Author Archives: houston

The Endeavor of Columbus

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In an effort to get stuff onto the blog (I mean, we do pay $100 a year for this domain name), I’m going to post some of Houston’s Essentials papers that he’s written over the past couple of years. Essentials is the grammar and writing portion of Classical Conversations for kids approximately ages 9-12. For writing, we use a curriculum called IEW (the Institute for Excellence in Writing).

IEW encourages what is called “hand holding” – a parent taking lead in the early stages on some to many aspects of an assignment but with the child remaining fully part of the process. The methodology asserts that the student will learn to emulate the skills through modeling the adult. And slowly but surely, the parent does less and less while the child eventually does more, until he’s confidently and independently crafting his own essays.

Houston will be starting his third and final year in Essentials this September, and Gabriel and Zeke will be launching into the first year of this amazing three-year journey of parsing words, and growing in a deeper knowledge of language and writing – the dialectic stage of the Trivium. And interestingly, little ol’ me will tutoring Essentials next fall, as well.

That means I will be the “lead learner” in class, guiding students through the rich material. I’m nervous, since I’ve never before tutored at our homeschool co-op, but I’m trusting God on this one. I’ve been called to fill this role because my director, many of the other moms, and Stephen all think I was tailor-made for the gig. So, I’m considering it a “calling,” and not a job.

Plus, my good pal, Adair, says she’ll sit with the 3 Amigos during class, since parents are supposed to be right beside their kiddos, simultaneously learning the information and absorbing in the process. Parents are, after all, their children’s lead educator, not tutors. We’re simply facilitators in the amazing pedagogy of Christian classical education.

Anyhoo, here’s the first of many history-based writings to come. I hope y’all enjoy. And please be sure to comment, if you feel so inclined. I know Houston would love to your read praises and critiques.

The Endeavor of Columbus
By Houston
8 September 2017

In the 1400s, Europeans were fully resolved to increase their prosperity by sailing to the East Indies. Christopher Columbus knew the earth was round, but he foolishly figured he could get east by sailing west. He coaxed the king and queen of Spain to make him three Spanish ships, so that he could boldly sail across the ocean. Some people thought he would fall of the edge of the world, or be viciously devoured by sea monsters, but on October 12, 1492, the crew excitedly spotted land! Ashore there were men that were vastly different. Columbus mistakenly called them Indians because he thought he was in the Indies. But he had reached land that Europeans knew nothing about, the Americas.

Puerto Vallarta – better late than never!

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Note: Houston started this blog last summer and finally finished the text over Christmas holidays. Being the slackers we are, we just now finished editing and adding in a few of our favorite pics. Hope you enjoy!

The captain invited us into the cockpit after our flight landed into Houston!

We visited Mexico in December 2016. It was really fun. We stayed for about a week, so I’m going to tell you about the adventure.

First I’m going to tell you about the flight there. We had to drive to Raleigh and spend the night. We went to bed early because our flight left early at 3 in the morning, so we woke up at 2. From Raleigh, we flew to Houston, Texas, which was a three-or-four-hour flight. From there, we were off Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We brought a Nintendo DS, which we played on the plane, in the airport, and in Mexico.

In Houston, we got in the cockpit and saw all the controls. It was our first time on a plane, and on the first flight (to Houston), I was so paranoid. I thought it would be extremely loud, but it really wasn’t. In the Houston airport, we ate lunch and waited an hour or two for our flight.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church: the symbol of Puerto Vallarta.

When we got on the plane, I noticed there was a charging outlet in front of our seat. I charged my DS the entire flight while I was playing it. The only games I played were Mario Cart DS and Lego Star Wars: the Complete Saga.

We had finally arrived in Puerto Vallarta. Right when exited the plane, we walked into this weird “welcome” room, which was loud, crammed, and chaotic. My dad talked to somebody for 45 minutes about a resort and then we left. We never did get the resort because we already had some place to stay. We arrived at our rental apartment, unpacked, and went to eat dinner.

For the first couple of days, we trekked around, eating lots of tasty food. At night, we went to a cathedral, where there was a special day, the Festival of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We ate popsicles and cotton candy, and there was a parade!

Drip castles, wave games, steamed oysters and fish-on-a-stick eaten right on the beach … what’s not to love?!

The next day, we went swimming in the pool at our Air BnB condo. Then we journeyed back to the room, got our bathing suits on, and went to the beach. It was awesome! We built sand castles and played fantastic a wave game.

This is how it works:
• first, you pick a beachy day with many waves
• next, you lie down on your stomach
• then, let the water wash over you
• finally, you get sucked in the water and you just have to survive
• now, you’re good and you can play again or whatever!

