madameblogalot

I am looking forward to a great Thanksgiving Feast tomorrow. I like turkey. I made a new cranberry-apricot sauce. Two pumpkin pies and a chocolate pudding pie (homemade pudding!) are both ready. Homemade whipped cream is in the freezer. Tomorrow I will finish up the mashed sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and corn casserole. Yum!

But I want to be sure in all this, not only tomorrow, but each day of my life, I am living in a grateful manner. In the midst of living, I often forget to give thanks for my healthy strong willed kids. I forget how truly blessed I am to have a husband who loves me and cares for our family. We have enough money. We have more than enough “stuff”. We have family and friends.

For all this, I give thanks.

I have been thinking of getting a new Christmas tree for the last few years. Ours is older than our son. It’s not in terrible shape, but I have been thinking it looks a little shabby. But I am too stingy to pay full price for the new trees (I only paid $20 for this one!!) I saw an ad this week for a pre-lighted six foot tree for $30! I thought it would be perfect! Until my daughter said “No way! Then we couldn’t do the lights ourselves!” I guess that means she will definitely be helping me put the lights on the tree again this year!

I have been getting an inordinate amount of junk mail in my email box. And that doesn’t even count what goes to my spam box! I took Friday morning to unsubscribe from the first 30 or 40 emails I had that day. Don’t know for sure why so much, except that I do a lot of websurfing. So I hope this will help to eliminate some of that junk mail. I hope to continue my little spree of unsubscribing til there is little junk coming into my inbox.

I have seen a lot of places offer tutoring to students of all ages. One of the biggest areas of tutoring seems to be Reading Intervention. I have never had experience with any of this kind of tutoring, unless you count the year I homeschooled my nephews. But even then I pretty much started at the beginning by using phonics to give them keys to decode nearly all words.

There are many different forms and approaches to tutoring reading. I think my favorite is the one offered by our public library. They use dogs to have the hesitant students read aloud to!

I think learning to read and to read well is the key to all other learning. No matter what else a person wants to learn, they can learn it if they first learn how to read and to become a proficient reader.

Our area high schools offer “late arrival” days occasionally for the students. Since school starts for them at 7:20, these secondary students appreciate late arrival days more than early release days. Whenever these late arrivals occur, my son is thrilled to stay up a little later the night before and sleep a little later the morning of. Tonight after church, we went by Half Price Books to pick up a gift for my nephew’s tenth birthday. Then we made a stop for a treat at Starbucks. My son was surprised and thought I must have gotten a gift card since it’s unusual for me to go to this establishment. All in all, it’s nice for the students to have a little treat.

My mom has been getting a lot of stuff together to help my daughter giver her room a little more of a “teen” look. She has bought her book shelves, a comforter and sheets and even storage bins. The colors are just right for my daughter and she really likes the way it’s coming together.

My mom also offered to help my son. His room needs painting and updating, but he is rather blase about it all. We offered to paint it and update it according to his tastes. We could decorate using ideas from SHOP.COM. We could use lockers, choose his favorite from the NBA comforters, put in new bookshelves, whatever. He said no thanks anyway!

Corrie ten Boom, Heroine of Haarlem: I have always found Corrie ten Boom’s later life to be interesting. This short biography was interesting. But there were several editing errors close to the end of the book. (I don’t know why that has been so prevalent in the books I’ve read lately!) When you turn the page, it began with a whole other thought, as if in the middle of another sentence. Or another time, it repeated something from the previous page. The story itself was a HIT, but the editing mistakes were a MISS.

Mary Poppins: We were blessed to be able to see the stage production of this touring show. It is truly outstanding! We were at first disappointed when we learned the actress who plays Mary was not performing that night. However, the understudy did a fantastic job! The actor playing Bert was really great, and the little girl we saw was incredible! We all loved the show. From the opening scene I loved the way they did the set for #17 Cherry Tree Lane. I loved how the house opened up like a pop up book. I loved the use of color. The singing and dancing were great. I love how they integrated the stories from the book and the Disney production. I don’t want to give anything away, so if you get the chance, be sure and go see it! This one was a HIT with me!

Carry on Mr. Bowditch is a book I had heard of years ago when my kids were younger, but we never read. It has been sitting on my shelf for some time now, so I thought I’d give it a read. When I began reading it I thought I was reading fiction. Then, as I got further into the book I thought it must be historical fiction. Much of it was “too good to be true” so I thought it surely had to be a work of fiction. When I finished reading about the fantastic feats of young Mr. Bowditch, I learned that I had in fact read a biography. This young man’s life was fascinating. He worked hard and learned much through his life that he shared with others by writing The American Practical Navigator also known as The Seaman’s Bible. Though the story only showed Mr. Bowditch’s good points (besides his occasional outbursts) I found this book to be a HIT.

