Man, is Ubuntu cool. This morning we went down to Holly Springs to go to the public library there. Right after I got on line with my trusty Dell Inspiron 1300 running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. I cost $449 brand new. it would have cost $399 without the Windows tax. The kids checked their books in and immediately came back to where I was sitting. I had already started this post, but they had heard the newly renovated library in Apex was reopening today, so we packed up the computer and headed out. I am writing from there now. It is a very nice library, but I kind of like the Holly Springs one better because, even though it is smaller, it has a coffee bar and you can drink coffee in the library and in the little theatre there. Is that cool or what. I am liking Holly Springs more and more all the time. I am really looking forward to the next Ubuntu that is coming out in October called Gutsy Gibbon.
Year: 2007 Page 7 of 15
Over the last couple of days, we did some hard core drawing, so we are a little burnt out on that. We have a new special drawing project on which we are going to work (thanks to Trisha) that might take us awhile so please stay tuned. In the meantime, I am really starting to feel the pinch on getting ready for next years homeschool. The kids are supposed to start in on their math on Monday next, but I have done nothing yet to get ready. In addition, we have to put the finishing touches on the research reports and get them published. i am going to try to get the first week of school lined up this weekend so that I do not have it hanging over my head. All but a few items that are already on the way are on the homeschool bookshelf. We have a great new writing program for Kelly coming called Analogies and a book on logic called Fallacy Detective that I want to do with both Kelly and Christian.
Just for posterity.
Dayanita by Dad
Christian did such a great job on his Grandpa Lauro drawing yesterday, that I thought I would go ahead and put mine up today. Kelly promised she would finish hers by tonight so that we can post it tomorrow. I have mentioned this before, but these drawings are an outgrowth of our homeschool drawing program. Each summer, in the evening after I get home from work, Christian, Kelly, and I all sit around the dining room table with some classical music turned on loud enough to listen, but still talk. We work our way through a drawing course described in a book. The first two years, we used Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad. We loved that course, learned a lot, and would recommend it to anyone. Especially those with children between the ages of five and 90. This year we have moved on to a book that is teaching us how to do pencil drawn portraits. We have been a little lax this summer because of the move, but we are moving forward and getting better. Aunt Julia has identified our next book. She is taking a drawing course right now and I am not sure which book she is using, but she described a book for us that is supposed to be a classic work that teaches people how to draw. We are looking forward to it, but we want to finish this book this year and next before we get to that.
Here is Christian’s latest efforts in our class on how to draw lifelike faces. This is our fourth drawing, so we are not so good yet. Still we are making progress. See if you can guess who this is. I will post Kelly and my drawings when we finish them.
Christian’s portrait
I read Psalm 98 today. I liked it a lot. It talks about making joyful music before the Lord:
Psa 98:4 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
Psa 98:5 Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm.
Psa 98:6 With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King.
It really got me to thinking about how we pray in meeting. Many say “amen” after each and every prayer. Some say “amen” after most testimonies. We have a great meeting in our new home, but hear few amens. We miss it a lot. The angels did it:
Rev 7:11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God,
Rev 7:12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever. Amen.
I am going to keep doing it. I want my kids to know to do it.
The 2007/2008 school year will be our fifth year of homeschool and our fourth year in a row. It is still very exciting to get ready for the year even though we know the routine. Kelly’s eighth grade history, literature, and science texts have arrived from Sonlight. Christian has all his sixth grade books out of their box and on the shelf. The kids are scheduled to do a thorough cleaning and organizing of the bonus room today so that I can make a final purchase list. Today, I will try to go through and make the final purchase list to start the year. It is never the real final purchase list because I always end up buying a ton of stuff after the fact, but we are getting better.
We really like to follow the calendar and schedule of the local government schools so the Kelly and Christian can be out of school the same time as the other kids in the neighborhood. It facilitates playing while minimizing whining to do it that way. The problem here in the county to which we moved is that, this very year, the schools are switching from a typical nine month academic calendar to four or five differing year-round calendars so that government school kids in the same neighborhood do not even have the same school year. The parents are hopping mad. Enough parents pulled their kids out to homeschool or send them to private school that now there is way less budget than was expected for the government schools which has made the bureaucrats hopping mad. It is a real mess.
I looked at the statistics for the schools here at the School Matters website. They are better by just about every measure than the schools in Salem, Albany, and Corvallis. That includes reading and math proficiency as well as students per teacher. Still, it would be very difficult to put our children in these schools. At least here in North Carolina the people seem to understand that the government schools are a big problem. In Oregon, even though the best of the schools operate at a lower level than here, the people seemed to be satisfied with what their children are getting.