That night, we went out to eat for a fancy dinner. The food was tasty, but there was a drag queen there; it got weird really fast! This actually wasn’t a strange occurrence for Puerto Vallarta, which is considered an exceedingly gay-friendly city.

Why would you care about Trump wanting to build a wall if Mexico’s so great?!

That’s why was a rainbow flag in our rental condo that Zeke mistakenly thought was the local banner. “Look Mommy, the Puerto Vallarta flag,” he exclaimed, until Mommy gave him the lowdown.

The next day we walked to Piño Suárez. It’s a strange forest kind of place where people can shop. We saw a skeleton with the Mexican flag because los muertos (a Mexican holiday that means “Day of the Dead”) is a big theme in the city. We arrived at a little stream and then had to walk over a creaky, unstable bridge. A man even lectured us in Spanish to stop making it rock so much!

When we reached the other side, something odd waited for us: a car from California with a Confederate flag front plate! We got a picture. We ate lunch right across the street from the car and the bridge, and then bought some t-shirts.

We rebels are everywhere! Maybe this dude is planning on taking on the federales.

We met some dogs and cats that were skittish, and one of the cats even ran up a rooty tree. Past the dogs and cats was a bunch of weird works of art, including a sculpture that had Donald Trump as a pig. We went farther up the road and we saw a bunch of filthy t-shirts with bad words on them. We headed back to our place.

Later that day, we swam in the pool for a little bit. It was really cool, but the bottom of it was sharp, and I cut my feet. That night after dinner, we explored around the city square. There was a statue of two random Mexican kids, pulling on a donkey’s head and the other on his butt.

We headed out the next morning for Los Muertos Beach again and built some pretty awesome sand-and-drip castles. We played another game with the waves where you simply couldn’t let the water touch you!

Doing our part to hold up the rocks out in the Islas Marietas. Pretty good considering we had all experienced various degrees of sea sickness out there.

We met a nice but kinda weird Canadian girl who played with us. We chilled at restaurant, got drinks, and watched the sun set. On the way over to dinner, we saw a cigar place called “El Gato Gordo” (The Fat Cat).

The following day was the best day of the adventure: we were taking a boat ride out into Banderas Bay. It was a smooth ride at first until ……… the unexpected happened ……………….. IT STARTED SHAKING AND ROCKING! It was terribly scary. Zeke threw up all over the place, and when I went down to go to the bathroom, I saw …….. PUKE IN THE SINK ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE! It was a madhouse of sickness.

We finally stopped in the ocean near a rock/island called Islas Marietas. We then got on separate boats and went to a beach island with tons of rocks. We swam for a little bit and looked at the cool rock formations, and then got back on the boats and drove through a cave with a huge hole in the top!

The view from church we climbed to the top of during our day-trip to Pitallal.

We sailed back to the main boat and got snorkel gear and boated to an area in the water; this is where we snorkeled. We saw some fascinating fish of all different colors. We ventured back to the city of Puerto Vallarta.

The next day after we ate breakfast we headed for a church in Pitillal, a mountain town northeast of the city. On the way there we spotted a Nativity scene with …….. THE DEVIL IN IT. There was a reason it was in there, you see. It’s a tradition to keep the devil in it and then on Christmas day you take him out. I don’t know why, but it’s not my problem anyway.

Across the street there was a cathedral or a church, which we walked inside of and looked around. There were these strange birds inside an open-air area that we watched for half an hour; they were pretty funny.

Cool art, statues, performance artists, shops, restaurants, & vendors lined El Malecón.

After that, we climbed up to the bell tower. We could see really far from there. Then we walked back to our condo and swam in the pool. Later that night, we left for the festival of “Guadalupe” which in Mexico is a celebration for Mary. The festival was at a church named after her. We got cotton candy, which was really tasty. We walked around for a little bit and found a bunch of weird statues. Here are some that we saw.

Near the statues we saw a restaurant that was called “Tres Hermanos,” which means Three Brothers. We walked a little and found a bunch of letters that spelled “Puerto Vallarta.” There was also a statue that a person riding a sea horse, a boat that was shooting of fireworks, people dancing, and lot and lots of food. We were very tired so we went back to our condo.

Chillin’ out with a friendly Los Muertos figure, which can seen all around the city & are said to honor the dead.

