I did some research on homeschooling methods today. I'm interested in the Trivium and and Quadrivium and in the Thomas Jefferson Education.
Len replaced the sad old fixture which went with the sad old door. The new one looks great.
There was a CIA drone strike in South Waziristan today. Four people were injured and as many as four were killed.
-16.3 @ 254.9
11/28
Len got that new door fully mounted and installed. There's still finish work to be done with molding and paint and stuff but it's looking very nice.
I've lost 19 pounds since starting this project. It's slow but steady progress. Since my all-time high of over 284 pounds, I'm down over 31 pounds. Things will work out a lot better aboard if I can move quickly and easily about the boat. Plus it'll be great if I can avoid a mid-ocean heart attack. So I'll continue to push. I'll be happy if I can make 225, thrilled with 200, and super-duper thrilled with 175.
-18.7 @ 252.5
I've lost 19 pounds since starting this project. It's slow but steady progress. Since my all-time high of over 284 pounds, I'm down over 31 pounds. Things will work out a lot better aboard if I can move quickly and easily about the boat. Plus it'll be great if I can avoid a mid-ocean heart attack. So I'll continue to push. I'll be happy if I can make 225, thrilled with 200, and super-duper thrilled with 175.
-18.7 @ 252.5
Grampsy Time
The house is really coming along! After the crazy cleaning spree, my dad has been furiously fixing things too. We have new lighting fixtures, a new front door, a new bedroom door, a new towel bar, patched bathroom wall, new door knobs....and I know there is more, I just can't remember it all. He even extended his stay to help finish all the things he had started. I feel really lucky to have him. It has also been so nice for the girls. They are loving having all the Grampsy time.
It hasn't been all work, we went to see a play, and spent a few days in Breckenridge. Breckenridge has been a Thanksgiving tradition for my dad and I for the past 32 years. We started going to Beaver Run when I was 4. We have so many great memories there. It was really great bringing the girls back, and it was nice not cooking all day!
 |
| Thanksgiving dinner |
 |
| yum, cheese (our favorite fondue restaurant in Breckenridge) |
One thing that I love about the hotel is the great pool. It is half indoors and half outdoor, and the girls loved it. They are both getting so brave in the water. Lorelei might be a little too brave. She will stand on the edge and just jump. A time or two, no one was ready and she started to sink for a split second before we grabbed her. She came up sputtering, but ready to do it again. In swimming class we have been working on her kicking and pulling after she jumps so she doesn't sink. She is really good at both, just not consecutively....yet. Audrey on the other hand is doing both brilliantly, and has gotten over her fear of taking the plunge without someone right there to catch her, as long as it is in under 4 feet of water.
11/26
Len ripped the old front door and frame out today to make way for the new one. I observed.
I'm sick, so let's hope for some better posts soon.
-17.7
I'm sick, so let's hope for some better posts soon.
-17.7
11/25
Len got us a new exterior door to replace the old one on our mud room, so we worked on prepping and painting it today.
One thing I forgot to mention that I did the other day was to apply some Pledge orange oil to some of the kitchen cabinets. It actually makes a big difference to that parched wood.
One thing I forgot to mention that I did the other day was to apply some Pledge orange oil to some of the kitchen cabinets. It actually makes a big difference to that parched wood.
11/24
I started working on revising the todo list and the pages on the blog in general. For some reason it's slow going.
We also did some more confidence building in the pool.
We also did some more confidence building in the pool.
11/23
The great thing about writing more often is that I have less to report each time. We've been hanging out in Breck the last couple days, so I've only been able to snatch brief moments to push on the goal. I studied forex a little today and also did some boat research. Come to think of it though, our several hours at the pool with the girls today definitely counts as progress too. They're both getting to be really brave in the water. Lorelei is actually a little too brave. She'll just jump into water over her head whether you're there to help her or not. Kinda freaks me out.
11/22
Here are some pictures we took the day of the showing. Our house had never been so clean. We'll probably use these for our real posting in the spring.
Len installed a new bedroom door for us the other day, and repaired some water damage to the sheet rock next to the tub. He and I also installed the long-absent towel bar in the second bathroom.
