Happy New Year!

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  Have a safe and wonder filled night!

I also wanted to share a little story from yesterday.  I was scanning in paperwork out of our safe so that we would have a copy of it somewhere and came across receipts and warranties on my engagement ring and our wedding rings.  

Out of the blue, Tyler asks me, “Mommy, can I wear your engagement ring someday?”  I explained that I wear my engagement ring everyday because now it is attached to my wedding ring and showed it to him.  

Then he asks, “Can I wear Daddy’s engagement ring someday?”  I then explained that Daddy didn’t have an engagement ring only a wedding ring.

Tyler’s response, “Well, that doesn’t seem fair.  How did people know he was getting married if he didn’t have a ring?  Does that mean he had to tell them?”  I guess it does seem unfair that we girls get to have a ring so that people don’t have to actually ask us if we are getting married.  Guys have it so rough!

Next school year & EPA

I got busy yesterday and accomplished a lot.  First, I got my work done and back in the mail.  Then I figured our taxes.  We knew we were going to owe on the state side and probably get a refund on the federal side, but didn’t know if they would cancel one another out or if we needed to save up some money.  All figured we are getting a little back overall.  That was a welcomed relief.  Then it still wasn’t warm outside, so I started planning our next school year (Jul’09-Jun’10).  I have it about 85% done already.  Now I don’t have to worry so much later this spring when we get busy.

The EPA has come up with a Household Emissions Calculator (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html).  I tried it out this morning.  My results came out at 32,218 pounds of CO2 per year for our household or 10,739 pounds of CO2 per year per member of the household.  It says that the average emissions per person in the United States are 20,750 pounds per year.  This result is similar to other results I’ve gotten from other sources.  We, as a household, are doing really good at curbing our emissions, but I’m still looking for ways to make our number better.  How are you doing?

Christmas is done

We are finally done with all our Christmases.  We had lots of good times, but it is nice to get back to our quiet lives.

There is $ burning a hole in Tyler’s pocket.  Before Christmas he had wanted a LeapFrog Didj, but after I took a look at it, I convinced him that a Nintendo DS would be a better investment in portable handheld gaming systems.  What is interesting is that when we were trying to decide between getting him a DS or getting him more memory in his computer, the DS was $100.  Now at Christmas time they are $130.  So our first order of business has been trying to convince Tyler to wait a few weeks to see if they will go back to a lower price since retailers have their end-of-year coming up.  We have tried to explain that the $30 difference is enough to buy a game, so waiting would have it’s benefits (if the price goes back down.)  Our second order of business is that Tyler doesn’t have enough money to buy it himself, so Trent & I are contributing to it.  This makes it family owned.  Yes, Tyler will probably be the one who plays with it the most, but if it is family owned then there has to be consideration given to everyone when new games are purchased.  So far he’s gone through wanting a Legos Star Wars Clone Wars game and a Pokemon game (big surprise on both of those!)  He was also mentioning some game where you have to help protect habitats for endangered animals, but he couldn’t remember the name or even if it was for a DS.  I’ve seen some educational games that look interesting.

So while we are waiting, that $ is still itching to get spent.  So he switches to other things and doesn’t want the DS anymore.  Now he wants a light saber.  He’s really sure that he would play with it more than the DS (which I know he won’t.)  He even tried to convince me that the light saber was a better idea because it won’t use batteries like the DS.  Until I reminded him that in order for it to light up and make sounds it would have to have batteries.  I know he just wants to spend his money.  But I think that he got lots of great things for Christmas already that can entertain him, so waiting a few weeks to spend his money shouldn’t be too hard for him.  I know I’ll hear about it every day, but in the end, teaching him a little patience will be worth the hassle.

Christmas Pictures

Here are the pictures from when we opened gifts at our home on Christmas Eve.

2008 – Christmas

We’re done (or not)

Tyler had his last TKD class of the year last night.  Don’t worry, he’ll still practice while on break so he doesn’t forget everything.

And he’s already finished up his school work for the day.  It’s only 9am, but he was up at 7am doing it because he wanted to get it done.  Other schools in the area are on 2 hour delay or closed due to bad weather, but there are no snow days here at our school.  Now he’s off for 2 weeks.  But don’t tell him I have educational things planned during the break.

