Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Blessings
We were blessed with everything coming together yesterday, for the house we are selling. The sell is now approved by everyone who needs to approve it and we will sign tonight and it will be closed by Friday. Yeah! We also found a family which has been approved by the property management company to take over our lease. Yeah! I appreciate everyone's prayers for our family. It has helped a lot. Thank you!
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Pumpkin Farm
We went to Bishop's Pumpkin Farm with my sister-in-law and her kids this Friday also. This is one of the coolest places. In addition to a hay ride that leads out to acres of pumpkins that you can pick straight of the vine, there is a petting zoo,
mattresses covered with hay to jump on,
a wooden train,
a real train,
a three story treehouse with a slide
and a dirt pit underneath,
tractor tire land and more that we didn't have time to get to.
My daughter saw a gopher hole and patiently waited with the camera for it to come out and snapped this picture.
Poetry Park Day
Our Homeschool group had a poetry park day this last Friday. The kids each either read or memorized a poem. None of mine actually learned a new poem for this, I think it would have made it more meaningful if they had. They each recited one from memory though. I am amazed how easy it is for them to memorize them. Kamron has over 30 memorized now and Logan has 3 the others are somewhere in between. I set up a card catalog to keep track of them, as I have them continuosly review their old ones so that they are not forgotten.
I print out each poem and glue it to a 3 x 5 card. Often several of the children will memorize the same poems, but I find it better if to print it several times, so that each child has every poem they know in their file. The poem they are currently working on stay in the front and they go over it each day and then they pull out the two cards behind, someone else holds those cards and they recite those poems and then the cards go in the back. It has really helped us keep track of the poems so much better.
I need to add more cards though, because I find that some of the kids memorize the other children's poems just by hearing them repeated.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
An Update
My life is hectic and crazy. End of update.
Just kidding, but only about the end of that. Kevin has lost 2 jobs since May, has been out of work for 6 weeks, and is currently on a short term contract, which is not that great. Our house that was supposed to be sold in May is still not, but we are 10 days from it if the second who already approved the deal in May approves it again, which they said they won't unless we take an unsecured loan this time. Oh, that will be just fine. We moved out of that house in May and it is currently in foreclosure, which means all of the credit card companies just informed us they have frozen our credit. Nice. My student loan check has been delayed until the 27th of October even though I started in August ("We're sorry for that glitch"). No problem. We attempted to cash out a Roth, the paperwork for it has mysteriously been lost by the company. We understand, that happens all the time. We have a life insurance policy that we could cash out, but it is with AIG, and they are not exactly running smoothly right now. Lovely. Since my husband does not work in this town we are attempting to move down with family, but our rental company informed us that if we break our lease without finding a replacement tenant they will sue us, so we have started advertising the property. Eight people looked at it last week, one picked up an application, it does not look like they will be approved. I have to start a practicum at a school next month and I don't know where I will be living. Of course, this is on top of homeschooling, me going to school, having a midterm this week, running the kids around, trying to keep up with the house, baking everything from scratch-because that is what you do when you are cooking from food storage, and then there are all of the other little things that are part of my job. An older lady spoke at church one Sunday and said, "When you are younger you think that life will get better, it doesn't it just has a larger variety of problems." I looked at my husband and we both said, "You have got to be kidding."
I have also met some really neat people lately. People who heard we were in need and came to help. One woman came and showed me how to cook one turky to last for 10 meals, and then gave me a lot of other ideas. This is a woman who is in a spot too and also has six young kids. This example has been huge. My kids have also made a lot of friends in this new area. Aubrey is learning the dynamics of little girl spats, betrayals and "best friends." Even homeschooling has these learning opportunities, but at least it is kept to only about twice a week at gymnastics and parkdays.
We have also been blessed with several family members who are eager to have us move in with them, and it is nice to feel wanted and not a burden. I am in a one of the few classes that are both interesting and relevant-a class on helping students understand mathematics. And Kamron finally mastered long division, while Aubrey is steadily gaining ground on the understanding of place value. She has also decided she is going to be a scientist and we now have a model of the solar system on our ceiling, nature journals filled with drawings and descriptions, a bucket of worms in the backyard, mixtures of scents as she has created her own perfumes, unknown mixtures that have crystalized, been examined under the microscope and drawn-she thinks she will soon be rich from these- and the beginnings of a weather station. I don't think she has picked a field yet.
Things will work out. And life will have less problems when I get older-I think that lady must have had it pretty easy as a young Mom.
Just kidding, but only about the end of that. Kevin has lost 2 jobs since May, has been out of work for 6 weeks, and is currently on a short term contract, which is not that great. Our house that was supposed to be sold in May is still not, but we are 10 days from it if the second who already approved the deal in May approves it again, which they said they won't unless we take an unsecured loan this time. Oh, that will be just fine. We moved out of that house in May and it is currently in foreclosure, which means all of the credit card companies just informed us they have frozen our credit. Nice. My student loan check has been delayed until the 27th of October even though I started in August ("We're sorry for that glitch"). No problem. We attempted to cash out a Roth, the paperwork for it has mysteriously been lost by the company. We understand, that happens all the time. We have a life insurance policy that we could cash out, but it is with AIG, and they are not exactly running smoothly right now. Lovely. Since my husband does not work in this town we are attempting to move down with family, but our rental company informed us that if we break our lease without finding a replacement tenant they will sue us, so we have started advertising the property. Eight people looked at it last week, one picked up an application, it does not look like they will be approved. I have to start a practicum at a school next month and I don't know where I will be living. Of course, this is on top of homeschooling, me going to school, having a midterm this week, running the kids around, trying to keep up with the house, baking everything from scratch-because that is what you do when you are cooking from food storage, and then there are all of the other little things that are part of my job. An older lady spoke at church one Sunday and said, "When you are younger you think that life will get better, it doesn't it just has a larger variety of problems." I looked at my husband and we both said, "You have got to be kidding."
