Thankful Thursday

1. The kids enjoyed going to a glow-in-the-dark dodgeball party for Xandir and his cousin, Alice last Thursday afternoon.

2. Last Friday, Cheri, Nadia, and I enjoyed a meal at Applebee's and a For King and Country Concert. We used a gift card for our meal and had free tickets because we were volunteers with Compassion. The only costs were the gasoline to get down to Hershey and back plus the fee to park, which I learned would have been $25 instead of $35 if I had prepaid for it online. Lesson learned! The concert was sold out, and 299 kids were sponsored that night! PTL! I got an email from the director of volunteers for the state of Pennsylvania, and he said it was my tenth time serving as a volunteer with Compassion. 

3. The boys enjoyed helping as candy runners at our church's Trunk or Treat. Oliver was Batman, and Ian used some things we had at home to create a Scrooge costume. Part of his costume included Oliver's suit jacket. Oliver LOVES to wear suit jackets, so I got him one at Target recently.

4. The VanHorns got 6 free tickets to see Daniel at Sight and Sound due to working at Knoebels. They invited Ian and Nadia to use two of their free tickets on Wednesday. They enjoyed spending that time with them! Since that meant Wednesday was going to be a day off from school, I invited Xandir over to spend a few hours playing with Oliver yesterday afternoon. 

5. Paul had lunch with Dave (former employee) today.

6. Because Ian's sleep study was postponed at the last minute, all five of us were able to help pack meals at Experience Missions for a few hours on Tuesday night. 

7. The weather has been unseasonably warm. Nadia would prefer it to be cooler, but I like warmer weather! Paul and I took Oliver and Milo trick or treating last night, and we didn't even need to wear a light coat! 

8. The man who purchased Kennedy Concrete took a one-year loan from Kennedy Concrete which was to be repaid by July 31, 2024. Up until this week he hadn't made any payments on the debt since December 2023. Thankfully, he made another payment this week which represented about 25% of the balance. Hopefully he'll pay the remaining 75% by the end of December. 

Opting out

 I don't recall exactly when I joined Facebook, but I'm guessing it was no later than 2007. From at least 2016 until 2024 I have had times where I have temporarily deactivated my account for varying amounts of time, but I never considered permanently deleting my account. However, that's the step I recently took. For a period of thirty days, I have the opportunity to undo that decision. Once the thirty days pass, it will truly all be gone. I decided that the "cons" outweighed the "pros." I have never used Twitter, and I had an extremely short stint of looking at Instagram. I do post the videos I create onto YouTube, but I view things on YouTube very infrequently - sometimes to watch church online or to watch a Bible Recap video or the like. I used to read far more blogs, but most of the people I used to follow no longer post on their blog or they do so very infrequently, so I don't spend much time in a year reading blog posts that others have written. I think this means that if I find out something about someone I know, it's going to be the old-fashioned way - because they told me, emailed me, or texted me about it. When I deactivated my account, I was still able to use Facebook Messenger. I don't have access to it any longer because I went the deletion route this time. I had a private Facebook group that I used with my homeschool evaluator, but I've let her know I'll be switching to sending her a monthly email instead, which is one of the options she provides all of her families. I might be in the dark about some events in the future because of this choice I've made, but in general I don't think we'll feel too much of an impact by my choice. I created an account for Paul many years ago, and he's never accessed his account. Paul has done fine with never using Facebook for the past 17 years. It can be done! Paul uses Twitter now because of his new investment "job."

I've also decided I am done using Duolingo because I finally finished the Spanish course! It "only" took me 1,244 days to accomplish that feat. I currently have a 1,246-day streak, but I'm planning to let that go. I'm also on a lengthy streak when it comes to being in the diamond league (169 weeks), and my friends quest streak is also fairly long. I've earned the monthly badge every month from June 2021 to October 2024. On Sunday night I won the final round of the diamond tournament for my 6th time. My current Spanish score is 120 out of 160. Since I finished the course, I now have access to the "Daily Refresh," but I have been very unimpressed with that feature of the program, which is why I'm planning on letting my "streak" drop from 1,246 down to 0. Most days I spend 30 minutes on Duolingo. Hopefully what I've learned in Spanish will be useful at some point in my life. I can understand the letters we get from the Compassion kids we sponsor who speak Spanish without reading the translation into English. As is normal for learning another language, my receptive comprehension is far better than my expressive skills, especially when it comes to all the verb tenses. Duolingo can only take you so far, but I know now far more words in Spanish than I've ever known at any other time in my life. 

All of the photos in this post are from the homeschool co-op that meets in our home on Tuesdays. We've been having debates (first one was on whether cigarettes should be banned in the US, the second was on animal testing, and the next one will be about zoos), doing artwork (completed three of the six art projects I planned for this session, and we've started the fourth project which is an acrylic painting of a lighthouse). discussing books (Sign of the Beaver, The Two Towers, and Listening for Lions), playing games, and doing chemistry lab experiments (this last Tuesday one involved hydrochloric acid and an egg). I haven't touched my camera in quite a few weeks. I don't plan to opt out of that though! I need to do a better job of taking pictures more often. 

