Hiking the day away...

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Minions Posing For Mom at the Bailey Homestead

part of the National Park Service

So today was adventure day. Or for those less acquainted with homeschooling life. This would be the equivalent to a school field trip. Except this field trip didn't include riding the over stuffed, non air conditioned, half way broken down old school bus. No waivers had to be signed. While they did pack lunches, plenty of water, and set off for an adventure.

I was told by Jen that they took the hike by themselves without a guide and got lost. Here is a picture of that moment, for your viewing pleasure. The good thing is that in this modern day of technology, Jen was able to navigate her way back on course and off to more adventures. There are days, where you think, 'how did we ever get along without all this technology stuff?' Oh, that is right, compass and a map! Might need to dust that off!

Interesting Tree Fungus

The kids also got to visit the 'Sugar Shack.' In my day of summer camps in Arkansas (camp "Wildwood"), that was the local snack hut where you could buy soft drinks, candy, and a myriad of other things. However this actually was the sugar shack where they make... maple syrup, and sugar of all things! It is still the location where they have a sugar/maple syrup festival each year.

Minions on the search for S-U-G-A-R!

Art and History Night

The Board Game of Se-net

Tonight turned into Art History night...

We started the evening with chili on the stove and an evening of sharing. Kids were in rare form for sure. We had a stressful day. Tonight we planned a simple evening filled with quiet times of reading, or other less involved activities.

Jen had to deal with our 'black pyramid' and had to flush the tank again. I had a brutal day answering the phone and fixing user issues. I think the quiet time was much needed as I really didn't want to have a lot of noise in the background. Spend a day in a cramped room surrounded by unhappy folks and dealing with critical issues does that to you.

I started the book 'Midnight in the garden of good and evil' and Momma-San went to bed early leaving me with a disquieted and rambunctious group of minions. No problem I thought. My book will have to wait. Uno asked for a game of Se-net. She is enthralled with everything Egyptian. She got this really cool book with fold outs and activities that she bought from her trip to the Museum in Chicago.

She told me the rules, we played. It was surprisingly fun. Much like a mix of chess, Othello, and 'Sorry!' all rolled into one. I like playing board games, the problem with two person games is that everyone else wants to play. Trying to keep T-Rex, the most annoyed minion who wanted to play, occupied was a tough job.

I haven't sketched in years, this was my result

That is when we turned to art. T-Rex was satisfied coloring in her new coloring book. Uno and Dos wanted me to teach them how to draw. We spent the next hour and a half working on drawing the human head and how to sketch things so that they eventually come out the way they wanted to.
In the end, all off to bed. I settled the minions down with a little struggle, and I am off to bed.

I am thinking of naming our camper Arrakis

I am showing you the superhero syndrome and your own participation in it.
—Frank Herbert

We found more 3M Command Spice Racks that are 

large enough for our bigger items

I know it is a cheesy...

Referencing the Dune Saga, but if you think about all of this talk about spice racks, the Indiana Dunes, I thought it was appropriate. What would be cooler is if Frank Herbert used the Indiana Dunes as his inspiration for the books. Unfortunately, that came from the Oregon Dunes.

But, Like Paule Atredies, we have had to overcome many hardships in the past ten years. From an unstable economy, several lay offs, poor financial and investment decisions, to the death of my father and closing our martial arts schools, we have had to face a lot. By the grace of God and sheer will, we have made it through. 

Making Arrakis our home, organization and simplicity is the key...

I started to be fascinated by camping and RV'ing a little over a year ago. In my research, I came across Families On The Road, and have been in awe of the families who decided to change their lives and live freely. What is inspiring to see is that people from various backgrounds and countries, changing their lives, living more simply, and experiencing a closeness and contentment I haven't found in the path I had chosen for my life.

You see, I am just different. Sure, easy for me to say, since I am the one writing this. I have so many interests and pursuits, that normally 'define' someone. From my faith in God, strong technical skills, multiple black belts, Master's rank in Kung Fu, entrepreneur pursuits, and various 'sub' interests, I find myself lost, only finding solace in one pursuit or the next.

Obviously, that is unhealthy and not the norm. I decided two years ago to put those pursuits on the back burner and focus on the family and righting both our emotional, spiritual, and financial courses. Changing jobs to become a consultant allotted me less hours of work for much more money. I am home more, spend more time with the kids and dedicate more time to them. We are invested more in our Church and I have taken back the reigns from the world on my family and decided it was time to be back in the driver's seat.

What I admire most from these families and this lifestyle is the simplicity of it. I did a back of the envelop assessment of our expenses living on the road versus living in a traditional home. For our family, I believe we can save $900 to $1000 per month without sacrificing on the luxuries we are akin to.The sacrifice is the home lifestyle in exchange to less room with more experiences, distractions that drain our time to fulfilling our emotional and spiritual needs.

While cutting the chord in selling everything and be completely unattached is still in the planning phase, we have settled on the happy medium of our 'experiment' in living in Casa Barnes, AKA Arrakis for a month. Today, the kids start their first full day of road schooling. We have prepared ourselves and have made the transition. We will keep you updated as our experiment unfolds its results.

Fun in the Sun, and not handling stress well

Another day in the Sun. The kids had an absolute blast yesterday when they visited Central Beach along the Lake Shore. Always careful as you can see, each of the minions wore a life jacket. It seems that the lake claims lives every year and that the under tow can pull people away. Of course this is the case whether you are in the Great Lakes, a river, or the ocean... there are always dangers.

