We received two interesting pieces of mail today. First, an invite to a family reunion for people who descend from my father’s maternal grandparents. It is in June in Oregon and I am going to try to be there with Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah. In the picture, I think my grandmother is the one in the back on the right side of the picture.
The other piece of mail was Christian’s official invitation to the Math Honors program.
Day 609 of 1000
We live a long way from Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah. Every day I have reason to be thankful for my three siblings who have done all the heavy lifting in getting them to where they need to go for the care that they need. They are in a memory care home now home which was a big change. Some people do not understand so well. Memory care is different from other kinds of assisted living, but often necessary. Dad and Mom are in a place close to all three of my siblings where Dad can work in the garden and still get around quite a bit.
I am also very thankful for friends. My childhood friend, Curt and his wife Rhonda had a potluck after meeting last weekend and invited the folks over since that used to be their meeting. They had a great time. There are other friends who pick them up and take them places. We appreciate it all a lot. Hopefully, we will be out there a little closer as soon as our kids graduate from college in the spring of next year.
Our family belongs to the beautiful Kraft YMCA in Holly Springs. We initially joined the YMCA as a resource for our homeschool physical education efforts, but it rapidly became a favorite destination for the whole family to swim, work out, and lounge by the pool. Even when I had work, I could sit in the lobby, have a cup of (free) coffee, and work (great wifi) while everyone else got their exercise. Now that the kids are at NCSU and have their PE classes there, Lorena is the main user of the Y. The good thing is that there is a sister YMCA right by the NCSU campus where Lorena often gets a workout in while waiting for the kids.
My hat is off to Lorena, she has hammered through a hard aerobic workout (usually the elliptical machine) and weight lifting three or four days per week five years. Longer than that, actually, but five years at this YMCA. She has the t-shirt to prove it. No wonder she looks so good.
Day 607 of 1000
We went to a late breakfast at IHOP this morning/afternoon because everyone stayed up late to study going into dead week. Christian and Kelly let me know that they like the content of this blog (even though the writing style is a little bit stodgy), but the site layout is really, really weak. Actually, they said it was ugly. The picture to the left is them looking smug after berating me so intensely and unjustly. I will give it a little more thought, but with Lorena already complaining about the header image (notice the only one who does not have their head bowed and eyes closed), but it looks like I am in for a redesign. Christian says it is inadequate to just find another header image or wordpress theme I like. He says I have to read a little bit about how to avoid having such an ugly blog.
Day 461 of 1000
I was going through some old photographs of my folks today and ran into an old video Christian and I made back sometime between 2000 and 2002. Lorena and Kelly went off some place and left us home alone. I really should take the time to align the images better, but you can get the gist of what we were trying to do. Between my bad camera technique and Christians ability to wiggle at that age, we made a pretty jumpy movie, but it was WAY fun.
Lorena and I celebrated our marriage with family and friends twenty years ago in Monterrey. I changed my header and added a couple of pictures below that were taken at the wedding. I thought of this song: Click here to open in this browser. Click here to open in a new window.
Christian’s YouTube video on how to make a hovercraft is now up to 65,638 hits. We are amazed it has been going. He put it up on YouTube when he was 12, so he has been getting over 15,000 hits per year. If it slows down to 10,000 hits per year, he should hit 100,000 by the time he is about 21. It is a fun video with lots of comments. We would really like to do another one, but we need to have just the right project. We are thinking about it.
Day 349 of 1000
We were sad when one of this summers frequent thunderstorms took out part of our persimmon tree, but it all came out well because it gave Christian and I a chance to buy some new tools down at the Walmart Garden Center. Christian is not quite a logger yet, but he is much closer than yesterday. It would have been more fun if we would have had something more powerful than a pruning saw and lopper.
Day 348 of 1000
I drove to Wilmington for a series of meetings at GE while the family slept in for a well deserved rest. When I got home, Kelly was just going out the door to one of two weekend baby-sitting gigs. This weekend is going to be a low stress weekend because there is really not much to do other than cut up the big branch of the persimmon tree that broke in our yard and work on hobby stuff. Kelly is going to draw. Christian is writing a python program to send web pages as images to his messaging phone (not a smart phone-all it can do is send and receive SMS messages and photos). I think he is doing this in rebellion because we have not yet bought him a Droid.
