Year: 2007 Page 9 of 15

Dad, some of my math is uncorrected. I went through it all this night. Here is a list of what I have done:

60 Corrected

61 Done

62 Done

63 Corrected

64 Done

65 Corrected

66 Corrected

67 Corrected*

68 Done

69 Corrected

70 Done

71 Done

72 Corrected

73 Corrected

74 Corrected

75 Corrected

76 Never corrected by you

77 Never corrected by you

78 Never corrected by you

79 To be corrected**

80 To be corrected**

*On 67, I only found one page. Evedently, It looks like I was not concentrating or something because I got a lot wrong on that lesson set. But luckily, before losing the other page, I corrected them. It is the first page, and it is awefully crammed, so the second page would not have very much in it anyway. I will just do it over copying my corrections and correct answers over.

** I will do these right now.

I also have some 10 problems left in my Africa which I will do now as well

We just got a brand new version of our development system for Kaktus Kids, so anticipate higher quality in these next issues. The Super Summer issue will be bigger than all of the regular issues which is very fun! If you have any cool material for our magazine, don’t hesitate to send it in soon! We hope you liked our last Kaktus Kids. We REALLY appreciate feedback. It makes us more excited for our next issues! 🙂 Bye for now!

Kaktus Kids Staff

Just a short post to let you all know I made it to Jasper, Indiana.  I ate dinner and went to gospel meeting with our wonderful friends Eric and Audrey last night, then went stayed the night.  They have a beautiful place in the country.  All four of their children are just simple exceptional homeschool kids.  The two oldest, Adie and Conrad, write wonderful poetry.  I am dying for them all to get reacquainted with Kelly and Christian and maybe even contribute to the Kaktus Kids magazine!  I will write more when I get the chance.

ThelLast post was one of my posts from before.

We are basically on the home stretch with home school. Christian and I spoke with the Larsons today and it seems that they are finishing up too. They are planning on finishing their reports today and called to ask if they could borrow one of Christian’s claymation movies for Daniel’s report on clay animation. Anyway, here is a poem that I wrote yesterday for school:

The Man in the Purple Cowboy Hat

by Kelly Chapman

There was a man, he had a shop
he sold old chairs and bottles of pop
he sold blonde wigs, he sold pig fat
and he wore a purple cowboy hat

he sold big pots, he sold small pans
he sold rubber gloves to cover your hands
he sold a thesaurus in the shape of a cat
and he wore a purple cowboy hat

he sold roof shingles, he sold bottlecaps
he sold beach bags and beat up maps
he sold a bird cage and a welcome mat
and he wore a purple cowboy hat

he sold escargot (it was alive)
he sold spam and an old bee hive
there was a big box, where he sat
and fiddled with the ribbon on his cowboy hat

he talked to me, most every day
whenever I went out to play
he looked up, smiled, gave me a pat
and tipped up his purple cowboy hat

“Howdy Joe!” he says to me
and he looks right happy, as pleased as can be
“Would you like an old chair or a welcome mat?”
he asked ‘neath his purple cowboy hat

“How ’bout a beach bag, for when it gets hot?”
“or a nice and cool bottle of pop?”
“or maybe a book in the shape of a cat?”
said the man with the purple cowboy hat.

“No thanks Mr. Maloney.” I reply
“I just dropped in to say hi”
“Maybe next time, now how about that?”
and he smiles and nods ‘neath his cowboy hat.

Dad left at 4:00 AM this morning, his pickup crammed full with luggage and books on tape.  He met with Craig Jacobsen at 10:00 AM in LaGrande (a wonderful little town) and should be happily on his way to Ontario (?) by now.  We are bumbling about on our last week of homeschool and working hard on our Annual Research Reports for 2007.  Boy, has this year gone by quickly or what?  It has been more than a year since we left Texas and now we are leaving Oregon for North Carolina!  Mom is thinking about posting up on the blog now!  That is exciting!  And we finished another perfect issue of Kaktus Kids!  Speaking of Kaktus Kids, when you post a comment up on the Kaktus Kids post, it is much like giving us a tip.  We appreciate it because we need the feedback. 😉  During the weeks that Dad is gone, Christian and I will be swimming a lot more.  Swimming provides much more exercise than  tennis anyway. 

Today is my last day of work in Corvallis.  I had a very nice talk with the President of the North American division of the company yesterday and will be cleaning out my desk today.  It was nice to know that I have not closed any doors with my current company.  We have had our house in Albany for coming up on four years now and we have had some good times in this part of the world.  I ran over to Jim and JoAnn’s house yesterday afternoon to give them a personal good bye and we had a nice talk.  I expect that they will come out to North Carolina some day before too long to visit us.  I know Trisha is coming out and I bet we would not have to talk to hard to get Aunt Carolyn to come along, too.  Now Uncle Merle might be a little work, but I bet we might even get him out there some day if we promise him a visit to the NRA again.  We got a nice letter from Chet and Kayleen in Australia with the scope on the Raleigh-Durham area where we will be living.  Life will be topsy-turvy for a little while, but I expect that we should be all under control by the time school starts again next fall.

Check out the latest and greatest Kaktus Kids ‘zine! Read it and chuckle in your superior way if you are adults or send it to the kids who matter in your life! Don’t forget to send in a picture or poem or a piece of pumpkin pie! In this issue we have a cool poem by one of our dear Texas friends, a cool Chinese rice bowl recipe, how to draw Kaktus Komix characters, funny photos, a story preview, and much much more! Be sure to check it out!

