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

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

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

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

I Can't Believe I'm Saying This

The White Sox are playing the Cubs this weekend and as incredible as this is for me to imagine the series is now for just more than bragging rights and the inaugural BP Cup.

Let's go back 2 weeks to May 10th. The White Sox were on a 2 game winning streak and had won 5 of their last 10 games. However they were 26-33 overall and were 3rd in their division 8.5 games behind the division leading Twins. They were 7 games below .500 and just had finished their second consecutive sub .500 home stand. This was a far cry from the team that I had predicted to win the 2010 World Series. Traditionally when you get that many games below .500 it can take well over a month to approach the .500 level again.

At the Time, the Cubs were in a nearly identical situation. The Cubs were 27-33 overall, 3-7 in their last 10 in third place in their division, 7.5 games behind the then leading Cincinnati Reds.

The Sox beat the Cubs in the first two games at Wrigley which brought their winning streak to 4 (a season high) before losing in a monumental pitchers duel between Ted Lilly of the Cubs and Gavin Floyd of the White Sox on June 13th.

Since that Sunday night two weeks ago, the White Sox have yet to lose a game. They have swept the abysmal Pittsburgh Pirates, the mediocre Washington Nationals and the stellar Atlanta Braves. The 9 game winning streak has brought the white Sox over .500 for the first time since Opening Day. The Sox are 37-34 as they face the Cubs in a 3 game series at U.S. Cellular Field. They are still in third place in their division, but only 2games behind the second place Tigers and 2.5 games behind the Twins. Yes, in 2 weeks they have gained 6 games on the Twinkies. That is incredible! The Twins and Detroit finish up inter league play on the road this weekend against 2 very good National League East opponents (Mets and Braves respectively). This means that The Sox have a pretty good opportunity to gain even more ground on their division rivals. There is even a small mathematical possibility that The Sox could be in first place as early as Sunday Evening. That this has all transpired in the past two weeks is basically incomprehensible to me.

I''l be back in a few days with a Cubs Sox recap.

Conventional Wisdom

I have decided to blend this edition of things fortnightly with a long promised synopsis of the Home School Convention I was at earlier this month. So, here are a few things I learned at the 2010 I.C.H.E (Illinois Christian Home Educators) Conference.

Thing 1: Be Careful out there.

A friend of mine was a seminar speaker at the conference.

He spoke about identity theft and on-line safety. Did I mention he was a police officer? I am planning to have him be a guest speaker at a blogging class I am offering at my co-op this year. Hopefully we can work all the arrangements out. I plan to interview him later this Summer and feature that interview here.

Here is a bit of what he had to say at the conference. . .



I have learned quite a bit from him already on Internet safety and as a result will be implementing some changes in this blog in the near future.

Thing 2: Pass the catch up.

One of the best things about the conference is seeing old friends. Between people from our co-op, our church, we were running into friends from other places we lived, college and even saw a co-worker of Amy's that we did not know home schooled. These "chance" meetings are real energizers and encourager's. Maybe next year I'll run into my Aunt Eileen!

Thing 3: Tongue Tied

I had the opportunity to work off some of the cost of the conference by working behind the scenes at the conference. One of these jobs was by working as a "host" to seminar speakers. Basically what I do is introduce myself to the speaker 20 or so minutes before they speak and make sure they have everything they need. During the talk I make sure that the place is quiet as all of the talks are being recorded. I was very happy that I was assigned to host a seminar that Dr. Voddie Baucham, a keynote speaker at the conference was speaking at. I spoke with Him briefly on 2 occasions before his address. I had been planning to tell Him how much I enjoyed his work. This was the third conference I had heard him speak at. I also wanted to tell Him how much I enjoyed the book of His that I read. I had even thought about telling Him that I was going to be blogging a review of it soon and give him my business card. But alas I clammed up, which is extremely uncommon for me. I'm not even sure that I told Him my name. Maybe next time.

Thing 4. Guess which one did not speak at the conference.

A conference is a good place to hear quotes. Either quotes speakers attribute to others, or direct quotes from the speaker themselves.

Here are 3 quotes I heard at the conference. Try to guess which speaker was not there in person?

• Museums are the secular temples of our day- Bill Jack

• God says don't walk sit or stand (with sinners) and we say how about marriage? Voddie Baucham

• A pious spouse is a s necessary as a sound arm or leg. - Martin Luther.

Before you answer please be aware that George Washington Carver was announced as one of the speakers.

You were correct if you said Martin Luther. As for GWC, there was a man there who impersonated Carver. I was unable to go to the seminar which was a little disappointing since my daughter had just finished reading a biography about Him.

Thing 5: I'll take History for 300 . (It actually was not that much.)

As I've mentioned previously. One of our big expenditures each year is buying curriculum at the Home School Conference. Some of the stuff we just pick up at the conference and others is delivered to our house a week or two after the conference is over. We are trying out some new curricula this fall and continuing with others. One new thing that looks really promising is called the Mystery of History. Parts of it were offered at our co-op this year and though none of my children participated, it seemed pretty cool. We are doing the ancient history unit this coming year. The more I review the materials the more psyched I am for the class to begin.

Well those are some things I wanted to share from the convention. If you have things you want to talk about it. (How Fred Rogers of me) please join in below.

Next Time: A Good Book.