When I got home from my day trip, I laid out the kids schedule in my new Outlook.com calendar. Very cool. I like it a lot. If they added an office suite like Google Docs, I would make a complete switch. Oops. I spoke too soon they have it. There is no longer any reason to stay on Google. With a 7GB of free storage space it is a pretty amazing deal. At any rate, the kids seem to have pretty good schedules for the fall semester. The next challenge will be to buy books. I need to add Lorena’s classes to the calendar. Then we will know how chaotic our lives will be for the next four months. The really cool thing is that their classes end on November 30 with a half dead-week and finals in the first week of Decemeber so they will have quite a long Christmas break. They don’t go back to classes until January 9.
Day 346 of 1000
Christian had his chemistry final this morning. This is not a post semester celebration because Christian has one more lab and Kelly has her final tomorrow. They are at Chick-fil-A to celebrate traditional marriage and support Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A. The place was jammed, but they had a big crew working so they got their food very quickly. Everyone was in a great mood to be around like-minded, right-minded people. Lots of people took pictures and videos to commemorate the event. It was quite a happy occasion.
UPDATE!!!! NEWS FLASH!!!
Troy just commented that everyone was not just at a Chick-fil-A. They were at the brand new ONE AND ONLY to story Chick-fil-A. How cool is that. How could I have missed that. Thanks Troy!
Day 339 0f 1000
This is NOT the perfect Mexican meal because it does not involve tacos, cabrito, tamales, or even mole. That being said, it is something that is pretty high on the list. A hamburger with jalepeños and a coke. Shortly after we got married, Lorena and I went to a McDonalds to get a hamburger. She worked at McDonalds for a couple of years while she was in high school in Monterrey. She still love McDonalds and we still go there pretty often. This first time we went in Boynton Beach, Florida, Lorena ordered a Quarter Pounder.
When we got to our table she said, “Just a second, they forgot something.”
She went back to the counter and ask the girl for a jalepeño. She was genuinely shocked that they did not have jalepeños at McDonalds in Florida. She had worked at McDonalds and she KNEW that all McDonalds hamburgers came wth a jalepeño. When she found out that she was not going to get a jalapeño, I think it shook her faith in America.
The next time we went to McDonalds, she still ordered a Quarter Pounder, but she sneaked a bottle of Tabasco sauce out of her purse to make up for the lack of jalapeño.
Christian’s cat, Rubix hates everyone in the family except Christian. Lorena especially annoys here by trying to give her tight hugs all the time. She is amazingly dedicated to Christian–almost like a dog. She comes and sits on his lap, computer, book, or anything Christian is using so she can just be with him. She has been the dominant cat in the Rubix-Kiwi nexus, but that has been changing lately. Somehow, when we switched from dry cat food to canned cat food Rubix got dramatically more passive and Kiwi got dramatically more interested in getting fed.
At first we thought it was because she was not getting enough to eat, but she is definitely not losing any weight, so now we think it is because she really, REALLY likes the canned cat food. We made the switch because the vet said we should. We hope it is helping Rubix lose weight, but for her, it is too early to tell. We read up on the behavior and found that dominance can change in these kinds of cases, The funny deal is that even though Rubix is less dominant, Kiwi does not seem to have gotten more dominant–just annoying when she comes to meow for cat food at 5:30 every morning. It has gotten bad enough that Lorena has put a spray bottle filled with water beside our bed. Cats and Mexican wives make for lots of drama in the household.
Day 317 of 1000
Kelly drew this picture of our wonderful friend Jon the other day and put it up on Facebook. I thought it was good enough that I did not just want to put it up there, so I put it here. Jon writes a blog (a little bit sporadically, but well worth a daily visit to see if there is something new). He writes very, very well has some great pictures of Chile and Brazil.
