A Quote to Start Things Off

""I'd love to go to Santa Fe at some point, Emmett said, but for the time being, I need to go to New York. The panhandler stopped laughing and adopted a more serious expression. Well. that's life in a nutshell, aint it. Lovin' to go to one place and havin' to go to another. Amor Towles in the Lincoln Highway.

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Pictures of Memories I

Pictures of Memories I
Snow kidding! These "kids" now range from 17 to 23

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A Good Book


The Best of Good by Sara Lewis is the second book this summer I have read at my wife's recommendation. Like The Help, it is a fantastic read.

Tom Good, the protagonist, is a living testament to the phrase, "You are never too old to be immature." Good, for some compelling reasons had never grown up.

To call Good conflicted would be like calling Lake Michigan wet. A bartender who's never touched the stuff. A musician whose only successes were "fakes."


Good's life, the tumultuous past, and the stilted present come together when he hears that an old girlfriend is in town and that she has a son that looks just like Good did at that age. This propels Good to examine himself and leads to a story of a life turned around.

The Best of Good is in some ways reminiscent of Judith Guest's Ordinary People and in others of Nick Hornby's About a Boy. The way Lewis crafts this book is masterful. Late in the book, a quilting storyline is introduced. Lewis has actually quilted Good's story for us. She brings out disparate parts of his character and history throughout the narrative and brings all these pieces together by the end of the novel.

Next Time: Soccer Pics Kick

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Bunderground railroad or Why it took 8 hours to vacuum the play room.

I mentioned in a recent post how active my BIL is in the care of my FIL. What I did not mention is that my wife, since she has some time off this summer has volunteered to give Mike a week off and work with her Dad this week.

This morning Amy and the girls took off for Grandpaville (that's not the real name of the town) at about 6:30 a.m. leaving a small list of things for Charlie and I to accomplish while they were gone. Again this was a relatively small list. Charlie's room was painted this Saturday with the help of a H.S. graduate from our home school co-op who is earning money for a nearly 1/2 year trip to England come September. As a result, all of Charlies room, save his bunk bed is in one of our main rooms.

This morning I gave Charlie a half hour of computer time and went to read in my room before starting on the jobs. Charlie let Smoky, our bunny out into the play room which is a very common occurrence. A half hour later Charlie and I started on the list. The first thing was vacuum the play room. So I went to get Smoky and move him out of the way (He doesn't like the sound of the vacuum cleaner). Smoky was nowhere to be found. Now he's gone missing before, but we have a small house and we've never had to look more than 5 minutes.

There were no doors open and while there is a small hole next to the dryer that leads to the outside it is much too small for Smoky to get through. We spent hours looking for that bunny and praying. Like I said we live in a small house, so we kept looking in the same places over and over again. What was really odd and scary was that we couldn't hear him. Most of the time when he is out of the cage we know what room he is in from the scratching noises emanating from that room. We couldn't hear anything. I even turned off the fish tank filter, refrigerator and fans but still nothing. As the hours passed by this lack of noise was bringing me to the opinion that he was either dead or out of the house.

Charlie in the mean while was very upset with himself as He was the one who let the bunny out of the cage. Charlie did nothing wrong! A bunny cannot be cooped up in a cage all the time and we had all let Him out before for longer than the half an hour Charlie did. We were both dreading telling Emma that her bunny was missing. Charlie was afraid that she would be mad at Him. I was afraid that it would break her heart. We had just celebrated his first birthday over the weekend and now he was gone. I called Amy at her folks and let her know what was happening. She wisely kept the girls in the dark. She also alerted her facebook friends to pray.

We walked around the block a couple of times asking neighbors of they had seen him. Poor Charlie would hear the sound of trucks backing up and convince himself it was a bird of prey attacking. I did my best to calm him down. I asked Him if he would blame me if I was the one who let Smoky out of His cage and he said no. So I said why would you blame yourself?

Instead of cleaning the house we pretty much destroyed it looking for Smoky. We dumped out all the buckets of shoes, toys, clothes that Smoky could possibly be at the bottom of. We basically ransacked the house in search of our precious commodity.

The aforementioned student came by at 2 to help us hang new curtains in Charlie's room. He also helped me check in places Smoky might have gotten into. At 3:40 Amy who had been checking in all day texted us that she and the girls would be home in 20 minutes. I texted back that there was still no sign or sound of Smoky. At that point I was pretty sure that I would soon be explaining to my 10 year old daughter that Her bunny was either dead or gone.