I'm going to be after myself to get back to posting daily, so we all have that to look forward to.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. I find myself experiencing mixed feelings today. While I am so deeply grateful for my wonderful family and friends, I can't help thinking of those whose families and friends have been destroyed and will be destroyed in the years ahead by American imperial adventurism. As we know, "war is the health of state."
What horrific and countless tragedies each of us has lent our material support to through taxes on our productive labors, day in and day out. It must give pause to anyone who dares to give it a moment's thought on days like these when we are expected to merely gloat over our own good fortunes. What an ethical quandary it is: Can we be held responsible for evil perpetrated using resources of which we were forcibly dispossessed? One might think not. Yet, knowing the intentions of those who have taken from us for evil purposes in the past, can we be excused for continuing to produce the fodder we know will be taken from us for evil in the future? One might also think not.
11/19
Today I replaced all the old smoke detectors with fancy combination smoke and CO detectors. Apparently that's mandatory when you sell a house in CO these days. That's right, you can't sell a house in carbon monoxide without Colorado detectors.
Len replaced one of our ancient kitchen light fixtures with a nice new one. It's great except it's one of those stupid CF-only fixtures. I didn't realize they were actually changing the fixtures themselves. I thought I'd be able to stockpile incandescents in order to avoid having a house full of those damn little mercury capsules, but apparently not. Anyway, the new fixture looks much better than the old one.
We also replaced the mangy 28-year-old stove hood with a fancy new LG OTR microwave to match the stove. It's pretty sweet.
The house is so much more live-able these last couple days than it's ever been with so much junk cleared out and so many previously unaddressed projects completed. It's great! If only it had a full keel and a cutter rig...
OK about the showing. The folks were pretty impressed with the location and definitely liked certain parts of the place. Overall they maintained pretty good poker faces, so who knows. I guess the thing is that if you're being shown the place by the seller what else would you do but keep a poker face?
We're on chapter 8 of It's Your Boat Too, and I'm in high school in the School of Pipsology.
Len replaced one of our ancient kitchen light fixtures with a nice new one. It's great except it's one of those stupid CF-only fixtures. I didn't realize they were actually changing the fixtures themselves. I thought I'd be able to stockpile incandescents in order to avoid having a house full of those damn little mercury capsules, but apparently not. Anyway, the new fixture looks much better than the old one.
We also replaced the mangy 28-year-old stove hood with a fancy new LG OTR microwave to match the stove. It's pretty sweet.
The house is so much more live-able these last couple days than it's ever been with so much junk cleared out and so many previously unaddressed projects completed. It's great! If only it had a full keel and a cutter rig...
OK about the showing. The folks were pretty impressed with the location and definitely liked certain parts of the place. Overall they maintained pretty good poker faces, so who knows. I guess the thing is that if you're being shown the place by the seller what else would you do but keep a poker face?
We're on chapter 8 of It's Your Boat Too, and I'm in high school in the School of Pipsology.
First showing
Alright we completed our first showing. That was exhausting. We got rid of so much stuff! It's an amazing feeling. Anyway, here's that kanban I was telling about.
11/16
So yeah, as April mentioned, we actually got a call on our Zillow MMM listing. That has seriously kicked me into high gear on getting this house sale-ready. Agile geek that I am, I put up a kanban to organize the effort. For the past couple nights, since we got this call I've been pulling near-all-nighters getting things ship shape. Obviously I can't do all the repairs we had planned before a showing for this weekend, but I think we will have seriously cut the amount of junk and mess around here. Stoked!
Make me move
Someone responded to our Zillow 'make me move' ad, and now the most dreaded part of this whole process, getting the house ready to show, is upon us. They want to look at the house this weekend, leaving us a whopping 48 to 72 hours to get it ready. We are frantically cleaning, and making shopping lists. Unfortunately we won't be able to get to some of the bigger projects like re-tiling the bathroom. Jacob and I really do work well under pressure though so I believe in us that we will get it done in time.
It's sort of exciting that we may be able to move on to our next adventure sooner rather than later. If this doesn't pan out though at least this exercise is helping us get the house ready more quickly.
It's sort of exciting that we may be able to move on to our next adventure sooner rather than later. If this doesn't pan out though at least this exercise is helping us get the house ready more quickly.
11/14/12
There's been a stream of really inspiring posts from Behan (sv-totem.blogspot.com) since they departed Australia a few weeks ago and are making their way through Papua New Guinea. Those guys are definitely role models for us.