Combine common sense, and a little extra precaution, you can have a fun day at the beach wherever you may end up. The only issue we had is that the kids came back a little sun burned. It could have been worse, all of our children take after me with fair complexion. We found earlier this year bathing suits that have UV protection and bought a swim suit for everyone in the family. That helps a lot. Me, I go from pasty white to the color a Lobster, back to pasty white.

The kids also were able to get five pounds of Michigan Blueberries from a local farmer's market. I would rather them eat healthy and delicious blueberries than snack away on unhealthy things like potato chips and other garbage easy to find at your local grocer. As you can see T-Rex in this photo, she is drinking one of the soda's made from our new SodaStream. Ok, we are not perfect! Sure, we could go the all natural way, however for our family, we live in a balance.

For me, I had a long frustrating day on the job. Coming home, I wanted to bless the wife by taking her out and buying her a new laptop since our old one crashed and the junker desktop we have been limping along at home didn't quite fit in our camper, we needed something very manageable that could server multiple purposes. 

We decided on a MacBook Air. I am a huge fan when it comes to Apple products. After supporting both Windows and Linux environments in my past, I decided several years back that I would buy a Mac and see what the hub-bub was all about. I was very surprised and happy. It combines the best in general security, had a great operating system based on Unix, that was mainstream enough to provide plenty of apps to meet my needs that worked well to integrate easily with Windows environments and networks. 

The main use of the new MacBook Air is for homeschooling. Providing kids with the tools they need to do their schoolwork, and matched with awesome and easy to use creative tools to make the whole process fun. My lovely bride would have all the tools she needed to prepare for teaching, with a small footprint to boot. And it fits really well with the RV life. It is ultra portable, lightweight, and rugged!

We found a great deal on the MacBook at the local BestBuy. They had an open boxed version for $250 less than a brand new one. I bought an external super drive as well as an AppleTV to go along with the accessories. The drive allows us to run DVD's as well as other learning programs we use to help the kids in the learning. We had to purchase this because MacBook Airs do not have a DVD/CD drive. That is fine with me because most of the time, we don't use it. Most of the material is available online to download. The AppleTV is for us to be able to send video streaming to our large TV. Thus making the material much more easily watched instead of having kids cram around a small screen.

Bought and paid for, off to the camper...that is when the trouble started. I opened the MacBook Air and everything looked fine. As soon as I booted up, I expected the normal start up and walk through that you normally see on Mac's to help you set up the computer. To my surprise, they hadn't wiped the machine. Worse they had locked the login user out from basically EVERYTHING. This along with not even providing passwords for the accounts made things more difficult. I even tried removing the setup file using terminal so that when I rebooted, it would take me through the process again of setting up the machine and creating new Admin and user accounts.

None of that worked. Instead, I had to call Apple Support. We went and wiped out the old settings and to my dismay, they wiped out the entire OS. The good thing is that you can restore the entire machine by downloading a new OS through the restore process. Unfortunately, it wouldn't find my wireless connection in the camper. I tried everything. I even walked the campground in the dark in hopes to find a good signal. No Dice. Eventually, I just gave up, put the machine in the box and tried to calm down.

In the kids excitement, they all wanted to see and look at the new machine. I was already under a lot of stress trying to get it configured. I really didn't want to be bombarded with a thousand questions and have everyone clambering around me to get a look at the new machine. I lost my cool. I yelled at the kids. Father of the year award... lost. 

I am definitely not perfect. I have lots of opportunities to grow in this area. I wasn't angry at them, I was angered that this new purchase that was supposed to be a godsend to my wife and children was utterly falling flat on its face. Instead of closing the computer and giving up an hour and a half before I did, I took the frustrations out on my children. Some things are just not worth yelling about. A smart person would realize that we should have had it checked out before we took it home. You know what they say when you assume...

Needless to say, Jen and I got up in the morning and prayed. I asked for forgiveness for my crappy attitude, and we are taking the MacBook Air back. I left it up to Jen as to whether she would take a replacement, or have the GeekSquad (who we purchased a package from) would work on the machine. Either way, I am fine with the decision. God is in control, even when I think I should be. This is a great lesson to me about living on the road. Things don't go as planned. Sometimes it will be out of your control. The best way to respond when things get away from you is to give up, seek help from those who are well suited to do so, and move on. It is not worth all the fuss nor the damage to relationships it could cause!

Indiana Dunes and the Jr. Ranger Program

Officially, we have told the kids that school starts next week. This will allow us to fully try out road schooling and determine whether or not this is something we want to do for the long term. I will say however, I am very impressed with how the kids are adapting. They have come from having their own rooms to a much more cramped living space. Our living room is combined with kitchen and dining room which means that we multi-purpose everything.

However, each of the children have a designated place to use for learning and working. 'Defined' spaces means a lot to our children as we are still fighting constant 'mines' over property. Just last night we had an Epic battle over an extra blanket being used during a movie of  'Mirror, Mirror' we rented from RedBox. 'It's Mine,' got in the way of a peaceful evening only to be settled by me turning off the TV and reminding the children that we are all in this together and that sharing is an absolute must. Finally, they calmed down and peace was restored.

The Indiana Dunes has been a huge draw for us. The kids love adventures at the beach. From climbing Mt. Baldy, to just playing on the beach, the kids seem to love it. I am actually even more impressed with the Indiana Dunes Junior Ranger Program. They have booklets that you can get in their office or download. The kids explore and learn about the lake shore, the beaches, plants, birds, and other historical information. From there, they fill out their booklets to turn them in and get their Junior Ranger badge.

Earlier last week, I had the chance to climb Mt. Baldy and it was a fun adventure for all. There is so much to do and see. It has also provided us with an endless list of 'to do's' and 'to see's.' What better way to spend an evening than a sunset walk along the beach with the wife as the kids scamper and play in the surf?