Leslie's Home Spot

Carl has been in kindergarten for about a month now. The volunteer program is getting started and yes I am a helping mom.

 

Carl rides the bus. I use the time we wait for the bus to review and practice skills. Every day we go over the day of the week and date. We then work on a shape he is having trouble with. Right now we are focusing on the pentagon. We talk about how a pentagon is shaped like a small house or a shed. He also sings a little song:

 

A pentagon has 5

Our tomatoes have finally come in!

 

I found a recipe - or at least a how to blog - for canning dried tomatoes in oil. In this recipe it is called Tomato Confit.

 

 

It has some answers to questions I had - mainly pressure cooker or hot water process and how long.

 

Here is another site with other thoughts.

I am posting a link to our neighbor's son's myspace page.

 

 

He recently played the Portland Zoo, in the opening act for Brandi Carlile. Unfortunately, we didn't hear about it till after the performance.

 

Here is youtube of Dave (on keyboards)-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbDh81hAnBo 

My niece was recently in town. Our evening activities were a unique Portland experience.

 

For dinner, mom picked up some pizza and we ate at the Chapman Elementary field and watched the Vaux Swifts. These are migrating birds that gather for the night in the chimney at Chapman School - in this swirling pattern.

 

We then took them to Powells bookstore - we were there for over an hour and they barely got through two floors. I bought a few books for Carl (mostly from the $1 bin.) I have started reading him some of Beverly Cleary's books. He also loves the "Little Critter" books by Mercer Mayer.

 

I was a fun evening.

 

 

 

 

I mentioned earlier that Rich and I were extras in some local movies. When they came out on video, we bought them. Between the clothing bought for one scene and the cost of the videos - we spent more than we took in.

 

We watched one of the movies recently - "The Sasquatch Gang." Since Carl watched it with us, we had the remotes ready "in case." The movie was a pleasent surprise. The story was told from two points of view. It was light and cute - with only one really "gross out" part. Carl loved it and now wants to watch it about once a week.

 

We couldn't find ourselves in the crowd - even though we know where we were and what we were wearing. It was also a good opportunity to talk to Carl about entertainment and acting. The example we were able to use was Jeff D'Agostino. In the movie he plays a pretty rotten character, but in the photos I have, he is a nice guy. He signed a lot of autographs and posed for a lot of photos that day! Check out his "zoolander" at the bottom of the page!

 

There are some very talented people in this movie. The one person who impressed me was Hubbel Palmer. He has a great voice.