2 questions for the 4th of July

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It has been quite a while since I participated in Thursday 2 questions at Self Sagacity. My independence day activities have given me few questions to ask.

Question 1: When is the last time you marched/walked in a parade? If you have never marched in one, when is the last time you went to a parade?

I marched in a local parade today and actually had 3 separate invitations to participate. 2 political candidates (one a homeschooling father, who I will be featuring in a future post) needed marchers but I ended up marching with Spider Droid and his robotics team.

This cyclist was in the group behind us. Right before the parade started his horn sprung a leak. Some of the robotics kids gave him a few I love robotics stickers and he patched up his horn easily. That was honking cool.

I asked myself question 1 on my way to the parade. As far as I could recall, before today the last time I walked in a parade was in a 4th of July parade in 1990 in Macomb, Illinois during my time at university there. What was unique about that experience was that a Christian group that was marching in the parade needed someone to carry a full size cross in the parade route. I remember this having a powerful spiritual impact on me, as I was able to reflect on how Jesus carried the cross in preparation for paying for my sins through his death and resurrection.

Question 2: What is your favorite part of the 4th of July holiday?

For me it is going to see the fireworks. It's not exactly the fireworks themselves, which were fantastic this year. It is actually tossing a ball or a Frisbee with Amy or the kids prior to the fireworks. Just a simple act of familial affection in a sea of patriotism and excess make me realize how much I "depend" on my family.

For more questions click here.

Next Time: Friday Fragments

Two Questions about Blogging Slump

 

I have not been posting very prolifically lately.  This is often because a) I don't have a lot of time to post or b) because when I have time, I can't think of a lot of good posting material. 

So here are my two questions that relate directly to this problem.

1) How do you bloggers carve out time in busy schedules to devote to posting?

2) What do you do when you have bloggers block?

Looking forward to the answers

For more questions head over to Self Sagacity.

The Best Christmas Gift Ever

Time once again for Thursday

@ Self Sagacity

Here are my two questions:

Question 1

What is the best Christmas present you ever received?

This year I received this book.

You might not be able to tell by the cover.  But this book is probably the best give I ever received. 

Here is what, the folks at Amazon call, a look inside.



That is my son reading and as I have mentioned in other posts, my son has really struggled learning to read.  This year he has made a series of breakthroughs and thus, this Christmas was able to read the entire book and my wife recorded it as a keepsake for me.  As I type this, I am beginning to cry.  I am so thankful to God that our hard work is paying off and thankful for a wife who loves us so much that she wanted to commemorate our achievement.

Question 2

What is your favorite part of your favorite season?

I think I like all 4 seasons of the year pretty much equally.  I certainly have my favorite part of each season.  For winter, it has to be what is scheduled for this evening.  Snow, and plenty of it.  I especially love sledding with the kids. 

Those are my 2 questions.  I am looking forward to your answers.
To see other people's questions or participate yourself, click here.

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This post's  featured HSBA blog is Handbook of Nature Study winner in the Best Homeschool Nature/Field Trip category.  I really like the look and feel of this blog.  It is the home of an outddor carnival that I want to look into more deeply in the future.  I really enjoyed this sample post.

Thursday 2 Questions @ Self Sagacity

I am not participating in Thursday 2 Questions. But that doesn't mean you can't check it out.

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Here's a puppyism that I heard at math today:

8 + 3, I don't need to use the number line, I can use my brain.

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HSBA Featured Winner

Ana Braga-Henebry's Journal - Best Super Homeschooler.

This is really a super homeschool blog.  It's interesting, informative, personal and loaded with variety.

Here is a Sample Post.

Two Questions Thursday: Things I've always wanted to do edition.

I am participating in Self Sagacity's Two Question Thursday for the first time in a long time. Here are my questions:

# 1 What have you always wanted to do, but never have done?

One of mine is go to the Ringling Brother's and Barnum Bailey Circus. I never have been. Sure, when I was a kid I was part of the audience at the Bozo Show. I even was one of those foolish kids who stood up thinking the arrow was pointing to them so they could play Bozo Buckets.
It was the kid next to me :(

I have even been to one of those travelling circuses that come to neighborhoods throughout the summer. But Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey. Those are they guys that do this

and this . . .


My wife and kids went a few years ago but I had to work.

Question # 2 What have you always wanted to do and did?

There are so many ways that I can answer that question. Tomorrow night I will be able to answer, going to the Ringling Brother's Barnum and Bailey Circus!

