Year: 2009 Page 10 of 15

Lorena cooked mole for lunch yesterday because that was what Aunt Julia wanted.  Lorena does not really need much of an excuse to cook mole, so when she has an enthusiastic audience, it is a double joy for her.  While Lorena cooked the Mole, Aunt Julia made something call no-knead bread that takes 20 or so hours to raise.  She will cook it in one of those big cast-iron skillets.  If it is not totally gone by the time I get home, I will take a picture and put it up here.  Lorena, Christian, Kelly, and Jenna might have to do it again on Saturday so they can get some practice and I can get some pictures.  We took a walk, ate Salmon before dinner, talked, and talked, and talked.

Christian helped Aunt Julia get FireFTP added to the Firefox web browser he put on her computer last time she was here.  Then he upgraded the WordPress installation on her website, put up a new theme and showed her how to do some of the stuff.  I gave him permission to take some time from his homeschool to work with her a little more before she leaves.  She gave us some amazing new lids for virtually ALL of the containers in the house as a gift.

Aunt Julia is working in Greensboro this week.  That is not too far away from here.  She said she would try to make it back here for one more evening.  We all hope that is true.

Update:

Aunt Julia’s Bread

We all love it when Aunt Julia comes.  I get kind of manic because she is my sister and we do not get to see her often enough.  She talked about the books, Outliers and Three Cups of Tea (she actually organized a talk that Greg Mortenson gave in Portland before his book was published), the value of life-long learning, the joy of statistics, cooking, Betty Blonde, her (very cool) job, and a ton of other stuff.  A classic, only Aunt Julia would do it, kind of thing that she did was let us know that the text in the Betty Blonde comic she receives in the mail every day is very hard to read.  That was great.  We did not know that.  So, after she showed it to us, we looked at the text on the Betty Blonde web site and that was hard to read, too.  So, Kelly is going to try to make the text bigger and more well formed.  We would not have known that unless Aunt Julia told us (or, DUH, we would have looked for ourselves).

Today, there are big plans.  Everyone is going to run down to the YMCA to work out.  There will have to be a cooking session.  Julia has been cooking since she was a Child, so it is absolutely necessary for Kelly and Christian to get in on some of that.  Christian is going to install some stuff on her computer for her so she can work on her website–she sells personalized crafty kinds of things, imagine that.  The only problem is that she will be gone tomorrow!

On my way into work this morning, Kim Komando had a radio spot that talked about this study.  It basically says that the more one uses Facebook, the lower their grades.  Her conclusion seemed to be that, if you are a parent, this report should cause you to want to check what your kids are doing on Facebook, but not necessarily restrict their time there.  Hmmm…  That does not make sense to me.  The more I am around Facebook and Twitter, the more I like my blogs–the ones that I read, and even the one that I write.  In some ways, I think Facebook is even more mind-numbing than television.  With television, the communication only travels one direction.  On Facebook, the ability to be heard provides sufficient feedback to keep people hooked in.  And don’t get me started on the narcissism of the whole thing.

We have been on a reading aloud hiatus for the last couple of weeks because of a bunch test preparation we needed to do.  We wanted to wait until Aunt Julia got here because she is bringing us Outliers which is the exact kind of book we like to read together.  Catherine recommended Three Cups of Tea.  Ruthie and Karen Joy seconded the recommendation (you can find Karen’s review of the book here), so we ordered it and are waiting for it to arrive from Amazon.  Kelly’s work on Betty Blonde suffers when we do not read aloud because that gives her just the right environment she likes.  Christian is right there to give advise on the fine points of humor and drawing that go way over my head.  Then I read this post.  That was the last straw!  I decided we needed to read aloud again today.  When I finish this post and our homeschool lesson plans for the next couple of weeks, we are going to start in on a fairly large tome that should take us well into the summer.  It is called A Patriot’s History of the United States.  Hopefully it will be interesting and help Christian with his US History CLEP tests.  Also, hopefully, we will be able to resist reading the other two books to ourselves when they get here!

