Year: 2007 Page 3 of 15

We have started another house hunting binge this afternoon.  We believe there might be an opportunity for a good deal if we are willing to finish the deal before the end of the year.  That would really be nice.  We are getting a little antsy to get into our own place.  As soon as we find something we will try to post it here.

Congrats to Cousin Trisha!  She passed her board exams for her field and there is nothing now in her way to get into grad school!

After our fellowship meeting yesterday morning, we went to a friend’s house for dinner.  On the way home after dinner, Kelly told us about a small event that she witnessed that we appreciated very much.  There was a little boy there named Warren who must be six or seven years old.  He is a very sweet boy, but he tends to ramble when he tells stories.  There were a good number of kids there, most of whom were a little older than Warren.  Kelly observed that his stories often got cut off by the other kids interrupting him.  It did not phase Warren too much… I guess he must have been used to such treatment.  By chance–there were a lot of kids there–he started telling a girl named Katie a story.  She must have been eight or nine years old.

When one of the other kids interrupted, Katie, held up here hand to stop the interruption and said “Go ahead and finish your story, Warren.”

Kelly was amazed.  I was very impressed with Katie for that act of kindness and very impressed with Kelly for taking note of that kindness and realizing that it was very special.  It was a small thing at the time, but a great benefit in the end, not only to Warren, but to Katie because things practiced become things internalized, to Kelly because that modeled behavior is something she realized was worthy of emulation, and now to me, because of the joy it brought me in hearing the story.

Well, I got up at 5:00AM this morning to go into work.  It was really not too bad.  I started early so I could get off early and be with the family.  I would really like to do some reading with the kids today.  We have not done that for a long time.  I also would like to work on our cat tower and take some movies of the process so Christian can do an Instructables or YouTube video.  He is up to over 2500 hits on his hovercraft video.  We will get better as we do more of them.  I am going to have Christian put the first video together for our KamVu program.  That little program is coming right along, but I do not have too much time to work on it.  Hopefully, we will do our first Alpha release of the program over Thanksgiving.

We are looking forward to going to the Steljis home for Thanksgiving.  It appears that there will be quite an international crowd there.  Our family will be representing Mexico, but there will be families there from Jamaica, too.  And of course, Warren (or as the kids call him – Miss Turbone) is a citizen of the world.

I had to work at my day job today (a Saturday).  It was mindless work running a bunch of samples through the machine we make to get ready for a big lab trial.  So I decided I would try to design us a logo.  You can see it at the top of this page.  Other than that, the only thing I have done since I last wrote is do a bunch of internal work on the calibration class.  I have plenty of work left to do on that, but I still think I can get it and the line tool we need to do manual measurements by the end of next weekend.  I will keep writing on the manual and Bob will keep giving me feed about both the program and the user guide.

I have to work this weekend.  I am going in at 5:00 am on Saturday morning to help get ready for a big lab trial in December for which we need some preliminary data.  I hope to be home by 11:00 am or so.  Maybe we can go to a museum Saturday afternoon.  I need the weekend to get caught up on some homeschool correcting, and I hope to work some on my open source software project, too.  It would also be fun to go look at a house or two with Lorena.  It will be busy weekend.

October was a very good month for us in homeschool. It was a little bit disorganized because I have continued to stay very busy at work and so we have had to do some correction and make-up teaching on the weekends. Still, we have made progress and have only had to make minor adjustments in our schedule for one special event that turned into a great learning experience for the kids. One of our good friends teaches Dental Hygiene classes at a community college several hours from here. Her kids had a day off so their whole family came down to visit us for the day. During the visit, our friend Terrie, gave the kids a stellar class on the human skull. She brought a model of a skull, they did worksheets, and all the kids, hers and ours, learned a TON. We appreciated her efforts in this very much. Now on to our update…

Math
Kelly: In her second week of Intermediate Algebra (Algebra II) this week.
Christian: Starting his third week of Elementary Algebra (Algebra I) this week.