We've renewed our focus on divestiture of excess clothing, pun intended. We've been carrying it out by the bag-full. It's a truly wonderful sensation.
We're continuing to forge ahead in our reading. We're on Chapter 8 of It's Your Boat Too. That's a really great book.
I also completed Jimmy Cornell's World Cruising Essentials. I don't know that I'd recommend it. Though there were some good parts, there were large chunks of the book where he just went over statistics he'd gathered over the years. That could've all been condensed into a few pages of tables and might've been more useful in that form. My favorite parts were on the various ways you can quickly install a high-capacity through-hull (whales, submarines, tankers, reefs) and on the variety of communication technology and what kind of information is available through each (SSB and GRIB files, SailMail, shortwave and email, VHF, etc.)
We've renewed our focus on divestiture of excess clothing, pun intended. We've been carrying it out by the bag-full. It's a truly wonderful sensation.
We're continuing to forge ahead in our reading. We're on Chapter 8 of It's Your Boat Too. That's a really great book.
I also completed Jimmy Cornell's World Cruising Essentials. I don't know that I'd recommend it. Though there were some good parts, there were large chunks of the book where he just went over statistics he'd gathered over the years. That could've all been condensed into a few pages of tables and might've been more useful in that form. My favorite parts were on the various ways you can quickly install a high-capacity through-hull (whales, submarines, tankers, reefs) and on the variety of communication technology and what kind of information is available through each (SSB and GRIB files, SailMail, shortwave and email, VHF, etc.)
11/11/12
We've been working on a getting rid of stuff.
I'm continuing to study technical analysis and forex. I've been learning all about Bollinger bands, MACD, Parabolic SAR and the like.
I've also been digging into some sailboat metrics and stuff.
We're continuing to read It's Your Boat Too, which I really like, maybe more than April.
We've had couple a days off from TYCTR just due to scheduling conflicts. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
I took the girls on a nice little hike up by Eldora today:
I need to leave
I must apologize for this post in advance. I know that one shouldn't bring up the drone wars in polite company but I've been stewing about this and finally had to put it down:
I've had something on my mind and it's got me really confused. This president kills and maims innocent men, women, and children on the other side of the world casually and frequently. Like on a weekly basis. Everyone knows this, yet everyone is thrilled that he'll have 4 more years to continue to kill at his leisure. Why is this good news? The man is known to personally maintain a "kill list" including American citizens who have never been tried or convicted of anything. Children too! I just can't get my head around it.
Maybe I'm just not patriotic enough. Anyway, I clearly don't belong here.
-15.9
-15.9
99th post
It's our 99th post!
I'm done with the window and door project for now. I do have 4 more windows to do eventually.
Audrey read her first complete sentence this evening: "See me eat." Lesson 13, baby! She also wrote and illustrated a short story about Mary and Laura entitled "Once Upon a Time."
I'm done with the window and door project for now. I do have 4 more windows to do eventually.
Audrey read her first complete sentence this evening: "See me eat." Lesson 13, baby! She also wrote and illustrated a short story about Mary and Laura entitled "Once Upon a Time."
TYCTRI100EL
So we've been doing better with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which is mainly the result of my letting go of the need to work meticulously through each and every exercise exactly as per the instructions in the book. One of the great attractions of this book is that everything is scripted for the parent. Theoretically, the parent could just read aloud and then watch as the kid magically begins to read. Of course, nothing is ever as easy as that is it?
The problem for us is that Audrey can't stand the repetition in the script, which has us doing the same sounds three times slowly and then 3 times fast, in 5 or 6 different permutations, when she already got the point the first time. I can't say I blame her. So I've had to let go of the script and just move quickly through the stuff that's boringly easy. Of course the challenge is not to skip anything important in our haste. And it's a real challenge: so far it's all boringly easy, but some of it is pretty important. So it's a balancing act.
One thing that works great is to put her in the driver's seat. So I'll let her play the parent role and I'll play the kid role from the script. The way this book works is that the parent controls the speed that the kid sounds out words by moving their finger one letter at a time. So Audrey thinks it's great fun to be in charge of pointing so she can make Dad stretch mmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat out over a full 90 seconds and then say it 30 more times inside of 10 seconds. One way or another, she's getting the point about the sounds that the letters make and how they fit together.
