Checking in  

Hello. It's been a bit slow of late here. We had a visitor last weekend (three actually) and spent a lot of time going out to eat, etc. (Three day weekends are great). All this week and next Monday I'm working with autistic kids in the ED classroom at Balsz (Miss Bee's school). All this is to say that our cooking has been a little paltry of late. Last night was our first home-cooked dinner in a while, consisting of store-bought Swiss cheese and chive potatoes au gratin with sauteed spinach with garlic and pine nuts.

Look for tomato "soup" with pasta soon.

A few pictures now. Here's one from last Friday; we went to a flamenco guitar concert with Miss Bee's old mentor teacher Mary and her husband Richard at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Papago Park, which is only about five min. from our place though we'd never been. The only picture I took worth seeing is this one of some sort of small desert tree, outlined so nicely with the lighting. The concert was lovely, and I think we're getting tickets to the gardens themselves soon so hopefully more pictures of this cool place coming up.

Thanks to Mary and Richard for the tickets.

Next is a picture of Miss Bee's friend Aliya who visited from Vegas with her friend Josh. On their last day we took them to our local Chinese place, Hai Ching Ling, in the Chinese Cultural Center (affectionately known as the Embassy). Here's the golden Buddha statue there.





And Aliya looking lovely in her "mini-moo":

Any visitors will surely be taken out here to enjoy amazing Eggplant with Garlic Sauce and vegetable chow mein. We can't get enough; in fact, the waitress actually pre-empted our order by asking what we wanted with our eggplant.




Also, I have to share one of these pictures I took of little Alfred. He's a five year old non-verbal; when he came the first day this year he didn't make any sounds other than crying. He's starting to say alphabet syllables now, which is what I was working on with him here. Yes, that's my knee he's resting his head on...

And finally, here's Alfred waiting to go out to recess; he's waiting for me because I am tall enough to help him walk backwards up the slide. Shortens the wait time, you know...