Day 316 of 1000
Lorena’s thing lately is Caprese salad. It consists of fresh tomato slices topped with a thing slice of fresh mozarella cheese topped with a basil leaf all with olive oil and a little bit of salt and pepper. It is VERY good and probably pretty healthy. Saturday night, though, we went over to dinner at my old boss and friend, Igor’s house. For an appetizer, the served something that reminds me of the Caprese salad, but, at the expense of possibly offending Lorena, might have been even better.
They started with a sauteed slice of eggplant, topped with a slice of fresh tomato, a basil leaf, and Parmesan cheese. It was also had olive oil and some spices that included garlic. It was awesome. I know I ate way to much of it, but it was health, right? Now Lorena has decided that we need to start eating more sauteed eggplant. All of us are in complete agreement.
Day 313 of 1000
Lately, our family talks about world views, morality, and world events more than has been normal for us in the past. I think this is because of the election in Mexico on Sunday, the election in the US in November, some Supreme Court rulings, propaganda filled college orientations indoctrinations, events in the Middle East, and our own rapidly changing lives. In the midst of all that, Christian is selling a lot of our old homeschool books to raise money to buy books, cell phones, and other stuff he and Kelly need for college. One of those books is titled, Understanding the Times by David A. Noebel. Kelly, Christian, and I read the book aloud together. We liked it very much because it pulled together a lot of material we had studied previously into a discussion about world views.
Actually, I have already written about the book a number of times. You can find those posts by clicking on the following links:
We read a lot of books, listened to audio talks, and watched videos about different worldview issues. Paul Johnson, Lila Rose, William Lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Dale Carnegie, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, Robert Spenser, and others helped us to understand the historical reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the seminal role of Christianity in science, law, commerce, education, and the emancipation of slaves and women. They showed us why abortion and homesexual behavior are wrong and traditional marriage is right. The main thing Understanding the Times gave us was a grasp of how different worldviews understand all of these important topics and what to expect from people who are true to these competing worldviews.
The reason this has all come to mind is that we really tried to give the kids a sense for why they should hold to a biblical worldview. This book helped tie a lot of disparate topics together into a cogent whole. The deeper we delved into these subjects, the better we understood the truths on which a biblical worldview are founded. Understanding the Times did a good job of giving us the big picture when the kids were just starting high school. It has gone a long way to prepare them for what they have confronted in college. For that I am grateful.
Day 312 of 1000
We are running out of “first day of school” picture opportunities. If all goes well, the kids will be off to graduate school in a couple of years, but we doubt whether we will be there to take the picture. We often talk about the concept of life-long learning, so maybe I am wrong. I hope so. Our departed friend, John Sterling often told us about a fellow, I think it was Beach Paddon who just kept going to college. My understanding is that he got a new Masters degree every now and then.
This is a favorite topic of Charles Murray the co-author of, Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Christian and I have spoken about how cool it would be to continue getting Masters degrees as a hobby after he finishes his “real” school. That is one way to continue learning, but self-teaching and pursuit of knowledge not readily available in college through alternate means are other good ways to keep learning. Homeschooling certainly served me well in that regard. Kelly has a sense for what she wants to do when she gets out of college and she will have to continually study and work to make it happen. Her school will give her something to do that she enjoys and will pay the rent, but her vocation lies in a completely separate direction.
At any rate, we have hit another milestone. The kids are stressed and excited. Lorena and I are a little bit melancholy.
Day 311 of 1000
I happened onto a great article by David French at NRO this afternoon. I very much encourage you to read the whole thing. It was about who unimportant we are. it very much resonated with me. He pointed out the fact that, even though in the big picture, we are literally irrelevant, we do not have to be irrelevant to everyone.
Not to my family, however. For them, my loss would change everything. That’s when I realized a fundamental truth — a truth we’d all do well to remember: We can have (at best) a small amount of influence over a large number of people, but we will only have a large amount of influence over a small number of people.
