Monday, September 8, 2014

Do it for Truett

We lost another icon today, a good man named Truett Cathy.  Unlike the previous passings, Truett lived a pretty long life.  He's the guy who invented the chicken sandwich, the founder of Chick-Fil-A, and a local hero in the Georgia area.  For many reasons, he will be missed greatly.  There has been quite a bit of talk about his passing, quite a bit of celebration about a very generous guy who did a lot for the community and beyond.

We will no doubt have a visit to Chick-Fil-A before too long ("Do it for Truett!"), but that is one of Madison's favorite places to eat anyway, so it isn't like this is too much of an effort on our part.

We returned to ballet tonight, after missing last week (because of Labor Day).  Madison seems quite content with her new class, so all the fears and nervousness are out the door.  Daddy was out the door too, making bank deposits and paying for the ballet class itself.  We just drop a check in a slot each month and there you go.

Madison was learning at school today about Mary Musgrove, someone I must confess I had not known too much about.  She's an important figure in Georgia history, but Mommy and Daddy did not grow up here, so we don't know much about her except for what we briefly looked up.  Madison could tell us her full Indian name.  This lady was a smart industrious sort, who helped settlers and the native population of Georgia communicate.  There is probably so much more to her story, which we'll let Madison tell us - and we'll look up too!

Georgia History was a class Daddy took a month-and-a-half of when he first came to Georgia some time ago.  It was part of the school year, the very last part.  All I remember was that I got an A on the comprehensive final, a test that covered the entire year - and I wasn't even here for most of it.  Part of that score had to be dumb luck.  But the other side of it is that Daddy is usually pretty fascinated with history, studying it.  Which brings us to Mary Musgrove - how is it that we haven't heard so much about her?

We have our LEGO series coming up, so today was a bit of reading about LEGO products and so forth, which was kind of fascinating.  Did you know the company at its earliest stages would pray each morning before starting the work day?  The series we're doing isn't so much about the LEGO products or history, but rather the "building blocks" of faith.  In fact, Daddy wrote the official series description today...

Master Builders Assemble!  At KidPak, we're using the building blocks of faith to show how each of us was made for more!  Join us this series as we put together those stories from the Bible that will build your faith, and make you a new creation.  Moses, David, Paul, and Jesus created the best assembly plans to follow, and when we follow their lead, we too can become ...Master Builders!

I can't believe that worked.  That was my first copy-and-paste on this tiny keyboard for the iPad.  ANYWAY, you can see the gist of the series is about foundational concepts that all Christians begin with, building blocks in a way.

This morning, Daddy brought up the fall decorations - Mommy will be putting these out this week.  The weather may not resemble fall too much now, in fact it feels more like Florida with the humidity and heavy looking clouds lumbering across the sky.  So many pop-up showers, and the ground is soaked each morning.  We harvested some more vegetables this morning, including cucumbers, mighty tomatoes, and a few green peppers on top of that.  We're quite proud of our little farming enterprise.  Yes, it's quite a little farming enterprise, but there it is!

Madison had her art class again today, although every day at home is art class.  Last night's Shrinky Dinks came out very well, and Madison spent more time coloring and cutting things out.  She likes to cut out shapes and fix them together with tape.  In fact, we go through tape pretty fast around here, due to Madison's little projects.  It is one of her favorite mediums.  It has to be tape from Scotland though.  That Scotch tape works the best.

We read some more tonight from our book, but Madison read as well.  She is reading about ten to fifteen minutes on her own each night, as well as doing her other homework.  She did about 32 math problems in 3 minutes - all correct.  That's on pace for quarter two, so she's slightly ahead there.  We'll keep drilling her there, with some incentives of course.  Those help a lot.  She also did some spelling words for the week, and she knows all of them - the only word that slows her down slightly is "please," which she knows as well.  She just takes her time with that one.  We'll be more certain of that as the week goes by.  She's still number one in her class when it comes to the work on the computer, mainly because she just enjoys doing it.  Daddy might have enjoyed this sort of thing growing up, but the best I ever had was an Atari 2600.  Yes, flipping a game of Asteroids was a perfect way to spend an afternoon for some reason - and just think!  It taught us math skills, as we keep adding up points for the asteroids and UFO carnage.  Clearly, today's apps are more educational.  What's great is that they are fun and educational - Madison would sit there with some of these math and language apps for a long time, having just a good old time and learning more and more along the way.  Which is a thrill for us, of course.  At the same time, we don't let her stay on it for too long of course.  It's all about balance.

So over to the keyboard she goes next, wrapping up her piano practice for the week.  There was more of Joshua and his battle of Jericho there, and another round of "Oh, Susanna!"  Madison has kept up with the daily practices much easier this year, and that I believe has to do with ballet moving to Mondays over Thursdays.  It just works to have her getting started on Thursday, which she can do now because it is free.  Wednesday is not free, so we generally have to wait there.  Anyway, the point is that she is able to pace herself much better this year, rather than try to cram in more practice at the last moment.  Her Minecraft Calendar Countdown is about halfway finished.  She's eagerly awaiting that reward.

We played a little LEGO Indiana Jones tonight before bed, as she seems to be back into this again.  We didn't have much time, but Daddy wanted to do something fun after all that homework and scheduled stuff.  It was her choice as to what to do, so she went with LEGO Indiana Jones.  Tonight we escaped an atomic bomb testing by jumping into a refrigerator.  In the movie, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," some folks seem to have a problem with this scene.  Indiana Jones gets into a refrigerator, which is blown a great distance, and he hops out a bit banged up, but still alive.  This - this one part - is unbelievable to a lot of folks.  Whereas jumping out of an airplane with only an inflatable life raft onto the side of a snowy mountain is not?  Or how about that scene the airplane going through the tunnel.  Or getting dragged under the army truck.  People who complain about that scene in "Crystal Skull" should also jump in a refrigerator - and chill.

Moving on!  It was a good day.  A full day too.  Daddy was pulling out some old unopened LEGO Star Wars kits to use for our display case at KidPak.  The goal was to have fun putting them together and make up a display case full of stuff.  But then Daddy started to look up the value of each of these unopened Star Wars LEGO kits.  We have about four or five that are $180, and three or four in the $90 range.  And that's when Daddy realized that these might better suit our purposes STILL INSIDE their boxes, and on sale someday.  We'll just have to figure out how to sell some of this stuff.  So we're at square one with the display case, but it'll be fun populating it.  It's fairly obvious:  fill it with LEGO creations.  They can be kind of pricy if we want to have THAT many.  But it will certainly be fun making it all!

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