Yes, my dream is coming true tomorrow! Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Feld Entertainment is proud to present. . . Starting tomorrow, November 3rd and ending November 13th, the circus will be at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Il. Then the circus rolls into Chicago proper November 16th through the 27th at the United Center. If you are in the Chicago area this month I hope you can make it! But wait, you say, the circus is expensive. Well here is a special offer that I can pass on to you. All weekday shows: 4 tickets for $44.00. weekend shows $4.00 off. Here's the skinny.

Until tomorrow night, my answer will have to be running to and hopping on a train as it is moving out the station. This is one of those scenes you see on so many movies, A River Runs Through It, and A League of Their Own, just to mention a few that start with A. I had always wanted to do it and when I lived in Russia, and used to travel from Khabarovsk to Birobidjan, I accomplished that goal on more than one occasion. I never missed the train, and that's good, cause missing a train was never a thing I always wanted to do.

Speaking of trains, did you know . . .

That The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® circus train that brings Fully Charged® to each city on tour has a total of 59 cars, and has a total length over a mile long?

and . . .

That The 59 cars on the Blue Unit Train include: 4 animal stock cars, 30 coaches for living, 2 concession storage cars, 19 flat bed equipment cars, 1 pie car (diner), 1 generator car, 1 shop car, and 1 auxiliary generator/shop car?

So that's it for me and my questions. I am looking forward to your answers. I'll be back on Friday to talk about our time at the circus. For more of this week's questions click here.

Joplin Trip Day 3 Part 1

Before I get too far in the daily recaps of our Joplin trip, let me introduce you to the 4 members of our team that didn't go on the series of adventures recounted in my last 2 installments. They were an elder emeritus (not sure if that is his official title) of our church, his wife and 2 of his grandsons. They traveled up earlier than us and were volunteering prior to our arrival. They figure in to some really good stories coming up. In the radio business, we call that a tease. So keep your dial right here for future installments.

On Wednesday morning we woke up to a very warm day that would be 110 degrees for most of the day. We were served breakfast and then we had devotions. People were excited, but most of us still did not know what we were going to do for the day. Many of the team members had considerable skills in construction and knew exactly what they were best suited for. Others were so moved by the needs, they wanted to get to work right away. I can't speak for all the people who brought children on the trip, but the prevailing mood among them seemed to be to get them in a place where they could serve along side their children and keep them safe. Did I mention that it was 110 degrees out? The team drove to a church in Joplin called Joplin Family Worship Center. We filled out some paperwork for each team member and were then given our daily assignment. Many of the workers would go from JFWC to homes that needed work and some of the workers would volunteer at the center itself.

We were also told of an opportunity to do meals on wheels later that day which seemed like it would be a good place for the children to volunteer.

Since this is my trip log, I will concern myself with what Spider Droid and I did. Before I do, I should mention that all volunteers had to sign in and out every day. This is because the City of Joplin receives money from government disaster relief agencies for every man hour worked.

Spider Droid, myself, and a few other members of our team worked at a clothing distribution tent at JFWC. Spider Droid got to work immediately matching women's shoes with other children. He really enjoyed this task. I got to work putting men's shirts and pants on hangars and helping the customers, those affected by the tornado find what they need. Although I have very little experience in clothing retail, I took to it very well. As a customer service guru, I just love helping people.

We worked with volunteers from many states and situations. There was a team from Walmart in Benton, Arkansas. The individual employees came there about once a month and got paid by Walmart to volunteer. There were church groups from Indianapolis, day trippers from Kansas City and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the workers were Joplin residents affected by the tornado. Our customers would come and go but they were priority one.

As I worked, I heard many people comment about how disorganized things were. But as I watched the customers, all their needs were being met and they never commented on any disorganization. It is natural when working in a disaster area to think that you should be knowing more, but all I saw that day was God meeting peoples' needs.

I am going to finish day 3 tomorrow because I want to spend some time on the meals on wheels ministry we participated in. So, I will finish with one story that I think shows how peoples' needs were being met even when the person meeting those needs didn't get to see the impact she made.

It was so hot, that the volunteers would often leave the tent and go inside the air conditioned church building. I of course mandated this for Spider Droid who was having the time of his life serving with other children. On one such time out, I encountered a Joplin woman who was getting a little frustrated. She had brought a small bag of things to donate and was getting the unintentional run-a-round. People suggested that she go to the clothing tent to donate it. She said she had just been to a tent and was told it was not needed. (There were at least 4 outside stations and one inside station giving all manners of things from furniture to housewares besides the clothing.) I told her that I would take her bag and get it to the right place. She had donated 4 pairs of jeans and 3 alarm clocks. The people at the clothing tent reassured me that they were taking donations and were not aware that anyone had been turned away. I brought the alarm clocks to another tent and chatted with one of our team members who was working there for a minute. When I came back to the clothing tent, I was asked to help a customer who was having trouble finding jeans in his size. We looked and could not find any in his size. I realized I had the bag of jeans from that lady. Guess what, all 4 pair were his size! He took all 4. This woman probably will never know the immediate impact of her gift. But it was a reminder to me of God's providence.