Last weekend I forgot my purse at the Chick-Fil-A. Second or third time this year that that has happened. I don’t know why I even bother carrying one around with me anymore. I always lose it somewhere!!! But carrying a purse around makes me feel awfully grown up and sophisticated, so I do. Unfortunately, this time around I had my cell phone in my purse. It’s not like I use my cell phone all the time (In fact, I had no idea it was missing until mom reminded me.) but it is a necessary little gadget. Christian and I use it a lot when we are at the bookstore on Saturdays, at our music lessons, or at a friend’s house. At first I thought I had left the purse at the Starbucks inside the Barnes and Noble, but we called and it wasn’t there.  So we racked our brains trying to remember where we had gone for lunch on Saturday.  I thought for sure that it was Wendy’s. Wendy’s is the Chapman household’s second kitchen on Saturday afternoons. BUT Mom remembered Chick-Fil-A. We called, and sure enough, they had it!!! Unfortunately, all of my CLEP US History II notecards were stashed inside one of the purse pockets and Mom called Chick-Fil-A just when we were parking in front of the CLEP testing place. 😛 No harm done though! I had my CLEP book and my notebook with me, and I did squeak by on the test, even with the little distraction of the fire alarm (see Dad’s post below)  Now I have to do it all over again twice! Sociology and Biology are coming up next…

Last night Christian and I got set up to program together.  He is going to continue on his daily C++ lesson, but we are also going to program some other stuff together.  We kind of had a cool project fall into our lap that is very similar to the volcano project.  The good part of the whole deal is that it requires something that we have been wanting to get for a garden adornment anyway.  So this weekend we are going to go out and try to find one of those wooden barrels that have been cut in half so they can be used as a fountain.  Hopefully, we will be able to find some goldfish and a water pump to go with it.  The idea is to point a camera and a light at the barrel to measure and report the water level in the barrel, real-time, via a web page.  It will look nice in the garden AND provide for a fun mechanical/electrical/computer programming/web development project.  I will take some pictures and post them here if we find something good to buy.

Trouble:  Yesterday, Lorena and the kids ran down to Johnston Community College in Smithfield so Kelly could take her US History II CLEP test.  They got there just fine, but about halfway through the test, the fire alarm went off.  It seems that someone had left their popcorn in the microwave too long.  So, our friend Ciara, the test administrator had to pause all the test computers and clear the building.  After the fire department checked everything out, all the test takers filed back into the room, Ciara unpaused the computers and everyone finished their test.  It was not an optimal performance for Kelly.  The test conditions did not help, but Kelly got an adequate score and we have some ideas on how to improve the study procedures for when Christian takes his history tests next year, so we are not at all unhappy.  I will discuss in a few days when I update our Homeschool:  How to Prepare For CLEP tests – US History post with how we did and what we learned from this last test.

Opportunity:  While the rest of the family was off taking tests, I met Troy at NCSU.  We went to visit one of his professors.  I had a GREAT time.  We had quite a long discussion about a lot of interesting things having to do with the measurement of water and water quality.  I am not going to talk about it in a whole lot of detail on this blog, but as a result of the meeting, Troy and I are firing up a project that will use similar technology to the volcano computer.  I think Troy might be the one that wants to do some of the documentation of this on his water blog, although we might host some real-time logging on the chapmankids.net site.  Stay tuned.

We confront competing interests all the time in terms of the way our homeschool time is spent.  It is particularly difficult this time of year.  That is particularly true for Kelly right now.  She has a very difficult CLEP test tomorrow (US History II) along with another one in May (Sociology), and a third one in June (Biology).  She has a challenging number of Precalculus lessons to finish per day through the middle of June so that she can be well situated to finish Calculus next year and still have a decent summer break.  There is a piano recital in May for which to prepare.  Betty Blonde is heating up as we prepare for the big one year anniversary T-shirt and coffee cup give-away.  What is good about all this is that it gives her a great opportunity to learn how to plan.  One thing I have not really thought about is that, as kids get older and leisure time becomes more scarce, “down time” is an item for which it is important to regularly plan, too.  It IS important to make time to play with the neighbor kids, go swimming, read a book for fun rather than for study, ride a bike, do a craft project, etc., etc.  We are going through a very, very busy patch right now, but that makes down time planning even that much more important.

Last Friday I received this in the mail.

