Month: April 2008

We are really happy to have our buddy Warren join us in the weight loss death match. Thanks, Bryan for helping out with the spreadsheet. Warren and Bryan stood up for me at my wedding in Monterrey and we all got to be twice the men we were before. Bryan is making STUNNING progress. The second picture is of how he looked when he had lost 20 llbs. He is now 38 pounds down from when he started. Check it out. He only has 22 to go. I think the race is now for second place.

Update: Bryan was good enough to send us a picture of how he appears today!!!

I finally got around to putting up a few pictures from our Kitty Hawk vacation. You can click on them to make them bigger.

We are going to do the PASS standardized tests this weekend if they come in time. In addition, we are going to buy a riding lawnmower, go to the library to get books for research reports, get caught up on homeschool read alouds, take a look at setting up to start assembling the radio we purchased, and maybe even spend some time working on the cat tower. On Sunday, we have a potluck after meeting. This time of year, as always, is very, very busy. Kelly got invited to a piano workshop of a famous pianist in a couple of weeks, Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita are arrive for a visit. And the weight loss death match escalates. I have to do all of the above on very few calories. I hope those deep fried Twinkies I sent, finally get to Bryan’s house.

Kelly passed her first CLEP test with an A, the PASS standardized tests arrived, and the kids have started their annual research reports. Everything is moving along at a fairly normal pace. The thing on which we are currently spending the most time is math. I do not think that will change through the end of the year and on into next year as we are at such a critical stage in providing a base of understanding for the calculus as well as other studies such as physics, statistics, and other hard science subjects. This year, Kelly is doing her annual report on Roanoke Island. She initially started with the idea that she would study the Lost Colony, but got so interested in the entire area, that she expanded the topic. Christian has narrowed his topic down to the history of Artillery starting with catapults, trebuchets, and moving on to modern propelled and exploding kinds of things. We were wanting to get started on the radio project this spring, but it looks like that will need to be postponed until the summer. That is the project where we will build a radio kit to learn radio theory to get ready for the kids to get there ham radio licenses. Yesterday, the kids did their first workout at the new YMCA that opened up in our area. Today, they will go down to be trained on how to use the equipment and learn the rules. We signed up for a one year membership and are all looking forward to using the beautiful new facility. Science, Spanish, history, literature, and all the other subjects are moving along according to schedule.

Bryan, I am finally on track with the whole weight-loss thing. I am down almost ten pounds and starting to accelerate a little!

We completely changed our telephone setup when we moved into our new house. We always got wired phone service from the phone company before. In addition to that, we had to pay for all our cell phones and the added DSL internet broadband offered by the phone company. The problem was that we almost never used our regular phone service because we have our cell phones. So, when we move to the new house we found that we could buy “naked DSL” which is DSL broadband internet without wired telephone service. ATT is required to provide that service as part of their merger agreement from when they merged with Bell South. We have used Skype to talk to our family in Mexico for several years now and it just keeps getting better and better. We talk from our computer to Grandpa Lauro’s telephone for two cents per minute and from our computer to all the uncles’ computers for free. It is hard to beat that. The only hiccup is that the security system requires a cell phone of its own, but we are hoping that will change soon so that the system will work over the internet.

Special note: JoAnn Waldo is often posts on comments here on the ChapmanKids.net blog. We are sad to note that her mother Mabel passed away last night. We were in meeting with Mabel regularly for several years. She is a wonderful woman and will be greatly missed.

It seems like no matter how well we prepare before vacation, when we get home, we find a million things we forgot to do before we left. It seems like we are behind on homeschool, yard work, house work, work work, and even our hobbies. Nevertheless, there is some good news. Our State of Oregon tax return check came in last week, so no we can afford to buy blinds for the new house so we can finally take down the sheets we have covering the windows. We also have to buy a riding lawnmower so we can mow our half acre (What was I thinking?).

On a much more interesting note, the kids started their annual research reports this week. Kelly is going to do the Lost Colony of North Carolina while Christian is going to do the history of man-portable weaponry. They are on the five note cards per day of facts for the next few weeks. It is very fun to watch the process. With their experience from Kaktus Kids, previous reports, our art classes, and other sundry projects, they have improved greatly over the years. I can hardly wait to see the final outcomes.