To those who are regular readers of this blog. You know it's usually not all about Joplin and journals. For a little return to what passes for normal on these pages, I have decided to participate in a meme called Two Questions Thursday over at Self Sagacity at the end of this post.

My two questions are Joplin related.

1) reread this post and the previous two. What have I told you that has had the most impact on you?

2) What would you like to hear more about?

For those who have never played before go ahead and answer my questions as a comment here and then go back to Self Sagacity and look at the other questions out there.

Next Time: Warm Dinners, Hot Cars, Cool God!

Missouri Relief Project

Joplin Tornado 5, a photo by DMangus on Flickr.

Spider Droid and I have an opportunity next week to do a work project near Joplin, Missouri where a massive tornado decimated the city on May 22nd of this year.

I will be posting again before I leave with a little more info what he and I will be doing.

I am not the handiest guy with a hammer and that is putting it mildly. While we don't know exactly what we will be doing this is a work and constructrion trip, something that is definitely out of my comfort zone.

Yet when we heard of the trip we felt compelled that we should help any way we can.

This leads me to my 2 questions for the day.

1) How do you react to tragedy like a flood, tsunami, earthquake, act of terrorism etc.?

2) Have you ever felt compelled, called, motivated to do something out of your comfort zone? Did you do it? How did it go?

For more questions head back to Self Sagacity.

questions of fun, frugality and fears.

I went to Great America with the bigs yesterday. Great America is a Six Flags theme park in the Chicago area. I have been going to the park for more than 30 years. That means that the park or myself are very old or possibly both. Going to an amusement park can be kind of expensive in this day and age. Six Flags has a winter reading program and if your kids participate, each kid (K-6th grade) gets a ticket. This seems like a good idea at the time but when you factor in the cost of your ticket and other family members outside of the age range, along with parking and other amenities, the cost of these free tickets adds up pretty quickly.

I have noticed that in the past year Six Flags has been making changes, some small, some big, to help families in this tough economy. Don't get me wrong, I know they are helping families in order to encourage them to attend their parks so they can spend money there. But some of the changes are very positive to families on a budget.

In the past year the reading program has allowed teachers including home school teachers to win 1 ticket per class. So, my ticket was free yesterday as well.

Now remember I have been going to this park for a long time so let me give you a little history lesson. As you probably know, amusement park food is expensive having a captive audience and all. So in addition to going to your cars to eat food you brought from home, people would sometimes leave the park, have a meal and come back. Over the course of time, the park cracked down on these activities by a) not allowing cars to leave the park w/o paying the parking fee again and b) not readmitting people to the park after 6:00 p.m., this way allowing people to have lunch in their cars but not dinner.

Also a few years ago the park sold two types of parking spots. Closer to the park for more money and farther from the park for less. Which meant if you wanted to spend less money and eat in your car you would spend more time walking all the way to the back of the lot (sometimes past rows and rows of empty parking spaces to get to your car) spending the one commodity more precious to a frugal park goer than money, time.

This year the park made some great changes that really encouraged me. They may have been motivated more by the rows and rows of empty parking spaces I alluded to parenthetically in the last paragraph, who knows. First of all, I had decided to pay the higher amount for parking so the kids and I didn't have to walk all the way to the nether regions of the lot to park. As I drove in, I noticed that parking was again only 1 price, meaning I could park close to the entrance. That was pleasant surprise #1. Pleasant surprise #2 occurred when the parking attendant handed me my receipt and told me I could use it to reenter the park throughout the day. The third pleasant surprise came at about 1:00, as we exited the park for lunch. I read a sign saying that you could re-enter the park up until 9 pm. If you take all of the pleasant surprises and put them together, it gives the patron the opportunity to eat lunch or dinner outside of the park, or in the parking lot without additional cost.

All this leads up to my first question: How have you seen entertainment companies (movies, restraunts, museums, zoos, theme parks, etc...) compete for your business in this economy? And how have you benefited from it?

Question #2 comes from a fear I have of pit bulls. I am not scared of them myself, as much as I am of my children being eaten by one. My neighbor has 2 pit bulls: an adult that was abused as a puppy, and a really cute puppy. My brother-in-law has one also. Both my neighbor and brother-in-law are staunch defenders of pit bulls. It's not the pit bulls that are the problem, they say, it is the owners.