What we have decided to do for our school calendar is to start next week on math, then start the regular school year the third week in August. That way, we will be close to being in sync with the little neighbor girl (Kasey) who goes to a Christian school with a classical focus (grammar-logic-rhetoric). We will have to do some shuffling to make things work out, but I think we can make it work. The reason we are starting a little early on math is so that we have a good chance for Kelly to finish Algebra II and Christian to finish Algebra I by the end of the year. We are on schedule for that, but just barely, so we want to give ourselves a little buffer. We swap Algebra II with Geometry relative to the way that the subjects are traditionally taught, but it makes sense to us to do it that way for our kids and is in alignment with the program we use.
On top of all this, I read a new article from HSLDA that touches on the subject of homeschool socialization and citizenship. It deals with some common misconceptions on the subject.
Now that we are settling into our new house, I have no excuse but to go back to work on my diet. I am quite sad to have to admit that I am now down only five pounds to Bryan’s twelve. My plan is to start working out tonight and have Lorena tie me to the bedpost tonight so that when I hear Biscuitville calling me tomorrow, I cannot go. It will be like Jason and the Argonauts passing the Sirens at Sirenum scopuli.
Today, Kelly and Christian are going to have their first tennis lesson here as the first one got rained out. Tomorrow, we have our work cut out for us in that we need to buy a new mattress and box springs for our bed, start our homeschool planning, make some new stock picks for our investment program, and, hopefully, work out.
Oh, if you want to hear the song Kelly sings to which Bryan referred in a previous post, click here.
The title just about says it all. Kelly and here friend Kasey (with some help from Mom and Christian) made puff pastries with blueberries and strawberries for our company picnic today. In addition to that, Kelly has her first piano lesson with her new piano teacher, Morgan, at 11:30 this morning. The kids first tennis lesson is tomorrow. The only thing we are really missing right now is a guitar teacher for Christian. We even got the homeschool books in yesterday. Hopefully, I will be able to start getting the plan for next year put together this weekend along with some investment planning, house hunting, and a couple of hours of work on Saturday. What a week.
Christian: Check out this VERY cool smartphone.
Well, we are getting very close to selling the house! We have accepted an offer that includes a July 26 close date. We are very thankful that we can start looking for a house of our own now. I hope there is no glitch! We are going to start looking at neighborhoods and properties on Saturday with the idea that we will likely build (unless I can talk Lorena out of it!). The great part is that our real estate agent who got connected to meeting through Steve (the fireman) and Audrey from the Spokane area, has a daughter named Sarah who is a year older than Kelly and at about the same level in piano. We got connected up with her and will start piano lessons on Thursday. She gave us a clues on how to find a guitar teacher for Christian, too.
It rained like crazy yesterday which, every says means that it will be really humid for awhile. The kids first tennis lesson got canceled due to the rain. When the tennis instructor called, Lorena mentioned that Christian and Kelly are homeschooled so they set up the lessons for Fridays in the morning rather than Tuesdays at 6:00 at night. That will be better for all of us. The piano teacher was quite happy with a morning schedule, too.
Well it looks like we have a good offer on the house. If everything goes well, we should have the sale completed by the end of the month. Now our only (non-meeting) connection to the area will be one or two more visits to the orthodontist–really just an excuse to go and visit Grandpa Milo, Grandma Sarah and our friends in Albany. We loved our house and our time there, but it will be good to be able to get on with life here.
Finally, it seems likes life is taking on a semblance of normalcy. This weekend Lorena, Kelly, Christian, and I drove around a little to get our bearings, ate out a lot (too much) and just kind of relaxed. On Friday night we went to watch Kelly’s new little friend play tennis. Saturday, we started off the day at Biscuitville. Can you imagine that. They have a place here called Biscuitville. Guess what they serve–biscuits and gravy. And they are very, very good. How am I going to stand any chance at all against Bryan with a place called Biscuitville right around the corner. The worst part is that Biscuitville is a chain. We live two blocks from Biscuitville #175. All is lost. Bryan. I am now at -6. Not bad, really, for having sat in a car for almost ten days with no exercise and only fast food to eat. I am game to start weighing in again on Fridays if you are.
Next, we drove down to a little town called Holly Springs to visit their public library because the one in our town of Apex is closed for a couple more weeks for renovation. Then we drove to a mall in the town of Cary that was not so satisfying, so we drove to another one in Durham that was WAY to satisfying. It was huge and beautiful with a two story Barnes and Noble. Lorena shopped while Christian, Kelly, and I read. On Sunday, we went to dinner after meeting with a new Mexican friend from Guanajuato and our other new friends Tom and Elda. Tonight, Robert Flippo and Kevin Kellam are coming for dinner after which we will go with them to a Spanish language bible study.
It is Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah’s 54th wedding anniversary today. Congrats!
