Sorry for the delays in getting this posted but I hope you will enjoy the news, even if it is not breaking news.
Grant's News
March 4, 2012
This was Grant's week of training in the kitchen. The managers say they are impressed with how well he cooks since his only training is knowing the menu and watching the cooks. His biggest hurdle is knowing the difference between how well done meat is cooked. He can cook well done burgers and rare burgers, but struggles with anything in between. The other hurdle is not freaking out as the orders come in and timing his work so that the orders go out at appropriate times. Although he has enjoyed the change of pace and the opportunity to mingle with a new group of coworkers, some things will take some getting used to, like getting paid. Grant is used getting paid daily through his tips, so he feels poor right now because he hasn't received his first cook paycheck. Luckily, Grant still has some serving shifts so we're not rocking the boat too much at Hudson's. Otherwise, Grant's week was rather quiet and uneventful. He was able to spend Saturday evening hanging out with Logan, going to Culver's and then renting zombie movies.
The Pennsylvania Haws Family
March 4, 2012
Our week was quite busy.
Renata has been working and has been very happy with the chance to get out of the house everyday and have her own personal routine, let alone the spending cash. She also had ESL orientation this week and will begin ESL night classes on Monday 11 March. She is quite excited and ready to become an English speaker.
Felipe doubts how much English will help his mother and suggests that Spanish may be more important for communication in America. Felipe is working hard to learn English in his ESL classes but finds that his Spanish gets more training. Due to the number of Spanish speaking students in ESL, ESL classes are mostly in Spanish leaving other speaker doubly lost as they must learn Spanish to participate fully in the ESL program. He has been a good sport about it though and is just happy that he was able to start practicing with the soccer team each Monday evening. The soccer team was very welcoming and quite impressed with his soccer skills.
Lucas is doing well in Brazil and is still sure that the USA is not as cool as it looks on tv. Maybe cool was the wrong word, not as fun I suppose. He wants to continue in Brazil and is working hard to reach his dream of becoming a professional soccer player. We wish him the best and Renata and the boys look forward to visiting him in the summer.
Derick is progressing in his English development. This week was the first time that he got all of his spelling words right. As he had begun the alphabetization process in Brazil he had a different understanding of what sounds letters were suppose to make and that was causing some confusion for him at school. It appears that he is getting past that and is beginning to understand a little bit more of how to sound things out in English. Derick has been enjoying the US and especially that Mommy is working as that means that his toy budget is better than ever.
We went to an Aquarium in Camden, NJ a week ago. I have attached two images to this email and will send another later. We had a lot of fun with that. Renata loved walking through the shark tunnel, a glass tunnel going through the shark pool where she could see sharks up close. Derick especially loved the sting rays and was even able to feed a sardine to one. Felipe liked seeing the university in Philadelphia and it was neat to see him get excited about the idea of going to college, even though I know that the excitement is only that he will get to live on his own and hang out with college girls.
I have been busy. Work always has new surprises and different things to learn. One of my learning projects is trying to see what I can do with a new little computer called Raspberry Pi. Raspberry pi is a very small computer. It is about the size of a credit card and runs on a SD card for all of its hd space. It is not terribly powerful so you probably would not want to use it for your day to day computing. At the same time it only costs about $35 so there are many people in the world that might find it extremely interesting as an option for their first computer or as a computer for their kids. As for myself the interest lies in the ability to set up an array of lots of them and run heavy tasks spread out across the multiple computers. Idea being that one may not be terribly powerful but lots sure can be and if ten still costs less than the common computer it may be possible to set up something amazing for much less than buying one other computer. There are many other interesting things that one might do with a set of small, cheaper computers but there is still much to learn.
I hope that you week has been as pleasant and exciting as ours.
Love,
Jeff
The Haws Family of Wisconsin
It has been a busy couple of weeks. Last weekend Logan went on a campout with his scout troop to Eagle Cave. It is a privately owned cave in Wisconsin. They have about 300 scouts each weekend camp in the cave. They have a terrific program that all the boys loved.
Lanette spent the weekend with one of her classmates, Autumn. Autumn's mother is one of the amazing people that foster kids with disabilities. Lanette and Autumn had a great time. This weekend we had some significant snow storms so Lanette enjoyed hearing the winds blow.
Mom and I had the opportunity to spend some time alone. We enjoyed a trip to the temple. It was a wonderful experience. We did the endowments for two of our ancestors that were born in the 18th century. I am cure they appreciate our efforts. We enjoyed time with Grant and I took Mom on a date to Chili's which a unusual treat since Chili's is not in Marshfield. We also spent a few minutes with Emily and a bit longer with Trent. That was a short but delightful visit.
We are looking forward to spring time and seeing Grant's flowers come up out of the now snow covered ground. We have plane tickets to go to Haley's baptism leaving on our 33rd anniversary and returning the next week. We love seeing our grandchildren even if it is just pictures. All and all I am feeling pretty lucky.
Love,
Dad