English Grammar, Vocabulary, and Writing
Kelly: Teaching Terrific Writing is a great learning tool for Kelly. She is about half way done now. She continues to work in Wordly Wise 6.
Christian: Three-quarters of the way through the last book of the Easy Grammar series. Started Wordly Wise 6.
Future: We are still planning to start in on WriteShop when Kelly finishes Teaching Terrific Writing and when Christian finishes the last Easy Grammar book.

History and Literature
Kelly: Continues the first year of Sonlight’s two year survey of American history (with accompanying literature).
Christian: Continues the first year of Sonlight’s two year survey of World history (with accompanying literature).
Note: Because of my work load, Kelly and Christian are moving forward on the history book reading together. Kelly reads the history books while Christian draws in the time line book.

Science
Kelly: Physical Science: Jay L. Wiles’ physical science book.
Christian: General Science: This is first year in Jay L. Wiles stellar science education series.
Both: Lyrical Life Science II
Notes: We are continually astounded with how good these books are. We have decided that Kelly will keep going on Science during the summer to do three years in two. The science is the only thing she would have left to complete high school after her sophomore year. We do not want her to be stuck in homeschool a whole extra year just for one subject, so we are going to push ahead in that area.

Bible memorization
Kelly: Will continue memorizing Matthew 5 & 6 through Christmas.
Christian: Will continue memorizing Matthew 5 through Christmas.
Note: We have decided to give them a little more time in this area.

Handwriting
Christian: A Reason for Handwriting F

Computer programming
Christian: C# Game Programming

Spanish
Both the kids are on course to finish the first year of Rosetta Stone Spanish and start the second year by Christmas. We have bumped this up a little so the kids are doing 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes per day. We would really like to get them through this and on to a third language.

Music
Kelly: Kelly is doing quite well with her new teacher. Her personality can be a little bit of a challenge, but all-in-all she is learning a lot, both with playing the piano and dealing with voluble people.
Christian: Guitar goes well. Christian is growing so much, the teacher thinks he will need a full size guitar soon.

We were really loaded up with trick or treaters last night. I bet at least fifty people came by. It was very fun. The kids got all dressed up. Christian’s costume was a particular big hit. He dressed up as a mail box. He even has a better plan for next year. I will put a picture up here in a little bit.

We had a great evening yesterday with the Steljis family over from Charlotte. It turns out we read the same kinds of books and have a lot in common. The kids played games, carved pumpkins, rode the hovercraft, and generally just had a great time. It was a beautiful fall evening for that sort of thing–not so hot that it was uncomfortable to be outside, but warm enough to get by with just a sweater. We are very much looking forward to Thanksgiving with them later this month. Our friend Warren should be there, too!

Our good friends from the Charlotte area are coming for a visit.  John and Terrie and their three kids.  It should be a lot of fun.  Kelly and Christian want to go ice skating or something like that, but it will all be decided when the everyone is together.  I know the boys want to try out the hovercraft and Christian will want to show everyone his new cat tower project.  I hope to get there in time to have dinner with everyone before the return home.  We are very much looking forward to having them.

Last night Kelly and Christian left a Harvest package on our neighbor, Kasey’s front door step.  They got much joy out of doing that.  We also found that our bible study is going to be switched from Wednesday night to Thursday night, so we they will be able to be with Kasey for their big party.  I need to remind them to let Kasey now they will be there!

We fouled up pretty bad on the Sunday, but other than that, we had a very nice weekend!  We arrived at the Sunday morning fellowship meeting at 10:15, but no one was there.  Lorena told me she had received a call from one of our friends to let us know that the time was changing this weekend.  We just assumed that we were an hour early, so we went down to MacDonald’s and ate one of those little apple pies, waited for an hour and went back to meeting.  When we got there, we could see we had missed the meeting!!!  So we went home and had our own little Bible study… it is never as good when it works out that way, but that is how it happened.  We will be ready for next weekend.  Especially with an extra hour of sleep.

Christian and I worked on our big cat tower project.  It is VERY, VERY cool.  We have the first two steps up to the tower wrapped with rope and bolted to the base.  The next step will be to get the other three steps done and then start in on the main tower.  Christian is going to document the whole thing on his NerdHow blog.

