The August, September, and October Family Update

Ok, I give in, no more so called monthly updates. Lets just call them family updates when Tim has time to do them. Now this would be more significant if more than just 2 or 3 people read these things, but since that is not the case it should have little to no impact on anyone.

Well the summer is over and the kids (kid) is back in school, it would be kids but Chris is living with his dad now and although he is back in school he does not live here so he really does not count. But since I brought his name up I will tell you what little I do know.

Chris seems to be adjusting quite well living with his dad and from what I have been told he has met some new friends that share his same interests. School seems to be more difficult for him as we expected as the school system out in Virginia is much more complex than we have in Columbia Tennessee. He has been in good health with the exception of a strained neck muscle that he received while in gym class a couple weeks ago. That put him out of commission for a few days but he is back to normal now. And for those who are curious his home resides in the Woodbridge area about 10 minutes away from the where they had those sniper shootings recently. That actually upset him a bit as the schools were shut down and no after school activities were allowed either. All in all he really seems to be enjoying himself there, and I am really glad that he is doing so well.

Matthew has been doing just great in school this year, he has been at the top of his class in academics and he continues to surpass our expectations. As noted in the news article on this site he has been doing extremely well in his piano lessons and it is really beginning to show. In a discussion with his teachers their current feeling is that Matthew may need to skip up a grade if he keeps excelling academically. While this is good for the educational side, it could pose some problems for us socially. Although Matthew interacts with his peers extremely well at this time, you can see where some of his interaction is scripted. He knows based on what one of his peers do what reaction to give. For example if a friend of his tells Matthew a joke or says something that is supposed to be funny, Matthew will laugh even if he does not comprehend the punch line.

In other events Matthew attended his first camp out (sort of) at his teachers home. they had crafts and games and food for all. Matthew had a really great time there with his friends but we were not ready to sleep out in the tents and under the rain that we had that night so Terri and I said that we would do our camp out in the van in our garage. Now as a refresher to all, we prepare all of Matthews food specifically for him and he takes a daily vitamin regimen that has to be prepared for him. So camping out in the garage made it really easy for that as well as those bathroom breaks in the middle of the night. Also since the van has the built in entertainment system I wanted to make sure it was used, and that way we could watch a movie in the van before going to sleep. Now originally myself, Terri, and Matthew were all to settle down in the van watch a movie and camp in the garage. Well Terri begged out about 15 minutes in to the event which left Matthew and me to watch Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So as Terri took the dog in the house with her to sleep Matthew and I slept in the van. It was fun for Matthew and I got my backache as expected.

Terri has continued to work and has been pretty busy with her job and things around the house. It has left her little time to work on her side of the web or do some the really neat projects she has done in the past. This has allowed us to do one thing that I wanted and that was to get Matthew his keyboard/piano. I started out at about $5000 and Terri said no, I then showed her a unit at about $3000 and she said no. Ok we have now realigned our sights to $1400, and you know what she said? No. I was finally convinced that I could spend about $800 max. without suffering permanent bodily damage. Although it is not exactly what I wanted for Matthew (and myself) it will work for the next year or two, and it has his piano teacher's approval. The unit is a Yamaha DGX 500 Keyboard, and other than the weighted keys it has everything I want in a keyboard. And most importantly for me is it only cost $600 so I will live to see another day. Below is a picture of the unit, it is a full 88 key piano keyboard and the keys are lightly weighted and have touch velocity sensitivity. The speakers on the unit are ok but not what I really would like so I replaced them with two Yamaha KA10 amplifiers. For my sister Debbie, this would be exactly what you would be looking for.

As for myself, I have been busy with the honey do chores and work has really begun to pick up so I have not had a lot of time to do anything else. In fact this update actually started in September and here it is November and it will finally be done. I am supposed to working on a genealogy CD for some people and I have little done on that yet. It's due at the end of the month for them. I finally got Brenda's computer sent out to her after 2 months of her waiting so I must be improving. In any case that should be about it for now so I will get this published for the 2 or 3 people to read.

Tim