The next day, we walked around for the last time. We strolled on the boardwalk and saw some other statues. One of them was a guy dropping food into his mouth; it was really slimy and gross. There were cannons and restaurants. We kept walking and we found a sand sculpture that said, “Welcome to Puerto Vallarta” which in spanish is “bienvenidos a Puerto Vallarta.”

There were these guys up on a pole with string tied to their leg and they were jumping off and swinging around. The next day we packed up and left for Chicago and then from there to Raleigh and then we drove home. Our adventure had come to an end.

The end. Thank you for reading.

Camping & birthday party

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About a month ago, I went camping for my birthday at Stone Mountain. Now this was no ordinary vacation; it was an insane vacation. There was constant screeching, screaming, and squealing of people. But hey, I’m not saying I didn’t do it.

But there was some fun involved, along with the fatigue and hard work of my parents. An example: there was something like a mini sliding rock that was actually pretty darn exciting, but I did cut up my whole lower body while going down it. Another example: hiking was epic.

Here’s the crew at Hutchinson Homestead.

So now I can get to the actual camping “adventure.” The first day was really just unpacking and getting prepared for the craziness to come. The second day, on the hike we visited the “homestead,” which was really cool. It had a bunch of buildings, including: an outhouse, lodge, meat cellar, and storage shed with an anvil and other equipment within its rugged old walls. (BTW, most everything in the “homestead” was real like around 100-year-old stuff, so that was really interesting.)

In the back of the residence, there was a giant “stone mountain.” I’m guessing that’s why they named the place Stone Mountain. So then we continued with the hike. The hike was long, about three miles, but when we finally reached the end, a 200-foot waterfall awaited our hiking victory. We didn’t swim because we still had to hike back, but we just “walked” in the water which was strange.

So we got back, we got on our swim gear and headed for the mini sliding rock. We finally arrived at our destination and slid and slid and slid until………….DUN DUN DUN….I got in big trouble, so here’s the story folks. I was told (by my parents) not to go in the swimming pit above the rock, but I didn’t go until a little later.

But then Asher (one of the people I went with) was calling me from the pit, so I started up, then I was being called out of the pit and came out and I was in big ol’ trouble. By the end of the weekend, we had lost about the month’s worth of video games! That concludes the getting-in-trouble story.

Having big fun at Widow’s Creek Falls.

We left and went back to the campsite and had a fire, (like usual) and went to bed. That ends day two.

Now for the last day: Day three. We packed up and left, but this is not the end. We were driving home and we took a wrong turn after leaving the campsite. We couldn’t have GPS because there were no bars on our phone, and we were taking wrong turns all over the place. We ended up wasting an hour even before we started on the right path to home, and then there were slow people at the Sheetz, too. So long drive home, ain’t it?

We finally arrived home and we stared unpacking, putting stuff in the shed, and just putting some of our gear inside. We didn’t finish unpacking until the next day, but we got most of it done. The day was over, and our camping trip had come to an end.

I’m grateful that my parents take us camping, even though there are some bad moments. But on the other hand, there are quite a lot of good moments, too!

The next day awaited. OK, so it was the next day and the day of my 10th birthday … YAY! I woke up at about 7:00 and started playing some video games which some were: Minecraft, Halo, and Forza Horizon. (Despite the ban, my kind father let me play because it was my birthday.)

Now we ate breakfast, but there was some angst which included: Zeke getting his butt whipped, crying, and screaming. The rest of the afternoon was spent decorating and getting food all ready for the party.

Around 1:00, we ate lunch and about at 1:30 my grandmother arrived. She bought me a new video game (Halo 1 also known as Halo CE Anniversary, which is basically like Halo CE and Halo Reach together one game) as a birthday present. After lunch, we tried it out. It was really awesome.

Getting some nice birthday gifts from my friends.

After that it was just a matter of time before the big party started around 5:00, and ended around like 9:00 or 9:30 (I can’t really remember). Earlier in the day, we had set up a badminton net and some sort of shooting station where we shot the BB gun and the bow and arrow.

After a while, we did cake and presents, which, by the way, I got some good loot. This included: a Nerf rival rifle, Clue the board game, an emoji frisbe and much more. The party ended and everybody went home, except for my friends that were spending the night: Brodie and Bret. We stayed up until about … I can’t remember … but I think it was around 2:30 or 3:00 playing video games and watching movies.

The next day we woke up at 8:00 and played some more video games and then went outside for a little bit shooting Nerf guns, the BB gun, and the bow and arrow, and then went inside again (playing some more Halo). After that my friends left and my birthday party and camping trip adventure had finally come to a close. I would like to thank my parents for throwing me a cool birthday party.

Goodbye everyone! Thanks for reading!