Here are some other random updates from the past three weeks:

1. This month our church began a campaign to raise 4 million dollars over the next 3 years to pay off existing debt (1.7) plus build a new, bigger facility for the Sunbury campus and Recovery Church (2.3). 

2. Nadia had a sleepover at a friend's house two weekends in a row. She was one of three girls from Meadowbrook who auditioned to be in the district chorus. Unfortunately, they didn't make the cut. Nadia has been taking two Bible classes through Liberty for six weeks. On October 21 her third class through LU began - an art history class. I recently registered her for three classes (7 credits total) for the spring semester - two Bible classes plus a government class. She also has a job interview on November 1 for a job that involves grooming dogs. She has logged around 35 of the required 65 hours of driving so far. We found out today that the dates of the Nationals for Bible quizzing next summer won't interfere with the dates Nadia will hopefully be a counselor at Camp Susque. PTL!!!

3. Ian and Oliver spent several hours at a friend's house last Saturday. Ian played the piano for the youth worship team for the first time ever on October 9. 

4. All three kids auditioned to be in the Wizard of Oz at MCS. Oliver and Nadia will just be in the ensemble. Ian was given two parts - a crow plus Nikko (head of the flying monkeys). All three kids are looking forward to going to a glow-in-the-dark dodgeball birthday party tomorrow afternoon. 

5. All five of us helped pack meals at our church on October 12 (collectively packed 125,000 meals for people in Uganda and Ecuador) and at Experience Missions on October 22. All five of us also attended a Colton Dixon concert at our church on October 18. Ian, Nadia, and I were volunteers with Compassion that night. Twenty-two kids were sponsored!

6. Oliver attended two trunk or treat events on October 19-20. This is his last year of being eligible for these events due to his age. The boys will be helping as candy runners at the trunk or treat at our church on October 25 while Nadia and I attend a For King and Country concert with Cheri in Hershey as Compassion volunteers.

7. I was the substitute teacher for our Sunday School this past Sunday. I taught a lesson on Haggai.

Thankful Tuesday

1. Paul, Nadia, and I had a good visit at Liberty University September 19-21. I'm thankful there is a Christian college not *too* far away that offers the degree Nadia wants to pursue.

2. The three of us also enjoyed spending time with my dad during our time in Lynchburg. We had dinner with him twice, played games together at his house, saw Anastasia together at LU (a musical none of us had seen before), and attended church with him.

3. The boys had a fabulous time at my sister's home in Maryland while we were in Virginia, and the Seiberts did a great job taking care of Milo in our absence. 

4. Our co-op resumed on September 24. The first picture in this post is of the colored pencil project that the kids worked on. We have eleven kids in our co-op. I just snapped a picture of half of their projects. Paul is doing two chemistry experiments per week with the co-op, and I am leading book discussion groups, debates, art, and some geography lessons. My kids are very grateful that their friends come over once a week! We do our work from 9-12, have lunch together, and then some (or all) of the kids stay for another 90 minutes of playing games. The first game we played today was Guesstures (similar to charades). The 5 girls beat the 5 boys with a score of 75 to 52. After that three girls played Suspend and Rack-o while seven kids played hide and seek in the dark in our basement. Milo loves having more kids here. He's a big fan of co-op! 

5. Our town had their annual community yard sales this past weekend. Some years we haven't been around, and other years I've spent many hours scouring these yard sales. This year Nadia, Oliver, and I did a little bit of yard sale shopping on Saturday. I got some clothes for the kids, hiking boots for Nadia, and six puzzles for Nadia. 

6. The kids have signed up for their auditions for the Wizard of Oz on October 12. I'm thankful they can participate in this school musical! The rehearsals are starting much earlier this year (October 21 compared to January 18 last year). Thankfully, we have far fewer schedule conflicts this year. 

7. Yesterday was Milo's fourth birthday! We love him so much and hope he has many more years of life with our family. Nadia baked him a cake using a recipe intended for dogs.

8. I've enjoyed Nicholas Sparks' books for years, but this week I listened to his newest one (Counting Miracles), and I loved it. 

9. This summer I purchased the geometry course by Teaching Textbooks for Ian, but then in September we switched to the textbook by Art of Problem Solving. I asked TT if there was any way we could have a refund as he had only done 10 lessons, and we've been costumers for seven years. Although it was outside the normal refund window, they made an exception and gave me a store credit that I can use next summer when I purchase Oliver's next math course. It was nice not to waste the money spent in light of switching from one curriculum to another. 

10. This past weekend I watched the movie Sweetwater which was about one of the very first African Americans to join the NBA. It was informative and entertaining to watch. I tend to enjoy movies based on true stories.

11. I’m having a lot of fun researching ideas for our trip to Hawaii next August!