If that's the case, how come every pit bull attack story sounds exactly the same. It was a very friendly dog that never did anything wrong and then one day it snapped. I am sorry but I don't want my children or anyone else around the dogs when they do snap.

Question 2 then is what is a pet you would never want to have or even have live near you?


So those are my questions. For more Two Question Thursday head over to Self Sagacity.

The Next Big Thing on the Internet?!?

When I started this blogging adventure 2.5 years ago, I fully expected to be the next big thing on the internet. I didn't necessarily want to be. I just thought I was slated for fame. Now that it hasn't happened, I am not sure at all as to why not. Let's examine the package that is HomeSchoolDad.

1. I am young. (If 46 can be considered young.







2. I am vibrant (If taking 3 minutes to get off a couch can be considered vibrant.)







3. I am fun and exciting (I am actually fun and exciting. No, really.)







4. My children do things like this . . .




So, I don't understand with all that going for me, why I am not the next big thing on the internet. Maybe I should change my name to Ree and become the Pioneer Home School Dad?

Here is my first question for you. Why are you not the next big thing on the internet? Since an early age I have been a big fan of Steve Martin. It probably stems from watching him make balloon animals from unblown balloons on The Muppet Show. I memorized all of his stand up albums which are pure genius. I even love stuff I now disagree with. For example he once said:I believe that Ronald Reagan could make this country what it once was: A barren wasteland covered with ice. I love Ronald Reagan but that is classic misdirection and liberal or conservative, you have to admit: that's funny.

I say all this because I have been following Steve Martin's twitter feed. He has been doing this bluegrass thing and his new song about Paul Revere from the POV of his horse is lovely. If I ever had the chance to say something to Steve Martin, I would probably say something like, "Thank you for showing me that it was okay to view the world a little differently." This brings me to my second question for you: "If you got a chance to see a childhood (or adult idol )of yours, what would you say to him, her or it?"

So those are my two questions and I am sticking with them. For more of Thursday Two Questions click here.

Thursday Two Questions, already?

I can't believe it's been a week since I posted last. I am at least 3 posts behind. I have 2 book reviews I need to write and I want to talk about the oh, so excellent Home School Conference I attended over the weekend.

Well a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. It actually now starts with an I-phone. They have an app for that. But since I don't have an I-phone I'll go with the single step approach. I liked participating in Self Sagacity's Two Questions Thursday last week I thought I'd give it a shot again. I'll have to put off the book reviews and the conference comments (That sounds like a kind of Celestial Season Tea) until next time.

The book I am going to review if I ever get to it is Laura Ingall's Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie. I love reading these books to my family as they really give good perspective to things. For instance in Wilder's the Long Winter which preceded Little Town, Pa and Ma make the following observations on "new" technology. . .

"If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of a light," ma considered. "We didn't lack for light when I was a girl, before this new fangled kerosene was ever heard of.”

That's so," said pa. These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves - they're good things to have but the trouble is, folks get to depending on.

What's most telling is 3 of the 4 items mentioned are basically obsolete in Western Culture. Trains are still around but nowhere near what they were 150 years ago.

This brings me to my first question: What new technology do you have the most trouble living without?

My next question also stems from a book I am eventually going to review. The book called the Lost Art of Reading is an essay about the state of the book. The paper, ink, binding variety.

My question is this. Do you have a nook or Kindle or other e-reader or do you read books the old fashioned way or do you just not read books?

Those are my questions. For other peoples questions click here.

Next Time: Little Town Review. (Yes, I know I have been saying that for awhile.)

Thursday Two Questions

I am trying out a new meme today. Called Two Questions Thursday. The basic gist (The central thought, the common idea, - It.s one of Spider droids vocabulary words). is that you ask 2 questions and your readers and those linking to you from the meme answer those questions. The meme is hosted @ Self Sagacity.

When I first started blogging I participated in Mnoga (Russian for many) Memes. I even hosted one for awhile after the original owner decided to let it go. Recently I participate in them less and less. I occasionally will post @ Friday Fragments or Six Word Saturday but it's definitely not an every week affair.

My two questions today are about memes.

1) How come the majority of memes start the day before? For instance here I am asking my two questions for Thursday on a Wednesday. Considering the relative ease on most platforms of predating your material. It is not hard to time your post to begin at midnight the day of your meme.

2) When not participating in a meme for the week, do you still read it? I faithfully submitted over 25 Works for me Wednesday submissions before I finally realized that hints from Heloise is just not my bag. I really enjoyed reading all the hints but noticed that once I stopped being a contributor I also stopped being a regular reader.

So those are my questions and I am sticking to them. To join in answer my questions as a comment and then click here for more questions.

Next Time: Little Review of the Prairie