We still need to finish up with our holiday shopping.  I’ve just got to get stocking stuffers, which I already have ideas, I just need to not have people along for the trip to the store.  I was going to go today, but I think it would be better to stay home with freezing rain, ice and snow covering the roads.  So I’ll have to go this weekend.

Time sure got away from me

I’m sure I can account for it all, but it sure is flying right now.  Tyler got caught up with school and only has a few more days until we are off for 2 weeks for break.  Yes, he is antsy this week and wants to be on break already.  Tyler’s had TKD and Science Sleuths.  Trent painted at his offices and has a carrying in potluck yesterday.  He took his famous banana bread with chocolate chips and pieces of cherries.  Tyler was so upset because Trent never brings home any leftovers of it when he’s made it in the past and Tyler really wanted some.  But when we got home from TKD last night, there was about 1 1 /4 loaves left, so Tyler has plenty of leftovers to eat.  Trent says it wasn’t like any other potluck he’s been to before in terms of food brought in, quantity, or anything else.

We finished going through Tyler’s toys and books.  I have the final load to take to Goodwill today.  Tyler did a great job, so I bought him 3 new books as replacements.  They are the first 3 books in the Percy’s Adventures by Rick Riordan: “The Lightning Thief”, “The Sea of Monsters”, and “The Titan’s Curse”.  Here’s a little explanation of the books: “The gods of Olympus are alive and well in the 21st Century! They still fall in love with mortals and have children who are half-god, half-human, like the heroes of the old Greek myths. Could you be one of those children? Join the adventures of Percy Jackson and his modern demigod friends as they fight mythological monsters and the forces of the titan lord Kronos.”  Tyler has inhaled these books.  He just got them on Sunday and is already 1/2 way through the 3rd one.  He doesn’t always know how to say the names of the Gods and Goddesses, but he is learning because he will come up to me and say,  ”Did you know Hades is the God of the Underworld and Poseidon is God of the Sea and Zeus is God of the Sky?  And did you know they were the most powerful ones?”  He is always surprised when I already knew these things because he gets a shocked look and asks, “How?  Did you read these books already?”  Silly boy, those are not the only books in the universe with the information.

I’ve finished with my goals for 2009 and have been looking at which classes I want to do from MIT’s OpenCourseWare.  I picked out 3 classes that I’m interested in and downloaded all the info.  Now I have to figure out a calendar to keep me on track and I have to figure out how to get my hands on the reading material.  Out of all the reading material for all 3 classes (figure roughly 15-20 books per class), there are only 2 books that my local library has.  2 books!  That’s really embarrassing.  So I’ll have to talk with a hopefully friendly librarian who will help me get the books from other libraries.  I’m hoping these classes go well because the have about 1800 classes online for free, which I just love.  And they have a high school version, so I’ll get the hang of the college level ones for a few years before Tyler’s ready to do high school.

Tyler did good

Yesterday was my first day of work at my little part time job.  I think it went wonderful.  It was nice to use some of that stored knowledge and for people to appreciate it.  Tyler was great while I was working.  He watched Scooby-Doo and Tom & Jerry.  He ate lunch – peanut butter and jelly sandwich and grapes.  His new thing with grapes is that all grapes are green under their skin.  He knows this because he peels the skin off the grapes with his teeth and fingers, eats the skin and then eats the grape.  He played with his toys.  I think he’s currently combining aspects of “The Librarian” movies we watched on Sunday with aspects of Legos things he is looking at in the magazines.  Not really sure, but I hear that the gnomes and trolls are going to have a big battle and that knights and ghosts are going to have to choose sides and help.  And he did some school.

I’ve still been working on my goals for the upcoming year and I have come up against some interesting stumbing blocks and insights.  Not sure how it will all iron out, but the process has been most interesting so far.

School

I thought I might actually have a post on school-type stuff.  Tyler is getting caught up from all that time off when he was sick.  He should be caught up by the end of the week.  Then we will have school next week and then we will be off for the holidays.

