the gookins dot net

We started back to school at the beginning of August, trying to tackle the rest of modern history before we bring on the science, the math, and whatever else it is we’re supposed to be doing. I grossly underestimated the amount of time this is going to take, but that’s okay, we’ve had some really good discussions and learning going on. I’m pleased to see the kids taking more of an interest in history. Finally.

This morning we started off by finishing reading an historical fiction book, “Witness” by Karen Hesse and discussing racism & the KKK in the 1920s, which is the main topic of the book. Our discussion drifted into the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, which brought us to watching Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech on youtube. Coincidentally, that speech was given August 28, 1963 - 47 years ago tomorrow.

Earlier in the morning Chris O’Donnell had posted a link to this editorial cartoon on his facebook page and I couldn’t help but see the tie-in. I showed the kids and asked them what they thought it meant and what they thought of it, and showed them a Venn diagram I had posted a link to on facebook earlier this week. Both related to the current theme of hatred toward Muslims in America. All three could see the connection of everything we had covered in just a short time, and that prejudice is still alive and well in the United States of America.

We concluded that prejudice and hatred are an all too common theme in our history, which brought us to one of my favorite quotes:

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. - Winston Churchill.

You’d think that was the end, right? The lesson was hammered home when an old classmate of mine (all through Catholic school, mind you) made a comment on a facebook “discussion” about letting “them” know they’re not welcome here (sorry folks, no link there. avert your eyes from the spectacle).

I couldn’t have written a better lesson plan that rolled all into one connected day if I had tried.

What have you learned today?

Allison turned 9 today, and we’ve been so busy that the traditional happy birthday post almost didn’t get written until after midnight. Allison had dance pictures all morning, then we had to get groceries for her chosen birthday dinner (homemade Chinese food). This was followed by opening presents, a visit from her cousins, making a giant birthday cookie (Allie even made the frosting and decorated it herself). Then it was cooking and eating, and cleaning up and more eating. I think she had a good day.

Our littlest munchkin is now officially halfway to adulthood. The fact that she is growing up is all too apparent in that none of her gifts this year were toys (except for two more Webkinz). The girl who used to reliably ask for Barbies or Littlest Pet Shop is now happy with clothes, jewelry, and gift cards. But as much as I want her to stay my little girl forever, I’m very proud of the young lady she is becoming.

Happy Birthday Allison!

Jessica tested for her 1st Dan Black Belt rank yesterday, and did an awesome job. She earned her temporary Black Belt last August, and after she is promoted on Tuesday will officially be a 1st Dan Black Belt. She says she’ll continue doing Tae Kwon Do until she is too old do it anymore. If she is determined to do so, I have no doubt she could become a Master (5th Dan) or even a Grand Master (7th Dan) someday. Needless to say we are very proud of her.

Jessica turns 14 today. Inconceivable!

Powerful.

Speedy.

Goofy.

Loving.

Smart.

A super friend.

Snuggly.

Ornery.

Serious.

Beautiful.

Amazing.

Jessica, you are all that we could ever wish for in a daughter. Happy birthday.

A quick word of congratulations to Jessica, who just finished NaNoWriMo for the second year, and Allison who just did her first. In case you’re not familiar, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, an annual event in which tons of crazy people try to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in one month’s time.

Jessica participates in their Young Writer’s Program, where kids get to set their own word-count goals. Jessica’s goal this year was 40,000 words, and she passed that mark this evening. Her novel is not finshed yet though. She says it’s probably a little more than half done, which should put it at around 80,000 words when complete, which is pretty close to the average length of a novel.

Allison, taking after her big sister, decided to do it this year too. She set her goal at 500 words which she actually passed some time ago. I think it is was easier to reach than she expected. I believe she is at around 1000 words so far and she also is not finished. Good job girls! I never doubted that you could do it.

Allie: “If you go dumpster diving downstairs, you can find food.”

***

Allie: “Like, who would like to visit with that freaky dress-up guy?”

(go ahead and take your best guess at the context of the above two quotes)

***

Don: “Can I have one of your big Hershey bars?”
Matt: “Eat it and die.”

***

Matt: ” By order of the belly vote, eggs have been elected for breakfast.”

Jess: “Mom, I think I want to get my hair cut this weekend, but I don’t know how I want it yet.”

Matt: “How about a mullet?”

Don left it up to me to ’splain the happenings of why Matt won’t be doing soccer. Or fencing. Or playing football at the park with friends for a few weeks.

First off though, I’m pissed at myself because I missed a planning meeting Sunday due to brain fry from overscheduling. I realized it this morning, then realized I had double scheduled us this afternoon for bowling and the park.

