Month: September 2009

Our weekend was interesting.  We spent two days at one of our churches conventions.  Between meetings we talked to lots of old friends and made a few new ones, too.  A lot of people seem to be struggling financially right now.  One of the recurrent themes of discussion was that times like these help us reset our priorities.  Then, when we returned home on Sunday evening, we heard that the brother-in-law of one of Lorena’s girlhood friends had been killed in a car accident.  He was the father of three children.  We really did not know him at all, but it made us think about our priorities even more.

In addition to all that, we were reminded of the shortness of life in a number of ways when we went to Oregon.  There were many, many people on whom we depended for so many years who are now old and struggle even getting around.  One of our dear friends had lost his wife and appeared lost himself.  Then on our return to North Carolina, we were reminded again of how quickly time passes when neither of a faithful old couple in our Sunday morning meeting were unable to get to our convention for the first time because of poor health.

It was just a very good reminder to me that there are some things that are very important and some things that are not.  We might have many years left, but we might have only a few hours.  Either way, it is good for me to be reminded that my time is finite and I better spend what time I have available on stuff that matters.

As often happens, Christian’s birthday falls on the three day Labor day weekend.  We are off to see friends and get recharged at a church convention for a couple of those days.  We hope to have some birthday pictures and the second video cast before the end of the weekend.  Of special note, Kelly has kicked it up a notch in her drawing for a story line about an art contest at her Betty Blonde comic.  Note the different points of view, the zoom levels, the improved lettering, and what I think is a funny and interesting story line.

This is the first homeschool update of the 2009/2010 school year.  We finished our first week on Tuesday and are off to a good start.  There were big changes for both of the kids this year that are a continuation of some things we started last year.  Those changes all have to do with the kids taking on more of the responsibility for planning their studies.  I still direct the material they study, but they plan how and when they engage with the material.  An example of that is the way we the kids are assigned books.  In the past, I always assigned a specific number of pages or chapters to read on a given day.  Last year, I assigned Kelly a book with only a completion date and the assignment of a way to show me that she had read the book usually in the form of a book report or a discussion of what was read.  That worked well for Kelly and Christian has switched over to that very same method for this year.  The kids are getting more adept at negotiating their studies so they can perform the work successful.

For instance, when I assigned Christian one book per week for the entire 36 week school year, he came back to me and said, “Dad, these are not all one week books.  Some of these books are two or three week books and some of them are two or three day books.  Why don’t you let me arrange my reading so that I am always reading two books at a time.  That way I won’t be stuck reading way too little one week and way too much the next.  The order that I write the book reports might change a little, but I should still be able to delivery on report per week and even out my reading load at the same time.”

That sounded like a very good idea to me, so that is what we are doing.  We have upped the ante with Kelly quite a bit in hear reading.  Since she will be in college full time next year (ala Ruthie’s Tisse), I am giving her a fixed reading schedule of scholarly books.  She is actively working through methods to get through heavier material, Rodney Stark’s Victory of Reason being the first, than she has read in the past.  She has looked through some of her “how to study” books trying to find better ways to do the reading.  The material is interesting, but sometimes it gets more technical and uses vocabulary that makes comprehension a little more difficult.

The things that have not changed so much are the math, science, music, memorization, bible, and exercise.  Both of the kids are more heavily engaged in CLEP preparation.  The kind of work they have to do to prepare for those tests is the same, there is just more of it.

Christian and I are doing weekly video-casts now! Here is the first one. It’s about the origins of Betty Blonde:

We will definitely be working on the professionalism and quality of the videocasts. We’re very excited to see how this, like Betty Blonde and this blog, progresses.

We’ll have to skip next week as we will be at convention, but we’ll stay on schedule after that!

Enjoy!

Christian’s birthday is on Saturday.  Yesterday, he went for his normal guitar lesson with Alex Gorodezky and got an early birthday present.  The Orpheus Valley Fiesta FC guitar was hand crafted in Bulgaria.  Alex recommended the guitar and, after having read a number of reviews (here is a typical one), we went ahead and bought it.  We are ALL enjoying it very much.  Christian’s guitar playing has improved pretty dramatically over the short time he has taken lessons from Alex.  He was pretty faithful in his practice before we found Alex, but now he not only does his regular daily practice, but picks up the guitar just for fun to work on different songs the he or someone else in the family wants him to play.  Last night, he worked several versions of Greensleeves that all sounded great on the new guitar.

We took the beautiful Yamaha guitar Kendall had lent us back to him on Sunday (Thanks, Kendall!!).  I think Christian was pretty sad to have to give that back and went through several days of pain and frustration playing his steel string guitar until we got the new one.  When I got home from work, Lorena and Christian piled into the car, ran down to the music store, and got a nice hard shell case like the one Kendall has for his Yamaha.  We are looking forward to Christian’s continued efforts on his new instrument.

Some differences (and some similarities) noted while vacationing on the west coast.

North Carolina lacks sidewalks, soda can eating machines, gas station attendants and Douglas Fir trees. Oregon lacks sweet tea at convention, accents and y’alls, churches, and square rocks. North Carolina has BoJangles, Biscuitville and Chick-Fil-A. Oregon has Baja Fresh, Burgerville, and Elmer’s. North Carolina is humid. Oregon is wet. Oregon does not have Kitty Hawk, but North Carolina does not have Crater Lake. North Carolina houses have garages on the side. Oregon houses have garages in front. North Carolina rednecks are loggers. Oregon rednecks are loggers. North Carolina hippies live in Chapel Hill (or so I’ve been told) Oregon hippies live in Oregon. Real Oregonians are Beaver fans. Real North Carolinians are into Nascar or something. I’m not sure. All I know is that they’re definitely not Tar Heel fans. Barbecue is a specialty of North Carolina. Marionberry jam is an Oregon specialty. Harris Teeter and Safeway are very similar, but Safeway has better Chinese food, and Harris Teeter has free cookies.

Alberstons and Fred Meyer are Oregon stores. Food Lion and Lowes are North Carolina stores. Ginger Rogers and Beverly Cleary and Herbert Hoover are from Oregon. Dolly Madison and Andy Griffith and Michael Jordan are North Carolinians. Krispy Kreme was founded in Winston-Salem, but Nike’s headquarters are in Beaverton. They cancel each other out, don’t they? Oregon state motto: She flies with her own wings. North Carolina’s motto: “To be rather than to seem”  Both Oregonians and North Carolinians seem to like country music.  Oregon has mountains. North Carolina has hills. North Carolina is very neighborly, only all across the state, not just in the small towns like in Oregon.  Both North Carolina and Oregon grow great peaches.  North Carolina has a history full of pirates and explorers and indians. Oregon has a history full of cowboys and pioneers and indians.

I’m sure there are many more differences and similarities. Feel free to add anything you like!!

I have been trying to figure out how to combine our fish barrel project with the GaugeCam project on which Christian and I work with NCSU.  The object of that project is to measure the level of water in rivers, lakes, barrels, etc.  Eventually, we will want to measure the surface velocity of the water with cameras, too.  Right now, we always have to get the images we want to evaluate from the server Christian set up in the Ag Engineering lab.  It would be kind of nice to have a setup of our own.  I think we can kill two birds with one stone.  The idea I have is to set up two half barrels that hold goldfish.  We could put a series of bamboo troughs and pipes between them and use a camera measure the water level in each of the barrels and our little Arduino controller to control the movement of water between the two barrels.  It would have an appearance with sufficient aesthetic appeal for Lorena to allow us to put the thing on the front porch.  I like it.  We could even put some lily pads in it!