Filed under: Uncategorized
And here I sit watching Law and Order and surfing the web while Boxman and the kids are sleeping out in the tent. I’m sleeping in my nice comfy, dry bed. The tent has actually been set up since Wednesday when Doodles had a friend sleep over and they stayed in the tent. It was the best sleepover we have ever had. They went straight out to the tent and stayed there. I think they were both asleep before 10. Then, Buster talked his daddy into sleeping in it last night with him. It started downpouring this morning. They stayed dry, but when they went out there tonight, Buster’s mat and sleeping bag were a bit wet. It’s still 70 out, so I think he will be okay. Doodles had to join them tonight too. Did I mention that I’m sleeping in my nice comfy, dry bed? They are having fun and I’m enjoying a bit of peace and quiet. It’s all good.
Filed under: homeschool
We are taking the week off for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I needed a break! The kids also begged to have the week off since all of their friends have off. I thought that would mean that they would want to play with their friends. Nope, they have been sitting at home and Buster is on the phone with a friend as I type this, telling him that he doesn’t want to go play at his house. The week is going far better than I thought it would though. I got them to help me clean the family room yesterday. Today, Doodles got up and cleaned out her closet without me even asking. And, the most exciting part, they have not been begging to play on the computer every minute of the day. Sure, they were both on for a while yesterday. Buster got up and first thing asked to play on the Wii this morning, but then got off on his own after a bit. He had to get back to the Playmobile toys he had gotten out yesterday. Buster had gotten two new Playmobile figures in his Easter basket. He decided to set up all of his Playmobile things in the newly cleaned family room. I played with him yesterday, and then Doodles played with him while I was in the shower (it was actually a quiet time in the shower with no interruptions). Then I played with him some more. When I asked why Doodles wasn’t playing with him anymore, he told me that she wasn’t allowed to because he was teaching her a lesson – he didn’t like the way she was playing. Apparently he was over it this morning because they set it all up again and plotted out a script to do with the figures.
Doodles got out her digital camera and videoed the whole play. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed sitting back and watching them play together, using their imaginations, and having good ol’ fashioned fun with no electronics necessary. It was a beautiful thing.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Today happens to be the birthday of Iowa State University. It was founded March 22, 1858.
Iowa State is a great school. Besides being the place where Boxman and I met, it is the first school to adopt the Morrill Land Grant Act. Few people realize that ISU was also home of the first electronic computer, the Atanasof-Berry computer in 1939.
VEISHEA (which stands for Veterinary, Engineering, Industrial Science, Home Economics, and Agriculture – the original 5 colleges) is the largest student run festival in the country.
Reimann Gardens
Four Seasons Sculpture by Christian Petersen with the Campanile in the background.
If you want to help celebrate, you can click here and go set off some fireworks!
Filed under: family
I’m so sad to write this, but I must. Jake DeShazer died Saturday night at the age of exactly 95 years and 4 months.
I grew up hearing about Jake just as my children are now growing up learning about him. I can only remember actually meeting him once, but I still have the picture of me with him. He truly was, and still is, an inspiration. You see, he was a Bombardier with the Doolittle Raiders during World War II. It was pretty much a suicide mission when they left the deck of the USS Hornet in their B-25’s as they did not have enough fuel to fly to Japan and back.
(Jake is the short one hiding on the right in this picture)
Jake ended up in enemy territory and was taken to a POW camp along with others. He was held in prison for 40 months, 34 of them in solitary confinement. While some of his other crewmates were executed or died of starvation, he survived. I believe he was spared for a reason. During this time of hatred towards the enemy, he found God. Eventually the war was over and he was released from the POW camp. He went back home, but then returned to Japan as a missionary. He returned to the country where he was terribly mistreated as a POW to spread the love of God! As if that wasn’t enough, he then met with Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, and converted him to Christianity.
He truly was an incredible man. Of course, my family has always been infatuated with his story because not only was he someone to admire, he was also married to my grandmother’s cousin. So, this is to you, Jake. There’s no doubt that you are right where you belong now.
You can watch a television special about him here From Vengeance to Forgiveness: Jake DeShazer’s Amazing Journey from WWII Doolittle Raider to POW to Missionary to Japan
Filed under: tae kwon do
So the tournament was this weekend. It was an exhausting day and I’m so glad it’s over. The kids both competed in 4 events – open hand forms, musical forms, weapon forms, and self-defense. Buster won 1st in musical, 2nd in self-defense, and 3rd in both open hand and weapon forms. Doodles did equally well with 1st in self-defense, 2nd in open hand, and 3rd in both musical and weapon forms. As for me, they ended up combing all of the black belt women over 18 into one group rather than 2 groups. That’s not so good for a 40 year old. I ended up with 2nd after being beat by a 20-something year old. Oh well, second is a nice place to be.