If you can’t tell, it is a princess sticker. Given to me for my valor and bravery in the harrowing halls of the doctor’s office. I felt SO embarrassed when I opened the envelope and saw what it was. As you all know, I complained bitterly (for an entire paragraph!) about not receiving such a sticker after my recent visit to the doctor’s office for a tetanus shot.  Never did it occur to me that the kind-hearted souls at Cary Healthcare Associates (?) would actually take the time to post the above sticker to me.  Alas, I did nothing but sit and feel sorry for my poor, wounded, sticker-less self.  Now, however, the world is a little less lonesome, the grass is a bit greener, and the pink wall of my room is that much pinker.

Thank you Doctor Gilmore!!!!

We had what could have been one of our top five weekends since we got to North Carolina.  I had Friday off so I we all ran down to Lowes to pick up materials so I could build another raised bed.  I only goofed up on it a little.  You would have to look at it pretty close to figure out what I did wrong, but it is certainly good enough for the likes of us.  It did not start raining until after I had finished making it.

I mentioned previously that I found some really nice arrechera at a Mexican Carnicería in Durham on Thursday.  Troy and Youngin in came over on Friday night to help us cook it up.  We forgot to put the spices on it before we cooked it, but it came out great anyone.  That means it will come out even better next time.  We have big plans for having a carne asada at our house soon after Special Meetings, probably in mid May.  Our friends from Guatemala were able to get off from work to come to Sunday morning fellowship meeting this week because it was Easter weekend.  They all went with Troy, Youngin, and us to Red Robin’s for lunch.  This is the second year in a row that we have gotten together with them on Easter after meeting.  It is also the second year in a row that we went to two restaurants before we found one that was not closed for Easter.  At any rate, we told the Guatemalans about the arrechera and they thought it would be a super idea to get together soon at our house for a carne asada.  They promised to do all the cooking.  We thought it was a super idea.

Then, on Saturday, Lorena convinced us that we needed to go to the Crabtree Mall because my sister, Jean, had given her a gift certificate for Pottery Barn.  She found the EXACT rug that she needed to have for the living room and it was on SALE!!!  So we got it.  Kelly, Christian, and I decided that we really like the Barnes and Noble at Crossroads much better than the one at Crabtree because the one at Crabtree is small, cramped, has a small, lousy set of chairs, and no electrical connections for our computers.  Beside that, it takes an extra seven or eight minutes to get there.  We had to admit, though, they did have a much more interesting set of fast food joints in the food court.

On top of all that, we all did all the exercise sessions we were supposed to do.  We are currently in a “twenty days in a row–report every day” kind of an exercise pact with all the Chapman side aunts, nieces, and assorted friends.  We are supposed to do thirty minutes of exercise every day for twenty days.  We walked several times, but one day we even went down to the YMCA and worked on the exercise machines.  We all enjoyed the weekend a great deal.  Lorena was looking so pleased that Kelly took her out on the porch and took her picture on Sunday after meeting.

I have a three day weekend coming up, lots of work to do, and not enough time to right a thoughtful post so I thought I would just write about a few disconnected things I want to get recorded so I do not forget:

• Our read aloud program has pretty much fallen apart over the last couple of weeks.  We are rethinking the video blogging as we have not been very inspired by the books we were reading about that.  I think we still want to do some video blogging, but we are thinking that we might want it to be more about blogging than about video production.  This is one thing that might need to wait until the start of summer vacation.
• It is supposed to rain every day this weekend except Sunday.  Our outdoor projects–building another raised bed, spreading more bark dust, installing rain barrels, etc.–might have to be postponed for a week or two.
• Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita are talking about coming to North Carolina from Monterrey in May.  We are going to try to talk one or two of the uncles into coming with them.  Of course everyone is excited about that.
• We are in preliminary planning with Lorena’s brothers to build a palapa and a fence around the family property in Allende, N.L. to use as a weekend picnic spot.
• Only three more days until Kelly’s next CLEP test (US History II).
• Lorena finally has all her transcripts to the local community college and should be able to go in for advising on finishing her degree sometime next week.
• Christian and I are planning to set up a web server (Ubuntu LAMP stack) this weekend with one of the old computers.
• Aunt Julia is coming to visit a week from Monday for two days.

That is not much, but that is all I got today.