Last night Kelly and I spent a few minutes together to help her get the hang of her knitting a little better.  It is not that difficult to knit, but is difficult to knit well until you have practiced a little.  She and I are going to sit together about fifteen minutes per night while she gets the hang of it.  We kind of gave up on the fuzzy yarn for awhile, but it is pretty hard to work with while we are learning.  In the meantime, Christian is trying to figure out how to pearl.  It looks like we are in for a rainy weekend, so it will be the perfect time to keep banging away at our knitting.

Last night we did another chapter in our Fallacy Detective book.  It really is turning into a pretty good book now that we have gotten past the introduction.  There appeared to be a little bit of that insecure homeschool attitude thing going on there that we fight so hard against in our own homeschool program.  So far, we have been through red herrings, ad hominem attacks, and genetic fallacies.  We certainly are learning the fallacies and the practice sections at the end of each chapter reinforce what we learned before.

Yesterday the kids finished their homework by about 2:00 PM.  Then, while Christian was at his guitar lessons, Lorena bought a bunch of knitting supplies.  Christian is pretty much the veteran knitter in the crew as he did a scarf when we last went through a knitting phase that spanned our Sherwood and Albany houses.  Kelly is coming on fast now.  She cast on a scarf and is knitting like a mad woman.  Kelly got some VERY cool fuzzy yarn that will make an awesome scarf.  Christian is still deciding what he wants to make.  He has black yarn and is thinking of a ribbed sweater vest.  I think he will have to learn some new techniques to be able to do that.  Lorena is going to give it a go, too.  If I were not totally tied up with my KamVu project, I would be WAY into this right now.  I really plan to get back to knitting as soon as I can.  Kelly and Christian both still have the scarves I knit for them.  There was a major feeling of accomplishment with all that.  I am very much looking forward to seeing all three of their efforts.

Our Wednesday night bible study is in Revelation.  It is very, very interesting.  I had always known that in the early chapters, Jesus gave advise to the churches in Asia.  I even knew that he praised the churches for a number of things, but had something against most of the churches.  I even remember what some of those things were:  not losing one’s first love, not being lukewarm, etc.  It was very interesting when I read the second chapter to review some of those things he praised the churches for hating.  Also, it was interesting how he castigated them for NOT hating some things.  The specifics of those things was very interesting.  It really is good to hate for the right reasons.

Yesterday, my buddy John gave us a VERY cool soda bottle.  It has a marble in the top and has a very cool motif.  Ours was a nice pink color.  I took it home to Christian to see whether he could figure out how to open it, but when Lorena and Kelly saw it, it looked so cool they did not want to wreck it.  Is that not how it always works.  Boys ARE different from girls.

Very, very cool, but Mom would kill us if we tried it. Click here.

We had a very nice weekend even though I had to work during much of it. On Saturday the kids went about an hour North of where we live to a get-together. Kelly and Christian both did something they had never done before. They rode four-wheelers and had just a great time.

I am still at it. I got up at 4:Something this morning to come in with the idea that if I can get enough done, maybe I will be able to have half a day with the kids tomorrow morning. We are making good progress, but the deadlines are arriving fast. The only alternative is to work hard and enjoy the challenge.

I am going to be stuck (I say stuck, but I love my work) working some long hours over the next week or so. We are trying to get our machine to work at a certain level, we have a very tight schedule, and there is just a lot to do. I might be a little sparse in my posting for awhile, but I will try to hit the high points. I think, I will be back on track in early November.

I am in one of those stages at work where I will have to be burning the midnight oil again for awhile. I really do not mind doing that every now and then–really, I enjoy sinking my teeth into a hard problem. If it stretches out too much, then one burns out, but I am hoping this will not be so bad. I have been working hard on some Open Source programs that are really very rewarding for me. I have done that sort of thing before, but I have never gotten as far as where I am now. It would be great to be able to dedicate more time to this, but it is pretty hard to do when I have so much to do at work coupled with the normal homeschool workload. Nevertheless, it is all very interesting and I plan to keep plugging forward on it. I am still several months away from being able to put even the alpha version of the program out for public consumption, but things are starting to take form. As soon as it is ready, I will let people here know where it is.