictures to me so we can post them up here. The really good part of the weekend is that we are starting to get our second wind on the large amount of homeschool work we have to do between now and the end of the May. The kids are starting this mornings work with renewed vigor that should manifest itself in great year-end reports as well as a strong finish in math.
Drawing order: Christian, Kelly, Dad
Yesterday, we started our new art program and we worked hard on math catchup. My weight is starting back down. Slowly. I hope Bryan’s lead is not insurmountable now. I can only hope for a relapse.
Last year, Christian drew portraits of some of the people on whom he wrote his report on the internal combustion engine. This year, he wants to do it again, but with some skills we hope to pick up with our new art program, Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces by Carrie Stuart Parks. There are four weeks left before the reports are due and we have all the materials to start our work on this, but the homeschool work load is heavy enough that it will take a big effort to make enough time to learn the new techniques in time to include the new style drawings in the reports. I have told the kids that we can work on the drawing class on weekends and in the evening when I get home from work if, and only if, all of the homework is complete. I am really looking forward to this and hope we can make enough progress to influence the quality of the report drawings, but will be checking the lists carefully to assure everything is complete before we jump into any drawing lesson. It is very important not to start something new if it will cause us not to finish our school year well.
Right now, we are in a part of our homeschool year where we need to really knuckle down and do some hard work. It is a little deceptive because we have already finished more than a year worth of grammar and vocabulary, the nationally normed standardized tests are complete, Christian has finished his logic and is in his last week of hand writing, spelling has been paused until next year, Piano Festival is over for Kelly and she is doing much less letter and story writing, and there much is less running around to do since Lorena decided to wait until the fall to take another class. On the surface, there is less scheduled activity, but it is hard to study when the sun is shining. That is all mitigated by one of the prime goals of the Chapman homeschool and that is to complete everything well and complete it on time so we can take the whole summer off without any though of school at all.
To finish well, there is a ton of meticulous work required to write the annual research reports. In their Algebra studies, both Kelly and Christian are in critical sections that will provide a base for much of their future classes, there is a lot important material in their literature and history. We had a good discussion about it all last night and we are all going to work hard to get everything done well so we can go to Mexico with a clear conscience.
Kelly made twenty dollars yesterday at her baby-sitting job. Very impressive. She was the only one there and they had to go a little bit long. She was very happy. We are still in catch-up mode after a very busy week last week. There were recitals and parties and all the normal stuff, too, so we are getting behind on math and the all important annual research reports. I think we can be completely caught up if we all work hard for the rest of the week.
Christian and I went to Staples yesterday afternoon and picked up most of the materials we will need for our summer drawing class. It was really fun. We got an electric eraser, drawing books, lead holders (not to be confused with mechanical pencils), smudging equipment, rulers, etc. I think the only thing we have left are some additional types of pencil lead and an erasing shield. Best of all, though, is the really cool bag we got so we can keep everything together. We are excited to get started. I think we will start on Thursday if we can get caught back up on our homeschool work.
Update: I did not have enough money to do an April stock pick, but should be able to do one next month. In the meantime, here are my results so far. The green line shows my picks. The blue line shows an equal amount of the S&P 500.
On tax day, it is good to try to think of something else. This weekend, Kelly had seven girls over for a great thirteenth birthday party. Aunt Julia and Cousin Kylee came to run the show. One of the girls could not get their until an hour after the party started, so handsome 21 year old cousin Charlie filled in as Stella. He was HUGE hit. The game was pretty scripted, but it was really good for a first time party. Next time, they will get one for older kids that is still scripted, but a little less so. Everyone came dressed and got into acting their part. That night, everyone stayed up until 2:30 in the morning, eating and giggling.
On Saturday, Christian and I ran down to the bookstore to try to find a good drawing book for the summer. We have all wanted to be able to draw portraits, so we got one titled Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces by Carrie Stuart Parks. Maybe our buddy Dellas will be able to come and draw with us using this book some day. This really takes it to a whole new level. The lady that wrote the book draws sketches of suspects for the police and teaches policemen and others how to do the same. It looks like an AWESOME book. We will try to go through that book this summer as our “sitting and drawing together in the afternoon” text. It is a much higher level book than the Draw Squad book that used last summer and loved so much, but I think we are ready.
On Sunday between meetings, the two new girls in the neighborhood came over to play kick ball with Kelly, Christian, Hannah, Jacob, and Haley. I think they will be a great addition to the neighborhood just in time for the summer. The lawn is in better shape than ever and will be perfect for games, picnics, camping out, and all that sort of stuff.
