Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Google Reader

One of my favorite internet sites is Google Reader. It helps me keep up with all my favorite blogs including all of my family blogs, tech news sites, recipe blogs, flickr friends pictures, local news, etc. It also lets me share interesting articles with Becky and other friends. I used it to share interesting articles with Olympics trivia during the last couple of weeks.

If you want to learn more about it, check out this little video. It describes what Google Reader does in plain english.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Home grown produce





Our garden is producing tons of stuff right now. I'm really excited about all the cucumbers the kids have been eating lately. Dante was calling them cumebutters, which was really cute. We have already picked tons of beans, cucumbers, zucchini and yellow squash, some tomatoes, basil (we made pesto this last weekend and that was really good) raspberries, & carrots.

We have a couple of pumpkin plants growing, one from the compost pile at the side of the house. This is just one plant and it is a volunteer. It is also doing much better than the one in our garden. It must like the compost it lives in as well as the water from the lawn sprinklers. There are 2 pumpkins growing on the vine in the 2nd picture. I saw a few more little ones when I took the picture today. We also had a few volunteer cantaloupe plants growing in the garden, and I saw a baseball sized cantaloupe on it today. For some reason though, we have a hard time telling when they are ready to pick so they usually rot before we pick them. Maybe this year we can figure it out. Gardening sure takes practice.


Pottery Class Results!

We got the pottery back from pottery class this summer.

Valerie created an alligator (no feet, I guess they ran out of time) a fish, and the sea bowl where she has a clam with pearl inside, a starfish, a seashell and some kind of fish.




Scarlett also made an alligator, a fish and her sea bowl has a whale, a sail boat, a shark fin, and I don't know what the green thing is.



Ella didn't have time to make an alligator, but she made a fish and sea bowl. Her bowl has an octopus, a boat, and also something I don't know what is.


The teacher spent 2 classes letting them make the items, then the last class they glazed them. The only thing I didn't like about the class was it was over 20 minutes away in Highland. If she was right here in Orem, I would probably let them do classes all the time.

Now all I need is a place to put all their creations. I'm thinking of making a high up shelf in their bedroom to display their treasures on without little hands being able to get into them.

First Day of School




The kids started school on Aug 18th this year. Valerie is holding her backpack that we embellished this year. She was very excited to make the owl.
Ella started 1st grade and goes all day now. She likes to eat lunch at school now. She seems so young to me to be in 1st grade. I don't remember thinking that about Valerie when she went to 1st. I can't believe that Valerie is in 5th grade now, because the 5th graders seemed so old a few years ago. She gets to memorize states/capitols this year. Liz, maybe you could teach her the song or something. I never learned the state song when I was in school.
Scarlett is now in 3rd grade and seems to like her new teacher. All the girls are in dual immersion spanish/english and the teachers are all using a 1 week in english, 1 week in spanish program this year. (well maybe not the 1st graders, I can't remember what her teacher said). We have back to school night tonight, so I guess we will get better details then.
Dante is going to start a preschool next week 2 times a week in the morning. I am excited for that as well. I think he will have a great time learning, playing with kids his own age, and I definitely will keep busy while he is away. I'm excited to be able to go volunteer at the school without having to find a baby sitter.