The Brokenness of VXX

This is in response to Jared Woodard's post "The Unbrokenness of VXX":

http://condoroptions.com/2012/03/22/the-unbrokenness-of-vxx

I don't know enough about VXX to claim it is broken, but I would love to know why sometimes it doesn't follow the VIX very closely at all. 3/19/2012 and 3/20/2012 are prefect examples IMO.


Here is the 5 min. chart of the VIX on 3/19 and 3/20:



And here is the 5 min. chart of the VXX on 3/19 and 3/20:




Those charts don't look very similar at all to me. The VIX clearly closed higher on 3/20 than it did on 3/19, but the VXX clearly closed LOWER on 3/20 than it did on 3/19.

I would love to understand why this happened so I could trade accordingly.

Thanks Jared!
Jeff

Abby lost her first tooth yesterday

We took my Mom out to Cheeseburger in Paradise for her birthday last night and Abby was showing her loose tooth to everyone because she was so excited to finally be losing her first tooth and it was hanging by a thread. She has been trying to pull it out for the past week or so, but quit trying when it got really close to coming out (probably b/c it hurt a bit). It was so close to coming out at dinner, but she wouldn't let anyone touch it. Then at the end of the meal, she asked Grant if she could have one of his gummy bears. She started eating it but after a few seconds, said she wanted to spit it out (which was very unusual for her). So I let her spit it out into my hand then I threw it on one of the dirty dishes. A few min. later, she noticed that her tooth was gone! Everyone started freaking out b/c we thought she swallowed it or dropped it on the floor. Finally I thought to look in the gummy bear, and sure enough, there it was! We asked her later why she wanted to spit out the gummy bear and she said, "because it was crunchy"!

That night, before bed, she made a little note for the Tooth Fairy and told him she liked him. I laid with her and she said, "Daddy, I really want to see the Tooth Fairy". I told her just to stay awake as long as she can and maybe she will. 5 min. later, she was sound asleep.

The Tooth Fairy brought her a $5 bill and she came running into out room at 5am to show Mommy.

Since December 31st (New Year's Eve) 2011, we started going to church on Saturday nights at Crossroads. After having problems time and again, Mom said this was our solution! She was right!!! It's been 6 weeks and we haven't missed a service. The kids are now involved in Choir and Jack is starting at The Light Company on Wednesday after school next week. It's been overwhelming how much of a difference it's made in our lives. Having someone to turn to and REALLY pray to is such a blessing. Yesterday, after Choir, I received the email below from the girls' (and Dylen's) teacher. So sweet!

*******

-PRAISE moment = During rehearsal this evening, I was in awe of the beauty of worship with these young ones. It was one of those times when you wish there was a hidden camera to capture it! Even though the upbeat songs are what make us want to dance, the slow songs can sometimes speak volumes for what these kids really understand. While singing the song, "Jesus with you," I asked the kids to sing the song with their eyes closed and in a worship pose. We talked about
worshiping with hands raised or hands on heart or hands folded in lap. In that beautiful moment of singing, these kids were in their choice worship pose worshiping God with eyes closed and hearts raised to the Lord. May this thought rest in your soul as you remember what great job you are doing by encouraging your kids to take part in these great worship activities.

Miss Abby

Abby was sick and stayed at Grandma's while we worked. Even though she was sick, she still had to be busy. She's soooo funny!!









- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Jack's First All Star Mention!

Jack is doing great in All Stars. He's positive, hard working and gives 110%. We are very proud of him!