I have a serious problem with pronouncing words correctly. I know what they mean, I can (usually) use them in context. The problem is I read them before ever having heard them so I constantly mess up. For example adolescent. Until today, when Dad corrected me, I’ve always said it uh-DAWL-uh-sent. Same with mature. According to Dictionary.com, the official pronunciation is ma-toor, but I’ve always said it ma-chur. Gambol is Gam-bowl. Sanguine is San-gwine. And tacit has always been tack-it to me. Wanton is supposed to be WON-tn, but I say it Won-tawn. Victuals is Vick-chooalz. Cached is Cash-ayed. Egregious is uh-GREE-gee-ous. Chagrin is shuh-GREEN. The list goes on and on. There are lots of words that I have butchered even more than those listed above, but I honestly can’t remember them. This butchering happens a lot, and sometimes it’s pretty embarrassing. 🙂 But honestly, why can’t people just be reasonable and pronounce words like they are written?? Yet another reason to move to Mexico.

Today I went to the doctor and got my decennial tetanus shot. I was slightly apprehensive (it’s ap-ri-hen-siv isn’t it???) because I seem to remember a horrible sting not unlike that of a hornet, 10 entire minutes of bawling and a cruel doctor who gave me an ugly dinosaur sticker. Girls of five have no use for dinosaur stickers, especially when there are Barbie princess ones nearby. My fears were in vain however!  All it was was a little poke, and a band-aid, and then I was through. This time I didn’t get a sticker though. I don’t know what those people at the doctor’s office think. Girls of fifteen want Princess barbie stickers just as much as girls of five do. 😉  On top of that, my own family didn’t even offer me a balloon or lollipop, or even a sympathy hug!! Even when I flopped onto the couch and sighed loudly, and looked mournfully at my bandaged flesh wound, they did nothing . What kind of a supportive family is that? I ask you!

Luke Holzman from the Sonlight blog wrote a very interesting post today about math.  He describes a post by another blogger in this way:  “Cherish has a very interesting post on our aversion to math which is often linked to school teachers.”  Both posts rang very true to me and got me to thinking about why I love math.  I think much of the reason that I love math is that my dad loved math and expected I would do well at it.  Also, I had a great Algebra teacher in the ninth grade that made it seem elegant and interesting.  Because my parents expected I would understand math and do well at it I expected I would understand it and do well at it.  Both of our kids do well at math.  They are not Newton, but they do very, very well.  Lorena and I both grew up around people who understood math.  My sister and I both have engineering degrees and Lorena has three brothers with engineering degrees.  Our expectation of our children was that they could excel at learning math.

Because we knew math was possible, we were very careful in the selection of homeschool materials for that subject.  I wrote about why we switched from Singapore Math to Teaching Textbooks when the kids got to Algebra.  It was specifically because the kids started to struggle with that material and we knew that it was not necessary to struggle.  It was not the kids fault that they struggled to understand.  They worked hard at their math, did everything the program asked, yet they were still not getting it.  So we did a little research and switched.  The same thing happened again when we switched from Teaching Textbooks Precalculus to Thinkwell Precalculus.  The recommendations provided by Sonlight for when to start using Teaching Textbooks and when to start using Thinkwell have been spot on for our kids.

Still, there is an even bigger point in all this.  It is not just about understanding the material.  Sure it helps that we know Kelly is smart enough to understand precalculus, but it is just as important that she derives some joy from her studies.  We could have stuck with Singapore Math when she got to Algebra and Teaching Textbooks when she got to Precalculus.  She would have eventually gotten through the material with a good level of understanding, but we saw the joy of math dying.  That is the beauty of homeschool.  When we saw the joy dying, we could actually do something about it.

Luke left this link in the comments.  It was too good not to put up:

The kids spent a good chunk of the weekend playing with the neighbor kids.  I think this summer has the potential to be even more eventful than last and last summer, with the swim team thing going on was quite eventful.  There were two more kids to add to the mix of those playing in our yard most of Saturday and then again on Sunday afternoon.  The two new ones are from out west like us.  The boy wore a BYU t-shirt if that tells you anything.  Lorena and I had quite a thoughtful weekend with a couple of walks–one of them pretty long.  Time with Lorena really helps me sort out my priorities.  Sometimes, with all the business of life and the competing agendas of those around use, we forget who we are and why we are here.  I think my big take-away thought for the whole weekend is that, to be a friend, you have to make yourself friendly.  In some cases, that does not work, so (and this is the hard part), it is important just to stay out of the way and be happy anyway.

