Saturday, January 30, 2010

Buy A Church?

So Sasha and I were driving home after dropping off Artem from soccer practice when we drove past the Roseboro chapel. Sasha knows that I would love to move and that we have been looking at lots so we can build a house. We drove by the chapel and Sasha said that we should buy a church and live in it. He said that the cultural hall could be our living room. We could play basket ball and have a cinema in there. I said that it would be great for going to church. We could just get up and we would be there. The bathrooms would be a little weird with the shower situation and stall for the toilets though. Sasha said we could just remodel the bathrooms.

I got a kick out of this idea. Where did he get this idea? Strange....

Later Katelyn and I went to the grocery store. When we got back Tania was watching the movie "The Sandlot". Wendy -- "Smalls" in this movie reminded me of your Alex.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Shhhhhhhh, We are evil, evil, evil.

Why are we evil? For two reasons.

First, I made soup for dinner tonight. I had bought some dried soup last October while we were in Arkansas visiting my parents. It's really easy to make. You just add water to the dried ingredients along with some canned chicken and enchilada sauce. So I started the soup while Tania was at dance. She never new that I added chicken. When she sat down at the dinner table she asked what was in the soup. I just said "I don't know, it came in a package." So Tania continued eating and ate a whole bowl of soup. It's amazing. If I had told her that I added the chicken, there is absolutely no way she would have eaten the soup.

The second reason we are evil is because after dinner, Tania was talking about getting together with Dosha and Sveta tomorrow night. She said that Dosha and Sveta had to ask "the" Bill and Leslie if they could go. David then said "If "the" Bill and Leslie agree to let the come then we should do something else". I think Katelyn was going to really lose it when David said "the" Bill and Leslie. We are having a hard time teaching both kids the appropriate use of "the". Usually we do try to correct them, we just had to have a little fun tonight.

Car Repairs

Since I read Wendy's blog about how frugal she and her husband are and about how James fixes their cars all the time, I thought I would add my little tidbit.

Matthew's car broke down last weekend. We originally thought it was the water pump. David called his friend who is very handy with anything mechanical for advice on how much this would cost us.

Luckily, our friend retired last spring so he has a lot of time on his hands. He said to come on over on David's day off and they would fix it. Well yesterday was David's day off so he took the car over to his friends. They took about an hour to diagnose the problem and realized that it was not the water pump but it was another part (I don't remember what it is called).

Now we decided the cost of a water pump would be around $300.00. The part we needed was only $75.00. So great we have saved a lot of money. The downfall on all of this is that if it had been the water pump they would have finished fixing the car yesterday. The cheaper part was in a much more obscure part of the car so they had to practically take the whole thing apart. Needless to say they are still working on the car today. I am so glad our friend has a heated garage.

Also, Matthew looked up on the Internet the estimated time it would take to replace this part. GM estimated it should take 16 hours. So we figure that if we had taken the car to the repair shop we would of had to pay about $1,200. in just labor. Thank goodness our friend and David are going to be able to fix the car.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Science Fair

Katelyn had us help us with her science fair tonight. She is measuring how well people take tests when they listen to music. Tonight Sasha, Matthew, David, Katelyn and I took an ACT sample test. There were four sections. The first section was quiet. Actually there wasn't any music playing but it wasn't very quiet. The second section had music with 71-90 beats per minute. The third section had 91-110 beats per minute with the last section having 111-130 beats per minute.

Matthew is a very quick reader and test taker. He finished every section before anyone else. Sasha was usually the second person done. David and I were always the last. After each section we would compare answers. By the time we were done David was pretty confident that he had done really well so he proposed that the person with the most correct answers get to win something. So we decided that the winner would choose where we go for dinner on Friday night.

By the time we were correcting the tests, we were laughing so hard. David was getting disappointed because he didn't do as well as he thought that he had. I was thrilled that I had the most correct answers.

The best part of it all though is how well Sasha did on the tests. The tests were the type where you replace a word or a phrase with a more correct word or phrase. It wasn't an easy test.

I was really proud of Sasha's ability and willingness to participate in our little activity. He has been speaking English for just over a year and yet he enjoyed helping Katelyn with her project.

Oh and I think we will go to Chili's for dinner.