All the stuff is moved into our new house, we have a potluck tomorrow before the bible study with our new friends from meeting, Kelly has a very cool new friend named Kasey who is 12 and lives next door to us, and my work is going well. Kasey has told us that there are a ton of boys Christian’s age in the neighborhood. We are glad to be able to start moving toward a routine again rather than having everything up in the air. I am still not at the point where I can write anything even remotely interesting, but expect to be under control in a week or so as we get stuff unpacked and have more time. Thanks for all your posts over the last little while–we love reading them.
After a very nice ride all the way across the country, life is starting to move toward normalcy, kind of. We are in our new home, but without hot water until Friday. The truck is supposed to be unloaded today, so the rest of the family should be able to get on line and start reading their email sometime this evening. We had a great time in our stay at the Gabharts in Indiana–the highlight of our trip out. We hope they will come and visit us before too long. I am back at work and enjoying it very much. It is still going to take us a week or two to get settled in before I can start posting again properly. One important note, though. I feel WAY off the wagon on the diet. Bryan send me your number, but be aware that I am thinking of switching the competition from how much down we are from our starting point to how far above it we have gotten. Don’t you think that would be fair?
I am flying from North Carolina to Oregon today. I will get into Eugene a little before 7:00 PM. Dad (I really do have the best Dad in the world) is taking a crew of his old employees down to Corvallis and, with the help of two of our other friends–Darren and Spencer– will pack the truck. After Lorena picks me up, hopefully the house will be ready to go and we can drive up to Dad and Mom’s house for the night. Jim and JoAnn might even make it to the airport to see us off (and so I can get my last going away hugs). I expect to see them out in North Carolina for a visit before too long.
Tomorrow morning, we will go to Sunday morning meeting with Dad and Mom, take them out for a late Father’s Day dinner and then try to make it to Boise before we turn in for the night. Then, we will do one really long drive from Boise to somewhere around Grand Island, Nebraska on Monday night. On Tuesday, we are hoping to get to the Gabharts in Jasper, Indiana so we can spend Tuesday night, all day Wednesday, and Wednesday night with them, leaving for North Carolina right after a bible study on Thursday morning. We will stay in a hotel one night in Raleigh, then pick up the keys to our rental house in Apex on Friday morning.
We will try to keep the blog updated as we go, but it might be a little touch and go with that.
I got a super nice note from my cousin Neil whose daughter, Haley took a trip around Israel, the Greek Isles and a few other places. It got me to thinking how great of a thing it would be to be able to go over there with the family. I was there just briefly for work, but going on a tour of the historical places in the bible would be just an awesome experience. I had been reading about it my whole life, but seeing it in context is an amazing thing. I remember driving past Mount Tabor on the way to work one morning from where I was staying on top of Mt. Carmel in Haifa to a little industrial town on the outskirts of Nazareth. Our bible study a week or two before my trip had been about Deborah and Barak and their fight against Sisera near Mt. Tabor. The historical nature of the bible became a whole lot more real for me that day. The stuff written in the bible really happened in a real place at a time in the distant past. I am really glad Haley got to go do that. I hope I get to take my family someday, too.
Every day when I drive to work, I drive by either a large pond or a small lake. After a few days, I started noticing a bird that looks like a Blue Heron. It is really quite beautiful and I see it almost every day now. It reminded me of a very type of bird (if not the same) that we often saw in fields and ponds in Oregon. Then at lunch time yesterday I got in a discussion with several people about the types of wild life the have here in North Carolina. From what I can tell, they have very similar animals to those that live in Oregon. There are no Elk, Mule Deer or Antelope, but there are bear, mountain lion, white tail deer, raccoon, fox, coyote, etc., etc. There is lots and lots of forest land here, but unlike Oregon most of it is privately owned. It is a beautiful part of the world.
Kelly and I read a blog called Wittingshire. I had not read it for awhile because of my travels, but when I was browsing it to catch up a little, I found a link to a website that has made access to all of the places mentioned in the bible on Google Earth. You can click on any book in the bible and a map shows up with locater dots for all the places mentioned in that book. If you click on one of the dots, the particular chapter and verse for that spot appears. There is also a big map that allows you to click on a spot on the map without going to the book. It is VERY cool. You can find it here at the Open Bible web site.
One of my colleagues at my new job and I work talking over a cup of coffee when I got into work this morning about how all of the things to do here in North Carolina will be new to us. People who have been here for a long time think nothing of the fact that the water in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Carolina is tens of degrees warmer than the water off the Oregon coast. It is warm enough for non-polar bear tough people to swim. We have never seen any of the museums or natural attractions. We have never even been to many of the restaurants and stores. It will all be new and all be fun and exciting.