The hardest part for me was having to be the “bad guy” for 7 kids to do their self-defense moves. The first one was easy as she was only a white belt so there were two simple moves to do. Then I did a green belt – still pretty easy. The sweat and pain came with the next 4 kids who were brown and black belts. Doodles had made a list of what she wanted to do which I had written on my hand. At the last minute she decided that I didn’t have to do the charging attack where she ends up on the floor and pushing me into a roll over her head. I was very grateful for that as it is my least favorite one to do. I went through her list with no problems. Then I have to do it with Buster but he wants me to do the roll. How could I say no to him? The next black belt wanted me to do the same ones with her. I’m getting really hot and tired by now as I had to keep getting beat up and then fall to the floor about 8 times with each of these kids and bounce right back up to do the next move. I had an advanced brown belt to do after that, with the roll. All was going well until we got to the roll. He must have really wanted to win that trophy because he didn’t let me control the roll and instead pushed me over his head as hard as he could with his legs causing me to totally lose control of the roll. I landed on the top, back part of my head, rather hard and it was a really ugly and painful roll. I told his parents they could pay for the chiropractor! And after getting up from that, I was informed that I had to immediately go to the other ring to do self-defense with a little red belt. When I was done, I had a bad headache and my neck was hurting from that bad roll. The judges gave me a perfect score of all 10’s for my performance. LOL It was only the next morning when I realized how falling hard to the mat about 50 times in a row can cause every muscle above the waist to be very, very sore. It hurts to breathe deeply or laugh. It hurts to bend over. It hurts to do anything.
Filed under: politics
Or whatever they are called. I usually dread these phone calls because they are asking for money. This time, I had a lot of fun with it. She asked me on a scale of 1 to 5, how important is it to me to keep the democrats out of power. I chose 4 and she was really happy – surely I would give them some money to help get Republicans into office. She asked me for $100. I said I couldn’t give them any money that would go towards John McCain’s campaign. This baffled her and she tried to stress how we can’t let the Democrats win the presidency. I responded with the following: John McCain is a republican in name only. He tends to vote with liberals including Kennedy. He’s tried to limit our 1st amendment rights. He’s tried to limit our 2nd amendment rights. She was totally shocked when I added that I will vote for an independent or third part candidate before I would vote for McCain. This was followed by some more stuttering as she grasped for something to say in response to my reaction. Finally she just told me thank you and hung up. I enjoyed it. There is something satisfying about getting someone who called you asking for money to give up and hang up without even coming close to making you feel bad about not giving them money.
And with that said, I had mentioned this to my dad who responded to me in e-mail with this. He just cracks me up and when he added at the end of it that maybe I was thinking about pasting it into my blog, I couldn’t not put it on here.
On your other topic of Creepublicans seeking bribes, I too, have had fun with their phone calls. I tried extremely hard to get them to hang up on me, not me hang up on them. That was pre-RINO (Republican In Name Only) McCain having so much influence. I used the example-horribulus of Jorge Busch. It is not some foreign power taking away freedom of the American people, It is our own elected traitors.
It is incongruent how Jorge has talked of democracy as if he does not realize that we are a republic. Well, we used to be before Jorge became a demoncrat and created perpetual war. (Shades of 1984). Just like the “war on drugs”, “war on terrorism has no identified enemy, nor any possible ending. Apparently, all of those taking down our twin towers were Saudis. Obviously, “homeland dispense” has failed to recognize that.
If Iraq might be about oil, what was Afghanistan about? We left all of the drug facilities and networks in place. Now, again, and still; drugs are the main export of Afghanistan. Jorge SENIOR was head of the CIA. Jorge junior claims the CIA needs to have torture in their toolbox of terrorism. Who really is running this calamity?
If you would donate to the Creepublicans, is that supporting a terrorist organization?
Have the Demoncrats and Creepublicans combined into the “Incumbent Party”? Wasn’t it RINO McPain that supported the McCain/Feingold Act? But what is in a name? If I recall correctly, that act was to unconstitutionally restrict citizenry from saying anything against an incumbent for about 60 days before an election. It really is hard to say any thing good about McPain.