Another key thing I've learned is to understand when she's telling me that we're going too slowly, and how to acknowledge what she's telling me and re-engage her. When she starts to horse around with stuff in the immediate vicinity, or starts doing gymnastics in the middle of an exercise, that's the cue. Earlier, that would really get under my skin and I'd express my exasperation to her. No wonder she began to rebel against "learning to read" as such. She saw it as a time to sit down with Dad, have no fun, and then get in trouble. So my approach now is to stop the lesson and go ahead and horse around with her for a couple minutes, then return to the lesson and skip to the next part. That seems to work. For now.
The trickiest of all my moves is that when I've tried and failed to bring her back to the lesson several times, I'll say, "OK well that seems like enough for tonight." She'll then beg to keep going and promise, promise, promise that she can pay attention. My reply is just that we'll have the next lesson to look forward to for tomorrow. This way I leave her wishing for more "word games" as we now call learning to read. It works so much better than dragging her through a lesson that she just can't focus on.
I'd say the biggest lesson for me so far is to understand her needs by looking at the experience from her point of view. It's actually pretty easy for me when I let myself do it, since there's a part of me that identifies very easily with 4-year-olds.
-14.4
The problem for us is that Audrey can't stand the repetition in the script, which has us doing the same sounds three times slowly and then 3 times fast, in 5 or 6 different permutations, when she already got the point the first time. I can't say I blame her. So I've had to let go of the script and just move quickly through the stuff that's boringly easy. Of course the challenge is not to skip anything important in our haste. And it's a real challenge: so far it's all boringly easy, but some of it is pretty important. So it's a balancing act.
One thing that works great is to put her in the driver's seat. So I'll let her play the parent role and I'll play the kid role from the script. The way this book works is that the parent controls the speed that the kid sounds out words by moving their finger one letter at a time. So Audrey thinks it's great fun to be in charge of pointing so she can make Dad stretch mmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat out over a full 90 seconds and then say it 30 more times inside of 10 seconds. One way or another, she's getting the point about the sounds that the letters make and how they fit together.
Another key thing I've learned is to understand when she's telling me that we're going too slowly, and how to acknowledge what she's telling me and re-engage her. When she starts to horse around with stuff in the immediate vicinity, or starts doing gymnastics in the middle of an exercise, that's the cue. Earlier, that would really get under my skin and I'd express my exasperation to her. No wonder she began to rebel against "learning to read" as such. She saw it as a time to sit down with Dad, have no fun, and then get in trouble. So my approach now is to stop the lesson and go ahead and horse around with her for a couple minutes, then return to the lesson and skip to the next part. That seems to work. For now.
The trickiest of all my moves is that when I've tried and failed to bring her back to the lesson several times, I'll say, "OK well that seems like enough for tonight." She'll then beg to keep going and promise, promise, promise that she can pay attention. My reply is just that we'll have the next lesson to look forward to for tomorrow. This way I leave her wishing for more "word games" as we now call learning to read. It works so much better than dragging her through a lesson that she just can't focus on.
I'd say the biggest lesson for me so far is to understand her needs by looking at the experience from her point of view. It's actually pretty easy for me when I let myself do it, since there's a part of me that identifies very easily with 4-year-olds.
-14.4
Oh, I almost forgot.
In my first post, I said, "The journey is the destination..." but in a more recent post I complained that sometimes our goal seemed so far away that we might never get there. Silly me! I almost forgot that the journey is the destination. So let me tell you about my day at the destination.
April's been craving a day free of child care and today was it. She headed out for the evening last night and spent the night in Blackhawk with some other mommies. She hung out with them most of the morning then rolled down to the flats for some errands until after bedtime today.
Well, Sweet Pea, Audrey, Lorelei and I had a great 24 hours on our own. After Mom headed out last night the four of us settled in to watch The Rescuers. I had a 45 when I was a kid that had an abridged version of the audio from that movie, but I'd never seen it until yesterday. So of course it brought back some memories and I thought it was a really good movie. What great voicing. But the best part was that Audrey and Lorelei both decided to curl up on my lap so I got to spend the whole movie cuddling with my girls. It may never happen again that both of them are in the mood to be still and relax for 90 minutes, but it was really nice.