An old friend and I were talking (via email) about just that topic the other day. As my kids finish up there time at home with Lorena and I, we have begun to realize that the relevance of our lives is tied up in helping just a few other people, but in a very personal way. With the kids moving on to bigger and better things before long, we want to find a way not to lose that relevance. Some people move to a foreign country to help spread the gospel. Others stay at home to involve themselves with grandchildren, charity, important causes, and other such worthy endeavors. It seems easy to maintain relavance when it is one’s own kids who are involved, but to extend that to others is a big deal and always seems to accrue to the one who is willing to help the less fortunate and less prepared more than the one who is organizing or leading it all.
The thing I liked most about French’s article is that he articulated the difference between obligation and self-fulfillment. I have always thought about doing things for others as a way to be fulfilled. The older I get, the more I realize the only path to true self-fulfillment is by meeting those obligations given to me by God. I will give David French the last word as he explains it beautifully.
In Judeo-Christian tradition, the relevant question relates to our calling, to our duty, not to our ambition and personal fulfillment. For some, our call places us on the battlefield, where a nameless (to us today) young private bleeding on Little Round Top did greater things for his country than I will likely ever do over the entire course of my life. For others, the call places them in a firehouse, at a PTA meeting, in a cubicle, or — yes — sometimes in the highest reaches of government. But for all of us the call remains to faithfulness and care for our families, the people whom we influence the most.
I used to think I could be important, and ordered my life accordingly. Now I realize I’m not and try my best to simply know, understand, and do my duty. Dean Slaughter concludes her article by envisioning the ideal, how in that ideal world “we will properly focus on how we can help all Americans have healthy, happy, productive lives, valuing the people they love as much as the success they seek.” I’d say as spouses and parents we should strive toward different goals, where we focus on fulfilling our deepest and most meaningful obligations — to the God who created us, to those we’ve sworn (through marriage) to love, and to those we’re called to raise from their birth or adoption
Stepan stopped by my desk again and told me a little story about his great grandfather, Nikolai, who was originally from the Ukraine. Nikolai was a successful, small family farmer. So successful, it turns out, that In the 1930’s, Stalin’s thugs took the farm and sent the whole family to Siberia. Somehow, Nikolai was able to bribe two guards so the family could escape. They changed their names and lived as illegal aliens in Murmansk. I looked up Murmansk on Google maps. It is in the very Northwest corner of Russia, not too far from the border with Finland. His family probably did not live too far from our relative in Northern Finland during World War II. It is an amazing story. Stepan’s family did not hear about it until Nikolai’s wife told them about it after the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990’s.
He also told me about his wife’s great grandfather who is German/Dutch extraction. During World War II, he got sent to a horrible concentration camp in Kazakhstan where the vast bulk of the prisoners died. He had abandoned his factory in the Ukraine and made his way to the south of Russian when he saw that Stalin and the communists were going to come and take it from him.
Needless to say, Stepan does NOT have too many warm fuzzy feelings about atheism, communism in general, and Joe Stalin in particular.
It is dead week at Wake Technical Community College. The winter fine arts performance is over. There is only one mid-term left (multivariable calculus). No more papers. No more quizzes. Nothing but study, study, study. The effort expended this week separates the A’s from the B’s, the B’s from the C’s, the C’s from the D’s, and the D’s from the F’s. These pictures represent what our household willbe like for the next week and a half. Study, study, study with an occasional break to go to a review class, to eat, or to get a short workout. Normally, it is just Kelly, but this semester Lorena is in on the fun. Study, study, study. It is worth it.
Day 102 of 1000
Lorena, Christian, and I made our way to the Community College last night to see the final performance and art show for the fine arts program. Paintings, pencil drawings, charcoals, and sculptures were displayed outside the music performance room. The chorus and the story-telling classes provided the performance arts. It was wonderful. There was a pretty good sized crowd to see it all. They dynamic of the community college is very fascinating. It is obvious that Kelly’s chorus professor and the story-telling professors take their jobs very seriously and derive great joy from them. Kelly sang with the chorus and with one small group of Mexican students who sang “We Are the World” in Spanish. Christian got some great pictures–I will put up a few of them this evening. Wake Technical Community College has an impressive facility, the student body is eclectic and fascinating to watch. It was all pretty impressive and very, very fun.
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