This morning, after we returned from Costco, Christian and I ran down to Lowes to pick up a chop saw and a stand to put on it so we could build a a raised bed.  We bought the wood and screws for it last night after work.  We had originally planned to build three, but we decided we should build only one first so we could see if we could do it right.  Lorena bought a pickup load of bark dust while we were at Lowes.  Then, while I assembled the saw and stand, Christian cut the lawn for the first time this year, while Lorena put down weed barrier plastic in the flower bed in front of the house.  When she was ready, I shoveled the bark dust where she wanted it.  We still need another pickup load, but we made good progress for one day.

Bark dust

Chop saw

Raised bed

When we were in Albany, we bought a house with absolutely no lawn.  We were able to turn it into something we really liked.  It was quite a bit of work, but it was very rewarding to us.  It is one of the things that made us saddest about leaving Oregon.

Back patio

Side view

View from the front

Although the climate and soil where we live in North Carolina is not quite as optimal for growing a lawn, it is pretty good.  We have a lot bigger lawn now than we did in Oregon so the task is a little daunting.  Nevertheless, we have made our start.  A fertilizer service came last week for the first time.  We plan to put down bark dust this on Saturday.  We all want to do some gardening, so Christian and I are going to construct some raised beds toward the back of the property for both flowers and vegetables.  Kelly is investigating seeds and tomato starts.  Lorena has been hard at work pulling weeds in front.  The good news is that the front of the house will be in pretty good shape after the fertilizer/weedkiller starts working and we get some weed barrier plastic and bark dust down.  The back is another story.  We have to decide how much we are going to manicure and how much we are going to maintain.  We have to put in a bunch of trees (when we can afford them).  We have to put down some contour barriers.  The other good part to all of this is that it is good exercise.

I have been writing so much about homeschool over the last month, that I will make this months summary brief.  The main accomplishments this month have been the completion of another round of CLEP tests and the moving to more math for both the kids.  Kelly finished Geometry and moved on to Precalculus.  Christian finished Intermediate Algebra (well, almost, he has a few corrections to complete as he starts into Geometry) and moved on to Geometry.  We are in the throes of preparation for another round of CLEP tests.  Kelly will take here US History II test on April 15 (tax day!) and then here Introductory Sociology test on May 20.  Christian’s next CLEP test is his US History I test on May 20.  He will wait until later this summer to take his Spanish test.

We have consolidated some materials and added new materials for each of the kids.  Each day now, Kelly will be drawing her comic strip as part of her homeschool work rather than as a hobby.  Christian will now spend 30 minutes each on C++ programming and 3D animation creations with Blender.  Science and Music continue to be both enjoyable and educational.  One thing I have noted is that both of the kids are enjoying the progress they are making in Physical Education even though it is hard work.  Kelly is pushing up toward 4 miles per day on the elliptical machine with and average of around 300 calories per session.  Christian does 100 pushups four days per week in about four sets.  He is working on doing that many pushups in one set.

What Earth Day? April 22d is National Jelly Bean Day. possibly my favorite holiday after Thanksgiving, Christmas, and National Pink Day (June 22d) I will celebrate this momentous holiday appropriately. They don’t call me Kelly Jean the Jellybean for nothing you know!

I have nothing deep or insightful or extremely interesting to say today (as if I usually do) so I’m just going to write about my Auntie Julia’s cool new idea.  Aunt Julia started a Google group challenging various of her friends and family members to “Work out every single day for 20 days” for at least 30 minutes a day.  I’m excited about it because we usually don’t go to the Y on Wednesdays or weekends, so this will really force me to be creative and play a game of soccer with the neighbor kids or do some crunches. Fun!

Jenna and Nathan brought over a baby doll yesterday. It’s Jenna’s school project. Basically the doll cries, sleeps, drinks, and wets (why is this reminding me of something Christmas-y???)  Her name is Sophie Margaret. She is very cute, but her perpetually-open eyes and crying noises are slightly disturbing. Thankfully she has an off button.