Kindergarten

So this is the school year in which Jesse is supposed to start kindergarten. Huh?

I mean, we've discussed what kind of curricula to use for him this fall and all of that home school stuff, but it only hit me this morning that the Commonwealth of Virginia and the county in which we live expect his little body to show up at the local elementary school on September 4.

Um. Wow. I guess it never clicked since we've been schooling him since he was a baby.

Meanwhile, Beau, who is awesome, has been furiously working to learn what we need to do to make it known to the powers that be that Jesse will not, in fact, being attending the local elementary school. Letters are being written, by us and by our friends and clergy (we are claiming the religious exemption) for submission to the school board.

Related, I got home last night and Jesse promptly informed me that he had a full school "day" of devotions, math, letters, and reading. Good job, Daddy and Jesse!

Books Completed

I apologize that this is basically going to be a link dump with star ratings for the books that I have completed since I last posted any book reviews. I have read quite a few between my Kindle and audiobooks.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (narrated by Will Patton for Audible.com) - 5 stars

Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue by Hugh Howey - 3 stars
Molly Fyde and the Land of Light by Hugh Howey - 4 stars
Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions by Hugh Howey - 3 stars
Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace by Hugh Howey - 3 stars

Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman - 3 stars

Angle of Investigation by Michael Connelly - 3 stars

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers - 4 stars

Austenland by Shannon Hale - 4 stars
Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale - 4 stars

Black List by Brad Thor - 4 stars

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale - 3.5 stars

The Maze Runner by James Dashner - 4 stars

Wow, that's a lot in about 6 weeks.

The stand-out is Alas, Babylon, which is an older book and about which I had heard great things prior to reading it for myself. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it - the narration was excellent and the story holds up well as a basic premise. I highly recommend it.

Riding the VRE train for a week (2 hours each day) helped with Kindle reading - I finished 3 books that week.

My commute has only increased by about 5 minutes so far, so my audio book listening pace has continued, too.

I'm currently listening to The Scorch Trials by James Dashner (book 2 in The Maze Runner series). And on my Kindle is The Complete Atopia Chronicles by Matthew Mather (a self-published series of stories recommended by Hugh Howey).

Moved Into The Money Pit?

We're all moved in and getting settled. There are still a lot of boxes to unpack, but the key things are done - kitchen, clothes, offices, etc. In our first month, we encountered two large hiccups of the money pit variety.

1. The day after we moved in, I started what was going to be about 7 loads of laundry. After load #1 was washed, I moved it all to the dryer and pushed the button to start and got only a click. About 20 minutes of fiddling and checking and we determined that "she's dead, Jim."

We had talked about adding the frig/washer/dryer to our home warranty, so I asked Beau to call to set up a service call. Turns out that option never was added to the home warranty, so no go. We called the 800 number on the dryer and were told that a service person would be there the next day.

She (!) arrived and then spent 3-4 hours sweating over our dead dryer (which worked fine at the home inspection, btw). She called a more experienced technician with no fix. She called the manufacturer with no fix. She got shocked once for her troubles. She left, soaking wet from sweat and effort and I felt terrible for her. We were not billed at all either.

That night I did some research online and bought a new dryer that was delivered two days later.

2. Last Thursday, after dinner I started feeling warm while moving around the house. Putting the kids got me really sweating. Beau came to bed and we tried to snuggle, but I was a sweaty mess and moved away from his furnace-chest. At that point he said, "Is it warm in here?"

"YES!"

Turns out the AC was dead. The fan was blowing, but the unit outside was not on and we couldn't get it to come on.

We called the home warranty people and they said the soonest they could send someone to take a look was Monday afternoon. I balked hard since our house was sitting at about 86F at that point already and it was going to be a sunny, hot weekend. There was no way I wanted my family to endure my whining and complaining if I had to sweat all weekend. I hate nothing less than to be sweaty constantly. I'm a big time sweat-er.

When I mentioned the problem to a guy in my office he said the exact thing happened to him last month and it turned out to be the capacitor. Simple fix and not expensive. So I begged Beau to call someone to come take a look. It was the capacitor, but the dude didn't have the right one with him and he had to come back on Saturday. We signed a contract for annual service calls, too. After he fixed it, he then serviced the furnace for the winter, so that's good to go now, too.