I have also met some really neat people lately. People who heard we were in need and came to help. One woman came and showed me how to cook one turky to last for 10 meals, and then gave me a lot of other ideas. This is a woman who is in a spot too and also has six young kids. This example has been huge. My kids have also made a lot of friends in this new area. Aubrey is learning the dynamics of little girl spats, betrayals and "best friends." Even homeschooling has these learning opportunities, but at least it is kept to only about twice a week at gymnastics and parkdays.
We have also been blessed with several family members who are eager to have us move in with them, and it is nice to feel wanted and not a burden. I am in a one of the few classes that are both interesting and relevant-a class on helping students understand mathematics. And Kamron finally mastered long division, while Aubrey is steadily gaining ground on the understanding of place value. She has also decided she is going to be a scientist and we now have a model of the solar system on our ceiling, nature journals filled with drawings and descriptions, a bucket of worms in the backyard, mixtures of scents as she has created her own perfumes, unknown mixtures that have crystalized, been examined under the microscope and drawn-she thinks she will soon be rich from these- and the beginnings of a weather station. I don't think she has picked a field yet.
Things will work out. And life will have less problems when I get older-I think that lady must have had it pretty easy as a young Mom.
Economics
Okay, I have a theory. I’ve been thinking about the current economic situation. What does the privately-owned, non-taxed, for-profit, Federal Reserve gain by this whole economic situation, besides a larger loan out to the government and the interest they will achieve off of that loan? Obviously, I’m thinking more money to roll in is not their endgame. I was watching Ben Bernanke give a speech on C-Span. He made it clear that he wanted every large bank to be regulated by a board-and guess who is on that board. Yep, the private for-profit company, which is not regulated, audited or taxed, gets to regulate all of the large banks that the US government has helped with their financial package. They get to set rules, approve mergers, approve policy, approve pay and retirement packages for these banks. The Wall Street Journal reported on the meeting that the government held with some of these large banks. “While the program is voluntary, Treasury essentially forced nine major U.S. banks to agree to take $125 billion from the federal government. Treasury will buy $25 billion in preferred stock from Bank of America -- including soon-to-be acquired Merrill Lynch -- as well as from J.P. Morgan and Citigroup; $25 billion from Wells Fargo & Co.; $10 billion from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley; $3 billion from Bank of New York Mellon; and about $2 billion from State Street. The remainder will be available to small and medium-size institutions that apply for an investment.” And “Wells Fargo & Co. Chairman Richard Kovacevich, who attended Monday's meeting at the Treasury, expressed reservations about the plan, insisting that his company wasn't in need of government funding, according to a person briefed on the meeting.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122398468353632299.html So, the large banks, which didn’t need help and had not even gotten into to the sub-prime lending, nor want government money were forced into signing, while the smaller banks, which do need help have to apply. We know that Federal Reserve and the Treasury have created a union, much like that of a domineering husband who controls all the movements of his wife and now this union gets to control the large banks. So, I’ve got to ask what happened that ticked off the Federal Reserve so much that they put this in place? Did one or all of these large banks have the audacity to disagree with the Federal Reserve when it said contract or stop loaning or something else? And then I have to ask what is their plan for the future that they needed the unity of all of these large banks for, but that the large banks would not agree to? Is it the collapse of the dollar and the emergence of the Amero? http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=2512, Or do they want something else? Whatever it is they have no pesky huge banks to stand in their way now.
Here is good video about the history behind the Federal Reserve http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936.
Okay, I promise to get back to homeschooling and family topics soon. This has just been one of mine and my husbands major areas of study right now, plus it's kind of important.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122398468353632299.html So, the large banks, which didn’t need help and had not even gotten into to the sub-prime lending, nor want government money were forced into signing, while the smaller banks, which do need help have to apply. We know that Federal Reserve and the Treasury have created a union, much like that of a domineering husband who controls all the movements of his wife and now this union gets to control the large banks. So, I’ve got to ask what happened that ticked off the Federal Reserve so much that they put this in place? Did one or all of these large banks have the audacity to disagree with the Federal Reserve when it said contract or stop loaning or something else? And then I have to ask what is their plan for the future that they needed the unity of all of these large banks for, but that the large banks would not agree to? Is it the collapse of the dollar and the emergence of the Amero? http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=2512, Or do they want something else? Whatever it is they have no pesky huge banks to stand in their way now.
Here is good video about the history behind the Federal Reserve http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936.
Okay, I promise to get back to homeschooling and family topics soon. This has just been one of mine and my husbands major areas of study right now, plus it's kind of important.
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