My daughter read The Slave Dancer for a school project. I had not heard of this book so when she finished reading it, I did too. The book tells the story of a young man who is kidnapped and taken on a slave ship then forced to play his pipe to make the slaves “dance” to get their exercise on the long voyage. The story is heart rending and I am sure there is a lot of truth to the way things were on the slave ship. Told from the boy’s perspective, it is for middle school and up readers. Though the subject matter is intense, I rate this book as a HIT. (note-also pretty cool that within the story one of the sailors referred to his Seaman’s Bible that I had read about in the book about Nathaniel Bowditch!)

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education-I have read this book before. This is a newer revised version. I only read it when my son started talking about maybe homeschooling again. I had already pledged not to bring up the subject to him anymore, but when he started thinking it over, I of course plunged in. I guess that scared him off! As I got into this book, there are statements that are nearly word for word things that he has said. But as he decided to stay in public school, I had to quit reading this book, it was just too depressing for me.

The book is written by a lady trained to be a teacher. She has taught in different formats of the educational system. She tried to implement ideas into the system but they just don’t fit. That is what led her to the idea of “unschooling”, a type of homeschooling approach to education. The book has some radical ideas that I think teens will latch on to. Since I did not finish the book this time around, I am not sure of all the revisions it holds. I do know that this book is a HIT with me in many ways. In some ways it’s a scary idea to give this to strong willed free thinking teens. But it may be just what they need!

For a wedding earlier this year we received a magnet with the couple’s wedding date on it. I think that is a pretty clever idea.  This can help serve as a visual reminder for all guests and can even help build the excitement of the upcoming event.

I have since learned that these “save the date magnets” are available for any kind of party or celebration. You can also add a photo to the magnet. This is a very clever way to remind friends and family of your next big celebration! It’s almost like a gift that serves double duty! Every time they look at the grocery list or their child’s latest art work, there is your magenetic reminder!<

On Tuesday morning I reported to Space Center at 7:30 am. We started pretty quickly after arrival. They had us change into our “business attire” and go to “mission control”. I was in this scene. I even had some lines! Once I really did accidentally hit a button. Not a huge deal but it did mess up one of the screens. They said they’d let me live though.

It was really amazing seeing how long it takes to shoot one scene. First they shot from the back of the room. Then they would change the angle, then maybe a lens. Next they would shoot it all again from a closer vantage point. Again changing angle and lens. Each shoot was done three or four times!

Then we went to another room for a mock press conference. Here I sit in the “reporters section”. I had a line here too. Then we broke for lunch.

After lunch they had some models (maybe cheerleaders) come in for the rest of the day. The place they were going to do this section was open and lots of Space Center visitors were congregating and taking pictures of Susie the Chimp! They finally got the area screened off and ready to shoot. We extras were done and sat around til 5:00 or so.

All in all not a bad gig. Although lots of sitting around and waiting for equipment to be set up, shooting and reshooting scenes, etc. it was not a bad couple of days. I met some nice people and made some good money for Christmas shopping!

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was blessed to be cast as an extra in a local shoot done by Nike!! It was pretty cool! The shoot took place at Space Center Houston. I got there fairly early Monday morning. As I was walking in, I noticed a chimp eating some breakfast out in the parking lot. I wondered if he (turned out it’s  a “she”) was going to be part of the commercial.

I reported to the conference room where the other extras were waiting as well. I was taken aback to be only the fourth person to arrive. Come to find out, there were only five of us (supposed to be six, but one never showed)!! I had expected a large crowd. When I asked another extra later how I got cast when there were so few roles, he said that the pool of extras is mostly younger people (the age range for this part was 30s-50s.)

We had our pictures taken and then the other four extras donned blue jump suits for the first scene. I was told to just wait. Then we all headed to the moonscape. Here we learned who the star of the commercial was and what the commercial was about.  We were extras in a commercial for Nike snowbaord boots, with a pro snowboarder who has two silver Olympic medals! Oh, yes, and Susie the chimpanzee!

I was at first told I would take notes on a clip board during this scene, but then was told, no, there was something else I was going to do. After shooting this scene for about two hours (!) we went back to the conference room to get snacks. At first we thought this was going to be our lunch so we were really trying to eat as many snacks as we could. Then the director came in and gave us our $15 meal ticket!

After lunch, we all sat around some more while the star and the chimp did some more shooting. By 5:00, three of the extras were released. I stayed along with another man to see if we would get to the “mission control” scene, which is what he had for me to do. We stayed nearly two more hours and never got to it. We left that day with me having done nothing!