We all slept in until 8 this morning. Yes, that's sleeping in. After breakfast we all played in the basement until almost lunch. Then we all took Sweet Pea for a walk and got good and cold, so we had hot chocolate for lunch. After nap, we built a pillow fort in the basement and read 8 books. That was so much fun that we decided to set up the tent in the basement and watch The Rescuers again. By the time that was done, Lorelei was asking to go to bed. After putting her down, Audrey and I turned out all the lights and did our Teach Your Child To Read exercises and read our Laura and Mary book by the flashlight.
My computer battery is about to die, but tomorrow I'll give an update on the Teach Your Child To Read situation.
April's been craving a day free of child care and today was it. She headed out for the evening last night and spent the night in Blackhawk with some other mommies. She hung out with them most of the morning then rolled down to the flats for some errands until after bedtime today.
Well, Sweet Pea, Audrey, Lorelei and I had a great 24 hours on our own. After Mom headed out last night the four of us settled in to watch The Rescuers. I had a 45 when I was a kid that had an abridged version of the audio from that movie, but I'd never seen it until yesterday. So of course it brought back some memories and I thought it was a really good movie. What great voicing. But the best part was that Audrey and Lorelei both decided to curl up on my lap so I got to spend the whole movie cuddling with my girls. It may never happen again that both of them are in the mood to be still and relax for 90 minutes, but it was really nice.
We all slept in until 8 this morning. Yes, that's sleeping in. After breakfast we all played in the basement until almost lunch. Then we all took Sweet Pea for a walk and got good and cold, so we had hot chocolate for lunch. After nap, we built a pillow fort in the basement and read 8 books. That was so much fun that we decided to set up the tent in the basement and watch The Rescuers again. By the time that was done, Lorelei was asking to go to bed. After putting her down, Audrey and I turned out all the lights and did our Teach Your Child To Read exercises and read our Laura and Mary book by the flashlight.
My computer battery is about to die, but tomorrow I'll give an update on the Teach Your Child To Read situation.
Halloween
Whew! Halloween is over! It was incredibly fun-filled and jam-packed. We did a Halloween story-time at the library, a friends party, a cool wonder walk where we met mermaids and princesses, and then last night we trick-or-treated around Nederland. The girls loved all the activities we did, and I loved watching them have so much fun, but I am exhausted!
I was reading Totem's blog about their Halloween festivities while cruising Papua New Guinea. It was pretty fun to see how similar and how completely different their experience was. They still dressed up, and seemed to have lots of fun creating their costumes. They happen to be cruising with some other families with kids (9 in total) and so they all got to trick or treat together. I'm not exactly sure what that entailed. I hope that as we are cruising we run into other families too, like those guys!
The fun doesn't stop around here -- next weekend is Lorelei's birthday party! I'm getting ready to decorate a cake for the first time. Stay tuned for pictures.
I was reading Totem's blog about their Halloween festivities while cruising Papua New Guinea. It was pretty fun to see how similar and how completely different their experience was. They still dressed up, and seemed to have lots of fun creating their costumes. They happen to be cruising with some other families with kids (9 in total) and so they all got to trick or treat together. I'm not exactly sure what that entailed. I hope that as we are cruising we run into other families too, like those guys!
The fun doesn't stop around here -- next weekend is Lorelei's birthday party! I'm getting ready to decorate a cake for the first time. Stay tuned for pictures.
11/1/2012
Getting very close on this window and door project....
It's starting to feel like a home improvement blog. Just to remind myself: I am doing all this home maintenance in order to make the house more marketable. I am making the house more marketable in order to maximize the sale price. I am maximizing the sale price of the house in order to hasten the day that we cast off to explore afloat. This is a blog about our journey and how we are making it happen. Just to remind myself.
I opened a practice forex account. I've made a couple trades and am ahead so far. I have a huge amount to learn before I would ever try it with real money, but I'm really enjoying exploring forex.
We read the 3rd chapter of It's Your Boat Too, which I thought was really great. Suzanne Giesemann encourages women to take on projects and roles aboard of their own choosing, rather than defaulting to the "pink" jobs. I couldn't agree more. All the jobs that need doing need doing, but I hope April and my girls will always feel empowered and encouraged to do the job that inspires them, both aboard and ashore. And frankly, Giesemann just makes boat maintenance sound like a lot of fun!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)