We went bowling for a little over an hour, I got to talk with my friend Bobbi while the youngins bowled the longest game ever (the ball rolls mighty slowly when the bowlers are 4, 6, 8, and 10). Bobbi filled me in on all the info from Sunday’s meeting.

Then off to the park. One of the older girls has been feeling under the weather, and they left for the doctor after we all took a look at her huge tonsils. We found out later that she has mono.

Matt and his friend Dylan started a game of “500″ (catching football passes for points). Matt fell catching a pass and Dylan landed on top of Matt’s left shoulder. Dylan got up right away and said when he fell on Matt he heard a “crack”. That was the sound of Matt’s clavicle breaking. I saw the x-ray right after they took it and it was quite obvious. The sucky part was that we went to our clinic. They had to send us to the hospital for x-rays. The radiologist sent us to the ER to see another doc. The ER couldn’t figure out why we were there. We waited forever for them to get everything straight by talking to the doctor and radiology. So two doctors, one x-ray, about twenty different nurses asking the same damn questions, and probably $1000 later we have ten Tylenol #3’s and a little sling. He didn’t even get the second x-ray to check for shoulder damage or much of an exam at the hospital. It was a wee bit frustrating. I am hoping they aren’t overlooking something else by focusing on the obvious. He was a brave little guy. He has a pretty high pain tolerance, but was gray and sweaty and cried a bit on the way to the clinic. I felt soooo bad for him.

So our schedule’s a little more free over the next three weeks or so. Matt will be back in action, oh, about the time soccer season is over.

On the drive to fencing tonight, I looked in the rear-view mirror at Matt, who was staring out the window. “Whatcha’ thinking about?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
Thinking I would give him something to mull over for awhile, I said to him, “you can’t be thinking about nothing, that’s impossible. Try it. Try thinking about nothing for a minute.”
We drive on in silence then a minute or so later I say, “Well, did you try it?”
Then Matt gets this grin on his face and says to me, “You can’t think about nothing; you can only not think about anything.”
Zow. I was a little amazed that he would make a distinction like that. So I was the one left with something to ponder for awhile…

At 10:17 this morning Matt moved out of his single-digit years. It’s hard to believe that little booger has been around for that long.

In honor of his big day, I uploaded a boatload of pictures of him to the Matt Flickr set, dating back to 2002. Before that I’d have to figure out how to use my scanner.

Here’s the oldest one we have on the computer currently, ignore the fact that he is wearing pink and lavender pj’s.

He was being particularly obnoxious yesterday evening, and in what I thought was a threat to not receive any presents I said, “Matt do you want me to wrap your presents?”
He answered matter-of-fact, “Nah, you can just bring ‘em up here unwrapped.”
I guess he didn’t take it the way I intended it.

So leave a comment wishing the little dude a happy birthday, and go check out his new pics, and notice how frequently he is goofing off in them.

Jessica and Allison are out camping with grandma and grandpa at Saylorville Lake (their page isn’t currently loading, don’t know if this has anything to do with the flooding. yes, it is flooded, and my family is camping there) yesterday and today. It’s been quiet here. At first I felt bad that we didn’t invite a friend over for Matt, but how often do you get to spend one-on-one time with your kids? Yeah, me either.

Yesterday we played a few rounds of Blokus. Don and I both took him to fencing, something we’ve never been able to do before. He played several games on the Wii with Don and got to stay up late.

Today we lounged around (nothing new there!). I asked him if there was anything he wanted to do today that the girls never want to do, he replied, “Naah. But they never want to play LIFE.” He seemed happy to play a game. After lunch we’re walking down to Dairy Queen since we never get to go there. It’s a risky place for Jessica due to her peanut allergy, so it’s a pretty special treat to him.

What a smarty pants.

Me: “We need to get another nunchuck for the Wii so I can box you.”

Matt: “Yeah, you mean so I can beat you at boxing.”

It’s been crazy around here and I haven’t much felt like blogging lately, just in case you wondered and were worried that Don had sent me deep sea diving without scuba gear or something. Anyway, here’s some of the crazy busy stuff I’ve been doing.

Allison had her final dance competition in Omaha on Saturday. She and I drove over (okay, so I didn’t actually let her drive) on Friday and stayed in a hotel since we didn’t want to get up at 5 am and drive 2-1/2 hours before slapping on a thick coat of makeup and sparkly clothes. She also wanted to watch her teammates Carlee and Harrison perform their duet Friday. We checked in, then watched a bit of the routines before heading out to find dinner, which consisted of driving around Omaha with Miss Indecisive. She could not make up her mind and when I finally told her I was going to decide and picked Old Chicago so I could have a beer, there was a 45 minute wait and I said forget it. We ended up back at the diner next to our hotel. I then spent the evening trying to pretend that I didn’t feel like the thing on Sesame Street that they sing about “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong, can you guess which one is not like the others by the time I finish this song.” The competition went okay, they didn’t do as well as the two previous competitions, but oh well. She has talked off and on all year about not doing competition team next year. It took me a while to realize that I think I wanted this more for her than she wanted it for herself. She is not putting her full effort into because she is not that interested in it. Now that I’ve realized this I don’t feel like I need to talk her into doing it next year. If she wants to be on the competition team again in the fall she can, but if she decides not to, that’s okay too.