Charlie and I went into my room and I prayed that if Smoky wasn't dead but just sleeping or hiding somewhere that God would wake him up or lead him back to us. 5 minutes later I heard a sound. Now I had heard sounds before that but it was usually Charlie in the next room. One time it was literally Charlie turning the page of the book he was reading. It was that quiet in the house with the fan, refrigerator and fish tank off. This was a bunny like sound. A scratching behind the wall of my bedroom. The room behind my bedroom is the bathroom. The sound I heard was coming from the bathtub area. Well we had checked the bathtub a dozen times. He wasn't in the bath tub. The sound was coming from underneath the bath tub.

Our dryer is in our kitchen behind the dryer there is an access panel to the back of the bath tub. I checked there at least 4 times but I was always concentrating with a big hole under the bath tub. I noticed there was a small area on the side of the bath tub that maybe a bunny could crawl into. I called Smoky's name for like the thousandth time (I'm crying even as I type this) and got a carrot we had left over from his birthday party and held it out over the opening. 30 second later, he stuck his face in the opening. For a second I thought I was imagining it since I so much wanted him to be alive. But he was really there! For a scary second I thought he was going to turn around and go back where I couldn't follow Him. But I was able to get him out of the hole.
5 minutes later Emma was home and wasn't surprised at all to see Smoky right in the cage where she left him in the morning. Amy on the other hand was shocked. Like me she had not counted on seeing that bunny again.

For 6 hours, Smoky was underground and is acting like he was never gone. I may contact a vet in the morning just to be on the safe side. A minute before the girls came home I joked with Charlie that this was one way to get out of doing our jobs. I am so thankful to God that it turned out to be a day where there could be laughter instead of tears. Alright laughter and tears instead of just tears.

Next Time: A Good Book


Monday, June 28, 2010

Surprise, Surprise. I'm pro home-schooling.

Men's Monday Meme

It's Men's Monday Meme time again at families again.

Here are his questions:


What do you all think? Have some (perhaps most) public schools become to corrupt ~ socially and educationally ~ for Christian children to go to? Should we go back to the way of our founding fathers and teach our children at home? What about Christina schools?

With a blog by the name of Home School Dad, I think you can get an idea of what kind of response you might get from me. It should come as no big surprise that home schooling is what we think works best for our family. Many people mistakenly think that we began home education because we thought something was wrong with public education. We started home education because we saw it in practice and thought we would enjoy doing it and thought our children would benefit from it. It turns out we were right.

Over our journey we have had experiences that have both given us respect for public educators and also a deep desire not to have our children in the public education system.

My wife works at a public school as a school psychologist. Over her career she has observed hundreds of teachers in public class rooms. (Technically she's there observing students but the teachers are doing their thing as well. ) Amy says experiences like this have been few and far between. She says that the vast majority of teachers have been interesting and engaging.



Also we have both noticed the great dedication these public school teachers have for their subjects and their students. Recently I was allowed to attend a multi-day training being given at Amy's school for a SRA program called Reading Mastery. Amy was already attending and thought it would give me good ideas for teaching the children reading. The experience was a very positive one, as I did learn many helpful strategies for teaching reading. I was also exposed to teachers, psychologists and paraprofessionals (previously referred to as teacher's aides) throughout the district. Some of the attendees were not getting paid for the training. Their dedication to their students was easily observed.



Conversely, Amy has noted that evolution as fact, is weaved throughout the fabric of the curriculum and instruction at the (K-8) public school where she works. She has also observed a teacher (who happens to be Buddhist) really pushing Buddhism during a world religions segment in a Social Studies class. She says such proselytizing is infrequent but more frequent than the uncaring teacher experience cited above.



As for Christina schools I am not sure what Tim from Families Again meant by that. Did he mean schools that were taught solely by teachers name Christina? Or is it schools that are taught only to students name Christina? Or is the subject matter about Christinas? In junior high could you take an elective about Kristy McNichol or is it just Christinas? Again I am not sure, so I can not comment on that kind of school.



One type of school that was not asked about was Christian schools. That does seem to be a common question when Christians talk about home schooling is what about Christian schools. I wonder why Tim didn't ask about that?

For our family, Christian School is not an adequate replacement for home education. Remember, that the main reason why we were drawn to the movement was the participatory nature. Sure, we'd be dropping off our kids to Christians (not necessarily Christinas) but we'd still be dropping them off.

I like where were at: 4 days of educating the kids at home and 1 day of bringing several home school families together in a co-op experience where the students can benefit from the expertise of other parents.

So that's the Men's Monday Meme for the week. Feel free to stop by at Families Again to join in.

Next Time: The Bundergorund Railroad



A to Z 2023 Road Trip

#AtoZChallenge 2023 RoadTrip