Day: October 1, 2008

In a little more than a week, Mom, Christian and I will be going to Mexico for a wedding of one of my mom’s cousins!  I can hardly wait!!!  I haven’t been to Monterrey in years, so I’m excited to see how all my cousins are and to go to all the new places that I’ve only heard about.  My uncle is building a new house, my grandma got a gigantic new refrigerator, my other uncle got a piano, and grandma tells me that there are a bunch of professing girls around my age in the area (not including my many cousins) so I’m also looking forward to meeting them.

Oh!  I also have several cousins who I haven’t even met yet, or who I only got to see when they were little babies. That’s kind of sad, but fortunately I’ll be seeing them soon.

And then there’s the food.  Carne asadas (basically Mexican barbecues.) and mango and strawberry cakes and tamales and TAMARIND FLAVORED CANDY!  I don’t even know why mom is bringing her ‘American recipes’ with her to Mexico when there’s already so much good food there, but I guess she wants to give Grandma a taste of her foreign culinary talent. 😛

Sorry this is so short… will write more later!

We read a textbook titled Understanding the Times by David Noebel over the last two or three months. Every night when I returned home from work, I spoke with Lorena for a half an hour or so over the Greek salad she always has waiting for me. Then, we made some popcorn and I read to Kelly and Christian while they worked on their comics. One time, about half way through the book, Christian picked out Home Style popcorn rather than the regular stuff we normal get. We were pretty disgusted with him until we had some, realized we like it better, and gave it our official, reading-aloud-with-the-Chapmans seal of approval. Now that is the only kind we ever get.  We finished reading a Sonlight curriculum book, The Gammage Cup, just a few days before we finished Understanding the Times.

The book was very good.  At places, the reading got a little tedious, but each of the worldviews we studied was covered well.  It was not all tedium, but what there was, was a result of material that was repeated both for clarity and as a way for it to stick with the reader.  We notice now that we can often identify the worldview of writers and speakers on the radio, magazines, and the internet.  It was something we did not much consider before we read this book.  When we can identify a person’s worldview, it makes it easier to understand and respond to them in appropriate ways.  It has been particularly useful to help us interpret what the politicians say during the current presidential election season.

Between now and when Lorena and the kids leave for Mexico for the wedding, we will read a book about evolution that I will talk about in a little more detail later.  We have decided not to start another Sonlight novel until we are all back home in North Carolina after the wedding in Mexico.