Letter to Grammie (Day 5 of our RV trip)

The weather was very nice today (mostly sunny and about 75 degrees) but it started raining again about 6:00 so we still haven't had a chance to sit by the fire at this campground. That's OK though. They had a blast today. This campground has a million things to do and on Wednesdays they have this special deal where you buy a wristband and get to do all the activities unlimited from 11-3 so they played miniature golf, rode go carts, rode bumper boats, had a water balloon fight, jumped on a huge trampoline, swam in the pool, and slide down a water slide. They were all too short to ride the go carts by themselves, so Missy and I had to take them so that was a lot of fun. I cannot believe the amount of money they have invested in this campground. This is like the Disney of campgrounds! We had a lot of fun today. The weather started looking bad so we decided to head into town (downtown Port Huron) for dinner and found a really neat restaurant right by Lake Huron. There were lots of boats in marinas, but we didn't see any coming or going (probably b/c of the weather). But it was a very good meal and very affordable too for some reason. It was a pretty old restaurant called Quay Street Brewery and Restaurant and I think they just haven't been raising their prices to match other restaurants. Then we came back to the campground and watched Air Buddies in their theatre. We're all in the camper now getting ready for bed. We have to leave for our last destination tomorrow so our trip is winding down. We only stay one night at this last place and then we head home on Friday. I think everyone is about sick of living in this cramped RV (especially when it's raining) so I doubt anyone will be sad to get home. We've had a ton of fun though and the best part is all the time we've spent together. The kids really start hanging on me when we take trips like this and I really love that part. They all want to hold my hand when we walk, sit in my lap when we sit or just climb on me when there's nothing else to do. Normally that stuff kind'of annoys me b/c I usually have something else to do but I really love it on vacations like this. I've probably only spent 2 hours total on the computer this whole trip and 90% of that was writing these emails to you! So that alone is a testament to how much time we've spent together.

Well, I'll try to write more tomorrow night but we might be busy packing and cleaning so I might not have a chance. Thanks for "listening"!

Love you,
Jeff

Letter to Grammie (Day 4 of our RV trip)

Yes, we are in Michigan. Right near the US/Canada border. I actually thought Port Huron was in Canada, but I was wrong, it's in the US in Michigan. We've seen 3 of the Great Lakes on this trip. First was Lake Erie, then we saw quite a bit of Lake Ontario on the road today and now we're right next to Lake Huron.

Niagara Falls was awesome and I think we did everything you can do. But we made the mistake of going to the US side of the falls first instead of going to the Canadian side. The US side was closer and it was amazing and we walked around for hours looking at all the sights and the kids ended up getting pretty tired so by the time we went over to Canada and saw the amazing, amazing horseshoe falls, they were kind'of sick of the place and ready to go home. I basically had to run over there and take a few snapshots of the horseshoe falls when that's where we should have been standing and admiring it all. But we did have a blast and did a lot of cool stuff. We walked over a small walking bridge that crosses the Niagara River just north of the falls. The water flowing over those rapids was incredible. They said it flows about 35 MPG and I could believe it. Then we walked for miles around the American Falls and looked it them from all angles. There are some lookouts that are literally about 5 feet from the edge of the falls. Then we went up that lookout tower and got some great shots from up there. Then we did the Maid of the Mist. I know we did that as kids, but I sure didn't remember how amazing that was to be at the base of those falls and hear that roaring water and get soaked from all the water mist. The kids absolutely loved that and I'm so glad we went. After that we drove through customs and into Canada. That was pretty cool too. By that time everyone was getting kind'of cranky and everything was very far from the parking lot so we did lots of walking in the hot sun until we stopped at a very cool restaurant for lunch/dinner. That revived everyone quite a bit and raised the spirits so we had enough energy to make it to the horseshoe falls. I took a ton of pictures from all angles and I can't wait to see how they turned out.

Well, we finally got some rain. We're sitting in the camper right now in the middle of a pretty bad thunderstorm. Missy is scared to death, luckily the kids are sleeping, and I'm loving it! There's nothing better than camping in a thunderstorm to give you that "close to nature" feeling. Technology is great in these situations. Missy's on the Weather Channel on her phone watching the live radar so we can tell that the worst is almost over, but back in the old days you had to listen to the pattern of the rain and make a judgment call on staying for the reward of a beautiful day the next day or potentially getting stuck in a 3 day monsoon. We're pretty far from home right now so we don't have much choice!

I'll send more later. I think the plan for tomorrow is to hang out at this campsite. This is by far the coolest campsite I've ever seen. We might venture into town and see the lake and beach. Kind'of depends on the weather too.

Love you,
Jeff