So for a quick round-up:

Math – working on multiplying a 3-digit number by a 1-digit number and estimating

Language Arts – Comparison & Contrasting, punctuation for talking in a sentence, and working on writing chronological paragraphs

Science – Carbon chemicals in things like rocks (limestone, marble, chalk), the halogens (salt-producers) and rare or noble gases (neon, argon, xenon to name a few)

Top Secret Adventures – Israel

Spelling – “ou” and “ow” words, and homophones

Nature-oriented – wind chill, and how snow flakes are made

TKD is going great.  He knows his whole form, his whole weapons form and his whole freestyle weapons form.  He’ll just be working on perfecting it as he goes along until testing at the start of Feb.  We’ve been working on him learning to do somersaults since he’ll need to do them in upcoming weapons forms.  Yesterday, for the first time ever, he did it.  All on his own and not just falling towards the side.  He also did 2 in a row.  I was so proud of him.  He’s also greatly improved his cartwheels for his XMA weapons form.  And he’s been practicing his 360s with his nunchakus and he’s getting pretty good at doing them.

Mr. Birky asked him yesterday if he wanted to go for a championship next season.  Tyler told him that he did.  I asked Tyler if he realized that meant going to tournaments.  He says that he does and that going to tournaments is exciting.  Hmmm…he’s only been to 1 and hasn’t been interested in any other ones since so we might have to talk about this further.  We’ll have to see.

Tyler is super excited about the New Year’s Eve Lock-in at TKD.  Mr. Birky is taking the kids for 13 hours (6pm-7am) overnight.  He has lots of activities that are going to be happening.  Tyler says he’s heard laser tag, movies, video games, and lots more but he can’t remember.  Mr. Birky says there will be no sleeping.  He’s going to feed them and keep them up all night and us parents can have a break.  Tyler asked what we would be doing and Trent told him we would be sleeping.  Tyler thinks his night sounds like way more fun.

Christmas Ecard, Ponderings

Here is the card that I chose from Care2.  I went with Care2 because I saved a square foot of rainforest for every card that I sent.  You should check out their extensive ecard collection.

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a great new year! 
Trent, Kristi & Tyler Blumeyer

And now off on my ponderings.  This weekend Trent & I talked about the economy, the Auto Bailout, the EPA proposals for taxing dairy farmers and a bunch of other things.  But it made me think about a few things during the process.  And I want to know why someone else hasn’t already done this because I can’t be the only person to have thought these things.  So here are my thoughts in regards to some of the solutions that we need to be looking towards for a better future.  These would be great for putting a bunch of people in room and making them come up with solutions.

1st – Today we woke up and there was no more oil.  Not we need to reduce oil or only use oil on certain things.  No more oil, period.  What would our cars, trucks, lawn mowers, snow blowers, street sweepers, tractors, plows, bobcats, etc run on?  What would use instead of plastic (which is made with oil) on our appliances, electronics, toys, vehicles, lotions, toothpastes, soaps, packaging around food, etc, etc, etc?  How would our lives look like without oil?

2nd – Today we woke up and there was no more paper.  Same thing, not a reduction, just no more paper because there was no more trees.  No paper for mail, catalogs, junk mail, announcements, invitations, etc.  No paper for printing out of emails, directions, recipes, etc.  No paper for printing out of 90 million copies of different versions of the same report at work.  No paper for printing out a report to proofread it.  No paper for kids to write on at school.  No paper for the packaging of food.  No paper to make books, pay bills, etc.  How would our lives look like without paper?  Of course, no trees would also mean no wood, so no lumber for buildings, decks, furniture, buring for fire or heat, etc.  Which puts a whole new twist on how would our lives look.

My lists for these things could go on and on.  Not all resources are renewable and not all resources are renewable as fast as we are using them up.  So what are we going to do if we run out of a certain resource?  Do we have a plan or is everyone just burying their heads in the sand and thinking “it can’t/won’t happen to us”?

