8/17/05
Jump to info about:     David       Cindy       Kelli       Sophie       Daphne News about Dave:      Dave continues to be in high demand professionally. Bracker's will soon be raising his repair rate from $35.00/hour to $45.00/hour for outbound repairs. However, drive time, which was previously billed at the outbound repair rate, will from to $25.00/hour. In-store repairs will increase from $25.00/hour to $30.00/hour. This is still an incredibly reasonable rate for someone so skilled! Dave is also still mentally writing a book on kiln repair. He has yet to get anything on paper, but he has a lot of thoughts and ideas, not to mention encouragement from manufacturers. As soon as he has the time to sit down and start writing, I'm sure the words will just pour out onto the paper. School starts for David on August 19th. He will be taking Politics of Africa, Comparitive Politics (honors), Film of the 1950s and German 3. 12 hours total. This of course is in addition to working full time and raising 3 children. Dave will also be undergoing minor surgery on September 2nd. Nothing serious, let's just call it preventative... On September 6th (while stil in recovery) Dave will turn 33 years old. He looks forward to 7:11am on this day every year because it is the 12 minutes that he can call his twin brother his "little brother" Jump to info about:     David       Cindy       Kelli       Sophie       Daphne News about Cindy:     Cindy just completed her first ever catalog for Bracker's Good Earth Clays. You can view the cover in Kelli's picture pages. It is a 40page catalog designed especially for teachers. This project was completed at home after the kids were in bed. Cindy would work for 2-3 hours every night for about 5 weeks,taking off June 22nd and July 4th only until completion. Then the proofing and correcting began. On August 18th, the 3000 copies Bracker's had printed will be picked up from Jostens Publishing in Topeka. 62 days after the project was started. Eventually, the pages will be available in pdf format on the Bracker's website and you can take a look at Cindy's work. Cindy also has been getting more and more into video editing. She created a wedding memories dvd for her Brother in law and sister "outlaw" (term used in more ways than one! wink wink) for their first anniversary. She also compiled home movie footage from 2004 and compiled that onto a dvd. For 2005, there was so much footage from just the first half of the year that she split up 2005 and recently finished "2005-A" As her video editing skills increase, the "funny factor" of the DVD does also. Nobody wants to watch boring old home movies of someone elses kids, but Cindy tries very hard to cut out the lame boring stuff and just include the best footage. She also adds fun digital effects such as Sophie hunting easter eggs at quadruple speed set to the music Flight of the Bumblebee. Copies will begin floating around soon. Cindy has adopted a "watch it and send it on" philosophy, because really, who wants to keep a copy of 2005A for frequent viewing laying around? However, after viewing it, if you would like your own copy to keep, contact Cindy and she will be happy to burn you off your very own! Jump to info about:     David       Cindy       Kelli       Sophie       Daphne News about Kelli:     Kelli started 3rd grade today! Her teacher this year will be Mrs. Breithaupt, who seems very nice. When we bought Kelli's school supplies, we decided to buy extras of everything on her list and donate them to the school. Although Sunflower is in a fairly affluent area, there are some kids who go there who cannot afford school supplies. We also bought some other fun "toys" for Mrs. Breighthaupt such as highlighters with built-in postit flags, post-it pagemarkers, construction paper etc. Kelli is really looking forward to this school year. The kids will actually be doing some class changing. The teachers in her "pod" have split up the basic subjects and each teacher will teach their strongest subject to all the students. The first 3 weeks she'll be doing Social Studies with Mrs. Breithaupt, then after that she will go to one of the other teachers for 3 weeks to do writing, then 3 weeks of science with the third teacher in the pod. Kelli turned 8 on July 30th. Gloria had her this year on her birthday, so we celebrated with Kelli on August 1st. She was very excited about getting a computer. Cindy had her old laptop refurbished and "mindwiped." Kelli has been spending all of her free time playing "The Oregon Trail" on her laptop. Her other favorite present was a surprise trip to spend the week in Wichita with her Grandparents. Tuesday night, August 2nd, Cindy asked Kelli to come with her on "an errand," which ended up being a trip to Emporia where Kelli was surprised to see her Grandparents waiting for her. She was so excited she could barely talk. A great time was had by all. Kelli also did a lot of reading over the summer, finsihing every chapter book she owns. She is now reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which she borrowed from David's "library." At the end of last school year, Kelli had been identified as reading at a fourth grade level! She reads about 1 hour every day. It certainly has paid off! Kelli also spent the weeks she was with us "working" at Brackers. She had to clock in and out and figure her "time card" every week and figure out how much she had earned. Her end of the year report card showed that her biggest deficiency was in time, money and math, so this was a good exercise for her, plus she got some "shopping money," opened her very own bank account and Cindy got a lot of her filing done for her! Jump to info about:     David       Cindy       Kelli       Sophie       Daphne News about Sophie:     Sophie continues to learn and show more independence every day. She is definitely VERY two! She still goes to Evelyn's every day and likes playing with all her friends there. We are working on poddy-training with her, which is slow-going. I suspect that once she has one success it should come quickly. Once she is poddy-trained and at least 2 3/4, she will be elligeble for Raintree's preschool room. Her placement on the list is very good for that room, which has considerably more space than the toddler room. Recently, Cindy took Sophie to see Dora the Explorer's Pirate adventure live in Topeka. She had a great time. Each kid was given a flag at the beginning that they were supposed to wave. Sophie was so star-struck that when they told the kids to wave their flags, she just sat there with a big goofy grin on her face until right after everyone else stopped, then she began to wave her flag wildly in the air. It was so cute! Jump to info about:     David       Cindy       Kelli       Sophie       Daphne News about Daphne:"     Daphne started day care on August 1st. She, like her sister goes to Evelyn's and seems to like it very well there. She loves to be outside, and Evelyn takes the kids out for nearly the whole day. She lives in an old neighborhood with lots of mature trees, which creates a fantastic canopy and keeps it much cooler in her back yard that the actual temperature. She is nearly weaned from nursing, sitting up on her own and making cute little noises constantly. She actually says ah-mah a lot, which David believes to be her trying to say Mama, although she is awfully young to be saying any actual words. More likely is that she is imitating her sister Sophie, who says "mama" constantly, usually in strings of about 5. Daphne recently met Jesse Keel, the first born son of Captain Fritz and Kelly Keel. Jesse is 5 weeks younger than Daphne although he weighs a full pound more than she does! Fritz was best man at David and Cindy's wedding. He was also Cindy's high school sweetheart and continues to be an extremely close friend, despite living in New York (Fort Drum) for the time being. We are still considering an arranged marriage. Just kidding. On August 17th, Daphne had a surprise for her parents - Her first tooth! Good thing she's almost done nursing! Jump to info about:     David       Cindy       Kelli       Sophie       Daphne Return to Home Page