Campfire

To Chris Westra Home Page

Dear Westra Family and Friends September 9, 2006

Another week has passed – we are well into September now. Last night was really fun, we had the home school group over for our opening social, with a Native American Theme. We had a campfire outside and cooked tin foil dinners. Conner had enlarged our campfire pit to a big oval. The girls did a dance about Pocahontas, and then we told Native American legends around the campfire. 

Our boys told about the decorated walking sticks and the gourds that Celeste had given them. The gourds have petroglyphs from our own surrounding area. We enjoyed the fire and the moon rise and the stars.

We are looking for a new van, our other one died. If you know of a reliable vehicle that seats at least seven, for around $2000 to $2500, please let us know. We bought this last one for around that, and it’s been a great one for us for years.

This morning Corin and I had a fun time working on his new website – read more below. 

Last Friday evening we had a late family home evening for the week before, with scripture questions during dinner and then playing a game outside. We had these little PVC tubes and marshmallows which Trudy had given us a few years ago. You put the little marshmallow into the end of the tube and then blow it out like a dart at targets (usually other people). The marshmallows were old and hard so they stung a bit and made the game more competitive. We had a lot of fun with it, and it could be an interactive idea for a family or community party.

For my Father’s Interview with Corin, we went on a long walk, and played Memory. Kadan played too, and I actually focused and beat them! They usually get a lot more matches than I do, kids do so well at that game.

Sunday evening we did family home evening and talked about Conner’s Patriarchal Blessing which he finally received in the mail. It led to a nice family discussion about life and goals and purposes.

Monday evening I gave Father’s Blessings to all the boys for the start of the new school year, and the teacher got one also. We like that tradition. We also made up new school charts (subjects and times) and chore charts so we started this month very organized. I typed them all up in Excel.

Tuesday was my birthday, but we didn’t do too much out of the ordinary. That’s fine, because I like normal days the best. I did work on some fun projects on the computer. Casandra took all but Camden down to Richfield for their new Statesmanship Club. They learn about the constitution and principles of freedom as well as other things. This club is run by some home school families down in that area.

I told Camden around 3:00 that it was “almost” his naptime. Then I told him to run upstairs and get his blanket for his nap. He looked at me and said, “But you said it was ALMOST naptime.” I then emphasized, “Well, it IS naptime.” He looked at me with a surprised look and said, “Wow, that was fast!”

Wednesday afternoon I took the boys over to Ephraim for Justin Hyatt’s cross country race. He is our next door neighbor and they asked me to coach him for this season, which I’m glad to do. I made up a rigorous schedule with lots of speed work. He will do really well if he follows the training regimen. Saturday he came over and we worked out together doing hill repeats – he did four laps for my three. Boy, that made me feel like I was almost 40. He did well in the race, coming in 8th out of over 50 runners. 

Then that evening Casandra and I went on a yard and garden tour for a date. People with beautiful yards put them on display and others come and go from house to house to enjoy, and to get ideas for their own yards. Then we went over to the high school to pick up our family portrait, and it turned out really well! I’ll get it up on the web sometime.

Thursday was my temple day. I did the longest part, so it’s good to have that done for the first time. We started a new long book about Ponce de Leon, after finishing the Red Doe. The boys are studying American History this year so we are finding long books that link to that subject.

We also got a new computer this last week. Our old one passed on, and I was so glad to have everything backed up and networked! That decision and investment of time turned out a great blessing. We bought another emachines computer from Best Buy and everything is duplicated and backed up again. It was only a glitch, and life goes on.

Friday I went to a Chiropractor down in Richfield, Dr. Whitaker, the same that Casandra and the baby went to see on Tuesday. My back has been hurting some, and he did help it, exploring emotional roots as the cause of the dis-ease. He is a very skilled man. Well, that’s our busy week, we’ve still been enjoying the garden produce, and had our first cantaloupe today.

Christopher, Casandra, Conner, Kadan, Corin, Camden, and Cayson.

Chris’s Ebooks and Marketing Work 

Corin and I worked on his web project this morning. He really likes pottery and wants to be a potter. I wanted to see how fast a new site could be created. At 9:27 we started and by 9:28 we completed the purchase of PotteryAlive.com. 

http://PotteryAlive.com

At 9:31 we had the nameservers changes over to my virtual private server to host the domain. 

At 9:33 we had created the new account for the hosting and by 9:35 we had opened up a new website in frontpage, added some content, published to the web, and checked. In eight minutes we bought the domain, hosted it, created content, and published.

No new countries lately but I have been writing lots of new articles at 

http://ICreateWisdom.com

Every article gets some natural “organic” traffic and I’m learning to get more. Traffic translates to income, when you know how.