While in Omaha I missed Matt’s first fencing tournament. There is one coming up in June here in Des Moines and I’m excited to get to see him, since all I’ve seen are the pictures and a few classes last fall. He really seems to enjoy it, and you can not believe the excitement on his face when his own equipment arrived Monday. Sunday we traveled to the blooming metropolis of Maxwell, Iowa for Matt’s soccer game. They were very well matched teams, so it was an exciting game and the boys were tired by the third quarter, but they stuck with it and won. And Matt lost two teeth this week. He has SIX MORE loose ones. I’ll be sure to post a picture when he has only a half of a mouthful of teeth left.

Tonight I started taking a soap-making class with my friend Heather. We made a few bars tonight but have to wait til next week’s class to bring them home. It was fun and interesting and I can’t wait to try out my soap. But tonight I smell goo-ood from all of the essential oils that got on my hands. Next I want to learn to make cheese. I know, I am such a geek.

Jessica had a big night at tae kwon do. She got to lead class. I missed it, of course, because I was at my soap class, and Don missed it, because he was at Matt’s last scout meeting of the year.

Next up: babysitting the cousins, more soccer, a horse show, a trip to Reiman Gardens in Ames, a get together with friends, the Eastern Iowa Homeschool Conference, even more soccer, and two Girl Scout meetings, both which involve pizza. Too bad I can’t have a beer, I think I’m going to need it.

Matthew had his first-ever fencing tournament today. It was an in-house tournament to help some of the fencers practice up for an upcoming regional tournament, and to let the newer fencers like Matt get some experience in a more fun and casual atmosphere. It was a 3-person team event, and Matt’s team placed last (out of three teams). The other two teams were all more experienced fencers, so Matt’s team actually did pretty well (points-wise), considering two of the three members were first-timers.

I’m sure I’m not biased or anything, but I thought Matt did really well. Several parents of other fencers did actually comment to me that they were impressed with him, and after one of his bouts his opponent told him that he was “really good at parrying”. Here’s a couple photos. He’s on the left in both, wearing club equipment that’s really too large for him.

I think I had my first crisis of non-theism last week, and I’d like to report that I came through fine.

Over the weekend I ventured into the normally off-limits area of our house known as “Jessica’s room”. There is usually some sort of reverse black-hole around her room that forcefully expels any (parental) matter, but due to some unknown anomaly in the space-time continuum, I found myself in there trying to calmly talk her out of her own minor crisis which involved the dreaded subject of “math”.

It was then that I noticed two books on her desk that made me pause. Now I should point out that Jessica goes through books like most kids go through candy. That is to say, she reads a lot of books. But these books were not her normal fare. One was “The Prayer of Jabez for Teens” and the other was “Piercing Proverbs“. I stood there thinking “why is she reading religious books?” This gnawed at me for a little while, but I soon forgot about it and went on with my day. (I should add as a side note that the irony was not lost on me that most parents would be happy finding religious books in their child’s room, but would be alarmed if they found something like “the God Delusion” or “God is Not Great“.)

Then awhile later, Jess asked me to log into iTunes so she could download some music. She had some money left in our iTunes account from some gift cards from last year, and finally found something she wanted.

And what was she downloading? Christian music! So that got me all freaked out again. Was someone trying to influence my daughter’s religious beliefs? Was it her friends? I know that a couple of her friends come from families that are pretty religious-y (and they’re not home-schooled, btw) so I had to wonder.

I brought it up to Christine that night and she responded with the simple statement, “she’s finding her own way”. Of course I know in her mind she added something along the lines of “Duh. Just chill out, you neurotic dorkwad.” She was, of course, absolutely right.

What exactly was I thinking? It took me nearly 40 years to figure out that I’m an atheist (or more accurately, an agnostic atheist) and I was expecting Jessica to avoid the religious path that I myself started her on, simply because I’ve let her know that I no longer believe in God? That’s either pretty arrogant of me or pretty disrespectful towards her as a thinking individual, or maybe both.

I may periodically need to remind myself to relax and trust in the intelligence of my children. Whether they end up Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Deist, or nonreligious really doesn’t matter. It’s about being who they are and about how they treat others that counts. I was reminded of this once again this morning when I read the latest post from Dale McGowan, who says to let them find their own way more eloquently than I ever could.