We are enjoying the house. The kids love having more space for running around. We like having more space for them to run around. I like that Jesse can ride his bike and I don't need to worry that he'll get hit by a speeding car (there's little traffic, but he stays on the sidewalks). I like that the kids can play in the backyard without too much hovering on our parts and they have a large, fun space back there.

The Lord blessed us with a great home for our family. We are grateful. And we're grateful that the first couple of hiccups were small and relatively inexpensive.

An Apology

I re-read my previous post and realized that my short mention of the death of my father-in-law sounded callous. I didn't intend that at all.

The truth is he was a wonderful, Godly man; greatly beloved by all who knew him and very much missed. He leaves a devastated widow and three adult children who will never again have conversation with their dad. There are grandchildren who won't remember their grandfather's tenderness and affection.

There is a public obituary, but because of my semi-anonymity as a blogger, I decided not to link to it. And I had no words that could adequately express our loss at the time I wrote the post in haste. For that I am sorry.

It's Been A Month?

It's amazing how time flies when life happens. Since I last posted a lot of life has occurred:

1. I attended a really exciting** training class in mid-June.  (**By really exciting, I really mean mind-numbingly dull)

2. My mother had total hip replacement surgery the same week that I was in that fun class. The day my class ended I headed to The New Homestead to help my dad to care for Mom.

3. On June 29 we went to settlement and became home owners. Or as Beau says, we now lease a great house from the bank.

4. On June 30 Beau's father was taken to the hospital. On July 2, early in the morning, we received word that his father had died. I returned to work that morning after having been away for 2 weeks.

5. On July 3 Beau and Jesse caught a flight to California while Molly and I hung out at home trying to endure the heat wave that hit us.

6. On July 4 Molly and I went out to hang with Pop and Marmie and friend Andi for a little bit.

7. On July 8 the memorial service for my father-in-law took place. I'm sad I missed it, but I'm told it was good and that many people from long ago came to honor him. He was a good Christian man and is already terribly missed.

8. On July 9 my men returned home. Technically they walked in the door on July 10, but let's not quibble.

9. On July 10 I returned to work after being away for another week. This is when I'm grateful that the summer is generally really slow at work. I had some stuff back-logged from being out for basically 3 weeks, but it was totally manageable and I got caught up quickly.

So now we're quickly approaching our big move to the new house. The guys come to pack up what we haven't packed on Wednesday and then the trucks get loaded on Thursday. To say we're excited is an understatement.

Through it all, God has been present, good, and faithful. His mercies are truly new every morning and His grace is sufficient. We are grateful for His blessing and care.

Reading Room & Bube Tube

Two more books completed:

1. Death of a Gossip by MC Beaton. It was OK. The audio book was narrated by Davina Porter, whom I adore. I give it 3 stars. It doesn't suck, but it wasn't as good as other stuff that I've read recently.

2. An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd. This is the 4th Bess Crawford mystery and it's pretty good. I listened to the audio book narrated by Rosalyn Landor, who is also a favorite. She amazes me with her men's voices - I sometimes forget that there isn't a male narrator doing those parts. Her voice for the American man was so good in this one. I enjoyed this book very much, even with the weak ending. 3.5 stars.

One more miniseries completed courtesy of Netflix streaming and my Roku. I watched Bleak House this week. Man, is that a long, dreary, depressing story. So Dickensian. Can I consider the book read after watching this? I feel that the producers of this miniseries followed the entire book exactly, but I don't really know since I have not read the book (and do not plan to now).3 stars - it was long and depressing, but it was well done with good acting.

I started listening to Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank and narrated by Will Patton. It's still early into the story, but I'm pretty much hooked. Good writing and pretty good narration.

15 Days

We're 15 days away from closing on our first house. I'm getting excited. And impatient to just be moved in already. There's so much I want to do to make it our home. There are so many ideas swirling in my head (and my Pinterest boards). There are rugs picked out, sofas picked out, linens identified to be looked at in person, walls to paint, a back yard to make kid friendly, a living room to be turned into a school room, offices to set up, pictures to hang, meals to cook, lives to live.

God had blessed us immensely in our nearly 7 years as a family. We are excited to embark on this leg of our journey. My prayer for this house is that the Lord will be central, this will be the home that the kids always come to (ours and their friends), our guests will enjoy warm and welcoming hospitality, and where grace and love are abundant.

