steckle.com

Finally, one of my dreams has come true! At least Amazon understands that it shouldn't take 45 minutes to open Fisher-Price Little People.

See Products Available with Frustration-Free™ Packaging at Amazon.com

PS. Just noticed that Amazon.com calls it a "Holiday Toy List" instead of a "Christmas Toy List", here comes my email!

Seriously, a copy of every set ever made! WOW! I was browsing through my daily feeds and discovered a video tour of the Lego Secret Vault!

I saw this photo of one of my favorite LEGO sets and it really brought back some memories. I remember playing with the Lego Space series all of the time. Luke really seems to like them too and I can't wait until we he gets some more!

Swiss adventurer Yves Rossy used his "jet-propelled wing" to fly over the English Channel today. You've got to check this out!

How much fun would it have been to fly behind him and record the whole flight!

Red Wings forward Dallas Drake brought the Stanley Cup to Traverse City on Labor Day as a fundraiser for Grand Traverse Hockey Association's New Skater Fund. Here's Grandpa Koot with the Stanley Cup. Lookin' good!

Photography for the day was donated by Joe McGraw, Rick Cover, Tara Noffsinger and Cindy Hughes.

On a side note, I was shocked to see that Koot was bigger than the Stanley Cup. Maybe the photographers used some photoshop tricks...

I saw this article at LifeSiteNews.com and really enjoyed it. For those of you who don't know about homeschooling, this article addresses some of the main reasons homeschooling is on the rise and why parents might choose to educate their children at home.

A couple of my favorite parts of the article...

Homeschooling is a way we can ensure that we are the primary educators of our children and that we take full responsibility for our children’s formation and religious upbringing.

and

On the other hand, our local Catholic home school group is full of families that share our beliefs, morals and values. In this group, the children find friends with whom they have much in common and meet older kids who are good role models. In fact, it may be that the best way to “socialize” our children is to surround them with love, first in the home and then in warm, caring environments outside the home.

I can't say enough how important it is to have the support and friendship of other Catholic Homeschooling families. It's been a real help to us on our homeschooling journey.

Read Homeschooling: a learning experience for the whole family at MercatorNet

I was browsing the Leelanau Enterprise online and saw this headline, Thousands of historical photos posted. Of course, I'm going to click an article with a title like that.

You must visit the Traverse Area Historical Society website and check this out. I did some searches for various places (Suttons Bay for example) and found some really cool photos. The navigation is a bit clunky, but the content certainly makes up for it. The site features over 7,000 photos!

This picture featured in the Enterprise article really made my day! A family fishing and women wearing dresses, if only today's society lived the same way!

Read Thousands of historical photos posted in the Leelanau Enterprise
Visit Traverse Area Historical Society online

Sometime tonight I will finally be adding some new photos to the website. It's been a long time coming as I recently realized that it's been almost 2 years since I consistently updated photos. To access the new photos click the Family Photo Gallery button on the right.

Here's a couple of recent pictures from 2008!

Claire is a flower girl 5-24-08

Luke and Mark Camping 7-3-08

Teresa swimming for the first time! 7-24-08

Late Night Reading follows the books I read "late at night" since it's really the only time I have a chance to sit down and read! It will be referred to as "LNR" in future postings.

I borrowed this book from one of my friends and had a hard-time putting it down. The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition is written by E. Christian Kopff, a classicist at the University of Colorado. Kopff provides great thought-provoking chapters and strong arguments for bringing back the "classics" to help our children's education.

Here's an excerpt from Booklist...

"Contemporary Chronicles" contains profiles in classical courage drawn from academe and the movies; especially noteworthy are the sketch of classicist and Scottish nationalist Douglas Young and the considerations of The Godfather, the films of Clint Eastwood, and The Lion King as enactments of classical Greek ethical concepts. Kopff concludes with practical proposals for restoring Latin and Greek to elementary and secondary curricula and with guidance for adults who want to learn them. His clean and lively style throughout constitutes a very cogent arguing point for teaching the classical languages again: would that we all wrote this well.

I also enjoyed the story in the introduction explaining the title of the book.

The Devil Knows Latin at Amazon.com

I found this great plugin Code Markup that allows for easy posting of code examples. So here's an example of ASP code to show a different greeting depending on the time of day.

<%
Dim dHour
dHour = Hour(Now)

If dHour < 12 Then
Response.Write "Good morning"
ElseIf dHour < 17 Then
Response.Write "Good afternoon"
Else
Response.Write "Good evening"
End If
%>

I haven't had a chance to attend a broadway musical yet, but given the performances by the cast of "Phantom" at the Milliken Auditorium in Traverse City, I won't have to travel to New York to see a terrific performance. Miracle Productions describes themselves as...

a professional production company offering high quality "Broadway" style musicals to Northern Michigan. Our mission is to provide a performance venue and employment for the immensely talented college men and women who return here each summer.

That sums up the show in a nutshell. The performances by Trevor Kolle (Phantom) and Hanna Brammer (Christine) blew me away. I was very impressed. The rest of the cast provided many outstanding moments and provided a wonderful evening of entertainment. We would have gone back the next day if we could have and watched it again.

Miracle Productions is currently getting ready to perform "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" in August and you can get information about showtimes and tickets at www.miracleproductionstc.com.

You can also learn more about the "Other Phantom" in the articles below...

Read 'Phantom' has same story, different approach in the Record Eagle
Read Phantom (musical) at Wikipedia