Filed under: homeschool
I’m having a hard time deciding what to do with Doodles for history next year, assuming that she will still be at home and not jr. high. I asked her today if she would rather do American history or ancient history next year. She didn’t say a word about going to school. I take that as a good sign she will be home. So, I’m debating between American history, most likely using Sonlight, and ancient history using Omnibus.
Her history so far has been Story of the World Volumes 1-3 with the activity guides, followed by a year of ancient history when we did Calvert sixth grade, and she is now finishing up Story of the World Volume 4. We’ve touched on some US history and took a break from SOTW 4 when we got to the Civil War so we could delve deeper into it, but we haven’t really covered US history the way I would like to. It wouldn’t really disrupt the schedule too much to do it this next year since that would leave us 4 years to go through the entire history cycle one more time. Of course as I type this all out, it does seem to make sense to go ahead and do US history. Oh, but I forgot to mention that she really wants to start back with the ancients again and I really like the looks of Omnibus (which I have already bought used) and I have Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World which we could use. And I also just bought a used instructor’s guide for the Sonlight 100 that looks so good for US history. Being the curriculum junkie that I am, I guess I have all of my bases covered. So which should I use next year for 8th grade?
Filed under: tae kwon do
There is a tournament this weekend. I really had kind of decided that my competing days were over. I have placed first in forms at every tournament I’ve been in and now that I’ve gotten to black belt, it just seemed like a good time to retire. My closet is full of trophies and I don’t really care to add to the collection. But then, I find out that this is a national championship tournament and everyone who gets first place will also be rewarded a patch to put on their gi that says national champion. I want the patch. They can keep the trophy, I want the patch. Or maybe even two of them. So, being motivated by the patch, I’ve been working a little harder, still not sure if I’m going to compete. Honestly, I’m a bit afraid that this time, I might not win. I don’t know why I’m afraid of that besides the point that by the time you get to black belt, it’s usually the people who are exceptionally good at it that are still doing it. I think I’m pretty good. It’s not that I’m a poor sport, I actually have some second place trophies that I won for weapons. It’s that I have never lost in open hand forms and I like being able to say that. I think I would like to be able to say that I’m a national champion even better though. Besides, how will I know if I am that good if I don’t try. The worst that will happen is that I won’t get first. Nobody will think any less of me, myself included.
I’m glad that the kids don’t worry about such things. They both are working on their forms planning to compete in open hand, weapons, and musical. They have both experienced winning and not winning. I think they have always done well enough to get trophies except for Buster the first year when he got two 4ths. We have plenty of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophies in our house. They want the patch too. Funny what a motivator a little piece of cloth can be.
Filed under: Louisiana
I guess it was a good thing that I had already planned on taking today off because it snowed! This is the second time it snowed this year, but the first time it wasn’t enough to stick. Today it stuck and we had over an inch. It was a beautiful thing. I think the kids went through 3 sets of clothes as each time they went out to play in it, they came back in soaking wet. We had a fun snowball fight in which I lost. There was a snow angel in our front yard for a little while, and there is a snowman accompanied by a snowcat, and a snow “stone” in the backyard. It was so much fun – it’s been a few years since we’ve had snow that we could play in down here. And since I discovered that Photobucket now lets you edit your photos in fun ways, you get to see the fun I had on their website.
Doodles was already to go out – in my coat, my boots, and my mittens.
The snow was coming down very heavily for a quite awhile.
Buster put two swords in his stone and managed to pull one out. Does that make him the king now?
Here they are with their snowman. The snow cat is partly squished under Buster’s feet.
The daffodils weren’t so happy with the snow.
Filed under: homeschool
Boxman took off a couple of days work to go to some Boy Scout training. I decided that I would like to take a couple of days off too. I didn’t exactly tell the kids my plan, but I did schedule them very lightly for today and tomorrow. I figured if they got Latin and history done, all would be good. I had a few more things on their checklist though, just in case. Last night, after I kicked them off the computer, they roamed around with nothing to do. The next thing I know, they are both sitting at their desks working on today’s work. They actually did all of their easy things that they don’t really need me for last night. I was so proud of them and so pleasantly surprised that when they got up this morning, I surprised them by telling them they only had to finish up their history and Latin for the week and we would take tomorrow off. I was met with, “You mean we don’t even have to do spelling?” We were all happy. They finished their work, we played a game of Tri-Bond Junior, and we’ve been chilling out ever since. I’m really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning, maybe playing another game or two, and maybe even watch Beowulf.
