Daley Ponderings

We bought a "new" minivan last year, and it had the lowest mileage, and highest cost of any car we've owned so far.  It is a 1997 Oldsmobile Silhouette, and it had 107,000 miles on it.  We did a lot of driving (I hit 135,000 today, after a year and a half).  Heather and I both... (More)

Since we're now into the second year of using the woodstove, I thought I would post an update about it. I bought five cords of wood this year, (we bought around four and a half last year, and used around three).  I got around one cord of black locust each year, and that wood is really... (More)

11/6 - Noah and I were making rice krispie treats and Noah was stirring.  He asked for a marshmallow, but I said no, they had to go in the recipe and he could have one of the finished products.  Well, he decided to snitch and got a natural lesson.  I, only a few feet away in the... (More)

We arrived at the Fitzkees' house on Thursday night, and Nick said we could stay as long as we wanted.  We ended up extending our trip by a day and coming home on Tuesday, which was a good decision.  I think we spent the right amount of time for the whole family to enjoy the... (More)

I decided to (mostly arbitrarily) call today the last day of Kindergarten.  Tomorrow will be the first day of First Grade. I wanted to post because of Jonathan's answers to some of the logic problems he had today. For each line, there was a list of five objects or... (More)

We generally try to avoid corn syrup of all kinds (but we only "try", meaning it isn't banned or anything like that). But, when I'm looking for cereal or granola bars or whatever, I check the ingredients and particularly try to gauge if sugar (in whatever form) would be the first... (More)

So, after thinking about it for a while, we decided to go ahead and purchase a new bike.  The reason it took some thinking is that it isn't a regular old bike with one seat, but has three seats, with room for three adults, or with the added child conversion kits, Noah and Jonathan can fit... (More)

Here's my take on the biking/camping trip. With last year's notes, it was actually pretty fun planning camping meals for 14 people, the vast majority of which are young men.  I only made two mistakes, one was forgetting oil for the eggs (we used some butter from the mountain pie... (More)

I have a double request from Grandma to post on the homeschool conference and to make the miscarriage post no longer the first thing you see when you check the blog.  So here goes. (: This was our second year at the CHAP convention.  Last year we spent so much time listening... (More)

In conclusion, the authors talk some about definitions of success and how those definitions affect how you see yourself and your church. He is quick to point out that large churches are not always bad, but points out various downsides of being in a large church, some of which I have... (More)

"The church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning." -- Emil Brunner Mission very easily becomes one activity among others in church life.  It sits on the agenda alongside a list of other items bying for attention.  Or it is left to the enthusiasts to get on... (More)

In continuing my tv watching and catching up on the news from the last year, I see that Verizon has been doing lots of ads about network speeds and comparing them to AT&T.  And I found out that AT&T rates lowest on consumer satisfaction surveys, etc.  My brother said he has... (More)

Since I am in the category of people who is expected to see my health insurance double or triple, I wonder why people are spending so much on their health insurance.  I do see that since we are "poor", we'll likely get free or heavily discounted health insurance under Obama's... (More)

Note: most links in the article are links to our pictures of the wood As I've mentioned previously , we really like our woodstove, and since we've used the gas less than I thought, I decided to get some more wood , and so I found a guy on Craigslist, who had a decent price for... (More)

I mentioned our new wood stove previously, and asked some of you for recommendations, but never got around to writing about it here.  We've had it for a couple months, and it has been great!  We ended up buying an Englander 13-NCI . I don't remember what the 13 stands for, but 12 is... (More)