I guess the biggest reason this came up is because of the Auto Industry.  I can see both sides to the Bailout.  I would hate to have all those people lose their jobs, but there would be other jobs for them because there are things that would replace the Big 3 to fill in the gap.  Part of my frustration stems from something that was pointed out to me by someone else and it is simple economics that we all learned in high school, supply and demand.  This industry made a product that is no longer in demand by the consumers, yet wants someone to bail them out so they can make more of the same products.  I don’t know that we should support a sinking industry.  In some ways, we should be thinking that we, as consumers, have already spoken.  If you didn’t listen and change your product structure, then too bad for you.  Years ago, you should have done what I pointed out in #1 – Today we woke up and there was no oil, what are we going to do?  Maybe some brainstorming then could have averted the situation that they are in now.  Would it be perfect, no, but I bet they would be a lot farther along in the process of creating vehicles that used alternative fuels if we gave them a deadline, after which there would be no vehicles that could run using oil.  I would be more than happy to set a deadline for them.  As of right now, you can no longer create vehicles that run on any type of oil based fuels.  That’s what Congress should be telling them and then only considering bailing them out if they have a good enough business plan in place with a loan to be paid back within a few years.  Off my soapbox for now.

TKD & 4-H

Well, I took care of that pesky TKD situation and it went well.  The other mom & I are both fine with the results, as far as I can tell.  My son isn’t being blamed for something he didn’t say and the other mom has decided that her daughter is probably over-reacting.  There was talk about some other similar situations that this girl has gotten into, where other kids have supposedly said mean stuff to her, and mom has had talks to with the parents (they claim their child didn’t say whatever) and how now the other kids don’t like this girl anymore.  Trent, in his wonderful wisdom, says it sounds like a pattern and that the other kids probably don’t like this girl for getting them into trouble just so she could get attention.  He says that kids know these things.  He’s probably right, so we’ll just hang out and see how things go.

In other TKD stuff, we talked to a parent that was upset with her son not passing at the testing.  It was the first time we’d seen her since testing.  Boy, did we get an earful.  She is mad and she says her son is angry, too, and doesn’t want to do TKD anymore.  Now, I don’t feel sorry for either of them.  The reason that she told us for his not passing is something that I think everyone knew about because we have heard Mr. Birky get on him about this skill for the past few months.  He was repeatedly warned that he wouldn’t pass unless he improved.  I don’t think it gets any clearer than that.  Not to get into all the details, but it brought back an old issue for me.  There are some parents who expect all the learning of TKD to take place during the 2 hours a week that their kids are in class and it is the instructor’s fault if the skills aren’t mastered.  Now, this issue is not isolated to TKD, you will find this everywhere (schools, other sports, arts, etc), which is why I’ve talked about it before.  Yes, I am paying an instructor to teach TKD, but all skills require practice on an ongoing basis.  That ongoing practice requires parental support and encouragement.  I’m of the opinion that the ultimate responsibility falls to me, the parent, to help Tyler achieve his successes.  I will give you an example of how I handle it just this week.  On Tuesday, Mr. Birky was talking to Tyler about his XMA weapons form and the cartwheel that Tyler does in it.  He is doing a 2-handed one and Mr. Birky suggested a 1-handed one.  So yesterday when we went early to get in some extra practice (I’ve mentioned this extra practice time before), that was one of the things that I had Tyler practice.  It was just that simple.  Mr. Birky made a recommendation, I followed through.  Sooner or later it will be Tyler that has to be the one to take the initiative to follow through, but he’s 8 and needs to learn how to do it first by my showing him.

All right, I’ll get off my soapbox on that topic.  Onto 4-H.  Earlier this week I made calls to all the 4-H clubs in my township and one to the fishing club leader, since that club would be in addition to our regular 4-H club.  Out of the 9 calls I made, I talked to 1 person and had 2 messages returned.  We are going to attend the first meetings for 2 clubs in January to see which one we like and would like to join.  The other returned message was from the wife of the fishing club leader to tell me that he had knee replacement surgery that day and would get back to me next week – that was very nice of her.  But I have not heard from any of the other clubs.  I know that most meeting start in Jan and I figured by calling now, I would be avoiding the end-of-year holiday rush.  Can these people not return a phone call asking them for more information?!?  I just don’t get it.  I also left messages for 4 people who supposedly do wildlife rehabilitation in the area to see if I could volunteer and none of them have called back either.  I must be in some weird vortex where I can’t receive calls or maybe I should just take it as a sign that one of these clubs in the one we should join and that I shouldn’t be volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation place.