Click here to read
This is a 6MByte PDF

In other news (actually the same news)…

if you read this blog (which your probably do) y’all know that we are moving! Perhaps you have done some extensive research on some aspect of our move and, if in fact you DO read this blog, you know that we will be traveling for at least 10 hours a day in a minivan cram packed with cats, energy bars, books on tape AAAAAND, probably, the laptop, then you will almost certainly come to the conclusion that the editor and reporter (ahem, Kelly and Christian) will have tons of time to work on the way cool summer issue of Kaktus Kids! Be expecting a biiiiig issue everyone! Just in case we run out of material though, it wouldn’t hurt to send us a little poem or a story or a picture or two… 🙂

We are in the process of moving from the west coast to the east coast–Oregon to North Carolina.  Last night was our last Wednesday night bible study at Truman and Elinore, our Alaskan friends’ house.  The study was James 1 and the theme of the evening was patience.  We have loved being in that meeting for the short time it has been there and it could not have ended with a nicer meeting.  After the meeting, Truman and Elinore explained how much they loved doing cross-country drives.  It was a nostalgic moment because Elinore is now in a wheelchair and it makes those kind of trips very difficult.  They are amazing people nonetheless.  Even though they do not do cross country drives anymore, they go to plays, concerts, dinners, visits, shopping, site-seeing, and a plethora of other engagements.  And the best part about them is they are ALWAYS cheerful.  What a lesson for my family.  What a lesson for me.

I am really looking forward to my drive across the country now.

The older I get, the more I realize how important it is to finish things well.  As I finish my work here in Corvallis, I feel the need and am making the effort to leave my current work so that those who follow me will have the very best opportunity for success.  My colleague, Ann, who will leave here position doing the same thing as I, but a week later, is doing a stellar job of exactly that.  Both of us have agreed with our manager to be available, after we leave, to help in any way we can to make our successors as successful as possible.  It not only feels good, it feels right.

At the same time, Kelly and Christian are working hard to finish their school year well.  Yesterday was a particularly difficult day for Christian because he had a significant amount of extra work to complete.  He really worked hard and got it all done.  That has set a good base so that he can finish all his material between now and May 22 when the school year is over.  There are special challenges in this next couple of weeks because Lorena, the kids, and the cats will have to be out of the house for the real estate people and potential buyers to do viewings.  They are working hard to finish well, too.

Another cool thing that happened yesterday was that Kelly paid Christian part of her babysitting money because he helped her with all the little kids she cares for on Monday nights.  I was proud of her for thinking of that.

Note to Bryan:  Have your numbers ready for Friday–I think my new diet consultant is showing results!

A colleague wanted me to post this:

This is the second to last week of homeschool and the last week of work for me here in Corvallis.  We are very excited about our move.  There will not be much to report for the next little while other than newsy stuff about the move to North Carolina, so expect fairly short posts until I am back East and can right about our new digs.  Yesterday, we went to Sunday morning meeting with Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah for Mother’s Day, then went and got Lorena (and me) new cellphones.  We also bought a nice, but inexpensive GPS for the big trips we will be taking.  The kids are in their last week of math and will do the first and second drafts of their reports this week.  This will have been a super year for homeschool.  We accomplished a lot and will be set up for a great new year in North Carolina.

We are North Carolina bound!  I accepted an offer with Centice in Morrisville (Raleigh/Durham) North Carolina.  It is a great job and a great part of the world.  The whole family is ecstatic about the move.

Yesterday, I turned in my resignation at the place I work.  My trips to North Carolina and Texas were for interviews.  Both of those interviews resulted in job offers, so now we are working out the details so we can decide which job I should take.  Both of the companies that offered me positions are doing very interesting high tech things with machine vision.  It is a hard choice.  In the mean time, my company went ahead and sent me on a business trip to New Hampshire anyway, so I am again sitting in Portland International Airport writing while I wait for the plane.

*Special note to Bryan:  You have a celebrity, three time NCAA national champion daughter to give you diet and conditioning advice, so I would not be looking too closely at the rule book.

In this diet death match I am in with Bryan, I have known for a long time that I was in way over my head.  Bryan is way out of my league and has been beating me like a drum.  To try to turn that I around I have brought on a diet consultant.  Bryan… take that!!!!

Jared of Subway with Kenneth “Slim” Chapman (Dad)

Well, I made it back to Oregon in one piece.  I hope to have some interesting things to report in tomorrow’s post, but who knows.  It was a long weekend with very little sleep until the very end.  I visited College Station, Texas, and Morrisville, North Carolina.  Both of them are beautiful places, but a little flatter than that to which I am accustomed.

Stock graphic for our picks:

As of yesterday, I have a new secret weapon in my diet wars with Bryan.  I cannot yet reveal it, but you will all be amazed at my new diet consultant.  Bryan now has no chance at beating me.  As soon as evidence rolls in that I can post here on the blog, I will put it here.  After that, Bryan might as well just concede.  Wait and see…

I am scheduled to travel to College Station, Texas, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Manchester, New Hampshire, and possibly Tucson, Arizona over the next little while.  That is going to make for some fairly light posting for the next couple of weeks.  The kids are finishing their homeschool and we have been getting the yard ready for the spring, so everyone has been quite busy.  I hope to be able to post on some more interesting topics as the summer progresses, but it will probably not be until mid to late May or even early June.

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.

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!