I gained a ton of weight, but am working valiantly to get it off before weigh-in day on Friday.
That business trip hurt me…
Kelly and Christian took the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) over the last three days at Santiam Christian School in Adair Village. They really enjoy the testing and have done quite well at it. This is the first year we have to turn the test in to the Educational Service District (ESD) office. It is very frustrating to have to do that as we cannot imagine anyone there has the ability to interpret the results of those tests better than us. We are the ones providing the instruction to the children and have a better understanding of their needs and abilities than anyone at the ESD. In general, I would imagine that we are more qualified than them to evaluate that significance of the statistical test results, too, in as much as statistical analysis is one of the major areas of both my academic training and daily work. If the ESD did not have such an abysmal record of assuring the children under their charge were adequately educated, I might feel a little better about all of this. At any rate, Kelly and Christian did great and it does not do a whole lot of good to rage against the machine.
That is all today.
…but I haven’t heard from Bryan yet.
Yesterday, I found out we are supposed to have a three day weekend this weekend for Good Friday. I have never before been at a place that gave Good Friday off. It really is a great time for a three day weekend. I would like to say that I was disappointed that I had not had more time to plan, but it will be nice to be at home and get some things finished. The government schools will not be out, so we have decided to go ahead and do the homeschool while I get caught up on a few things. Maybe we will run over to the coast on Friday to have some place to drive.
I found a link on Linux Online this morning to a blog post titled 11 Things You Haven’t Seen Yet in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. I have been running the Beta version of Feisty for a little over a week now on both a laptop (Dell Inspiron 1300) and an older Dell desktop. I knew I liked it a lot. The wireless stuff all seems to work a lot better, there is continued improvement in the appearance and usability of the desktop, etc., etc. What I did not know is there are a bunch of tools under the hood that make things easier to set up that used to be the biggest impediment to using Linux. This is a HUGE step for people like me. When I set Linux up for myself, I really do not mind spending the time to figure out how to get the sound, wireless, video playback, webcam, networking, and all that other stuff going.
The problem is that I really would like to get other people up and going, too, but I just did not have the time to get everything configured and running for so many different sets of hardware. I have been helping people for years with their Windows systems. I am the main computer “guru” for quite a few assorted grandmas, liberal arts majors, and computer challenged relatives. The worst of these is my father and mother-in-law in Mexico. They have three sons with engineering degrees who work as computer technical resources for Oracle, Symantec, and a large manufacturing firm with hundreds, if not thousands, of PC’s. All three of them live in a Windows world, but cannot seem to find the time to keep their Mother’s computer going. She lives within a mile of one of them and within ten miles of the other two. This is a problem because my wife uses Skype to talk to her mother. We live in the States, so when the computer is not working, the phone bills go way up.
Several things are happening that make Linux a more viable option now. First and foremost, like I described in the first paragraph, it is getting easier to set up and use. Second, I am learning more about using VNC to handle many of the administration tasks required to keep a remote system running. Third, my brothers-in-law, are getting pressure from their work to come up to speed on Linux. I do not know whether that is going to help much. They seem to be able to get to their mother’s house for carne asada after church on Sunday, but they are next to useless at spending the five minutes to keep their mother’s Windows computer running while they are there. On the other hand, nothing from Microsoft has been very interesting or fun to work on for years. I have installed Linux down there a few times before. I tried Mandrake (now Mandriva), Red Hat and then one of the Fedoras, and then one of the earlier Ubuntu’s, but they were pretty impossible to keep going from afar.
We are going down for a visit again in June. I think Feisty has improved to the point where I am willing to try one more time. The applications that have to work for them are Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird, and a photo downloading and viewing program for my Father-in-law’s digital camera. You would think this would be a no-brainer, but I have lowered my expectations dramatically over the years. In the past, the longest any computer has stayed running in their household after I left was a Windows XP computer that lasted for about three weeks. If I am able to set the computer up and keep it running for them for a month after we leave, I will consider this effort a huge success. I will also know that Vista is in really big trouble.
Kelly and Christian are working hard on their research reports now. They are both in the data gathering stage which has been going on for a couple of weeks and will continue through the end of next hear. Christian is doing a report on rockets and Kelly is doing a report on cats. We have been working on skills, tools, and techniques for report writing as much as on content for the last three years. The reports are getting better and better each year, so next year, we will start transitioning from tools and techniques to content with specific enough report topics to require additional library work. We might even try to do a little original research through interviews and or experiments. The kids will continue to be more and more responsible for their own proofreading and editing as well as layout and artwork. There work on Kaktus Kids has helped them tremendously in that area.