Thank you, Lord, for this gift.

Edyookashun

Before Beau and I were even married, we discussed the blessing of children and what to do with any children with whom God chose to bless us. Interestingly, we both expressed an interest in home schooling. Also interestingly, while concerned with the potential for propaganda being taught (climate change, evolution, self-esteem focus, etc.) and increasingly anti-Christian climate in public schools, our greater concern was the actual stuff our kids would or would not learn from the government run schools. Being a single income household private school was not going to be an option. And we both were interested in a more classical education, so home school has been our plan from before the birth of our little blessings.

Before I go further, let me acknowledge that there are excellent public schools. Our region boasts some of the top school systems in the country, high test scores, and loads of Ivy League-bound graduates. And there are many excellent, caring teachers (I am friends with a few and grateful for their hard work and dedication to their students) who work hard to educate the students who come through their classrooms. Beau and I merely want to have a little more control and flexibility with the education of our kids. We want to teach from a Biblical worldview. We want to give them more than what they may receive in a public school - more focused lessons in their learning style and level, more well-rounded subjects (life is school!), more autonomy in the learning environment (self-teaching is good), less homework (school is work), more field trips, more time to play (kids need play time and lots of it).

Beau has been "teaching" the kids since they were infants. For him every moment is a teachable moment. In the past couple of years he worked on teaching Jesse how to write his letters and now he has him doing some basic math (simple addition and subtraction) most days. He's reading well and increasing his vocabulary pretty much daily. And Molly is learning, too. She counts well and has known her alphabet and numbers for a long time. She has a pretty large vocabulary, too. Having an older brother helps spur her to learn more in order to keep up.

So now that Jesse is 5, it's time to make things official. He's supposed to start kindergarten in the fall. We're making the move to notify the county that we're going to be home schooling. We've been reading up on curricula and methods and it's all very overwhelming. I put out the call for curricula recommendations on Facebook and I got a lot of great recommendations and advice. Based on that I have a long list of curricula that have been tested and approved and some basic advice for the early years. With that, the plan for this year is to keep doing what we've been doing (I say we, but it's mostly Beau) - math and grammar (vocab/reading/writing). To make things easier for Beau, because he is still teaching online courses with Liberty University, we bought a basic math workbook and a grammar book for first grade (we believe that Jesse is mostly at that skill level, but where he's behind we can supplement) and Beau takes the kids to the library regularly where they can stock up on new reading material for Jesse to read or for us to read to both of them.

As to the socialization of the kids, I refer you to this post, which pretty much sums up where we are already. That said, we plan to get Jesse signed up for soccer again in the fall and maybe get Molly into a dancing class (Irish step since she already has the hopping thing going when she dances around the house). Our new neighborhood has a lot of littles for them to play with and there are the kids they meet in their classes at church. And we hope to get involved with a home school co-op or group in our new neighborhood, too. I'm not worried about their social skills.

YouTube of the Day: Mister Rogers Rulz

Reading Room and Moovies Reviews

There are two books and one movie to review.

The first book is Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James. I didn't finish it. It was that bad. The end. I gave it 2 stars at the Audible.com site because while the story sucks, the narrator was good. She deserves a star of her own for managing to read that crap so well.

The second book is actually a collection of short stories, Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey. This one defies description without giving away huge spoilers. I'll give you the Amazon brief:

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

From the first chapter I was hooked. I love this book. It's different from what I normally read, well written, compelling and interesting characters, a good mystery that builds, solid pacing. I think this is my favorite book of 2012 so far. 5 stars. And the bonus is it's only $5.99 for the Kindle.

Currently listening to Death of a Gossip by MC Beaton.

[Edited, June 8]:  Finished First Shift: Legacy by Hugh Howey on the Kindle. This is Wool #6. 4 stars. A good prequel to Wool, but it should be read as #6.

Currently reading Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue by Hugh Howey on the Kindle.

The one movie to review is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I felt confused for maybe the first 45 minutes of this one, but then all the threads started to come together so that by the end I was totally tracking with it. I loved all of the cast - such a great collection of good actors. Gary Oldman as George Smiley was so good. He's a chameleon, man. So talented.

I liked that it had a late 1970s feel to it to match the actual story. I told Beau that I sort of reminded me of The French Connection only without the car chases. 4 stars out of 5. It lost one for the confusion factor.