First Grade Parent-Teacher Conference

I had a Parent-Teacher conference for D yesterday. It was a complete waste of my time and gas. We got there and D showed me a stack of his work. I mean, he is 7, so showing me his papers and things was just him handing them to me, not explaining them or what was going on. Then after about 10 minutes of that his teacher had to answer the phone...Finally she sat down and told me that I need to make him practice his handwriting at home more. MAKE HIM!!! Yeah right! Has she met my 7 year old, bull headed son?! Making him do something like practice handwriting will be like pulling teeth on an alligator! So then she asked me if he had been held back previously after I told her 'no he started a year late due to medical reasons' and left it at that she just stared at me. I believe she wanted further explanation but...And then she said that was the only concerns that she had and to have a good evening. I was there a total of 15 minutes and mind you 10 of that was D showing me papers. I guess I should take it as a good thing that she doesn't have more concerns but call me crazy, I would like to know more. How is he behaving in class? Does he have any friends? Is he getting along ok with the other children? Does he get in trouble often? Things that we talked about in Kindergarten conferences but I guess don't matter once you get to first grade. Oh well.

Family Heritage

So I have definitely been busy lately with Family Tree Building. So far the Tannahill side goes way back into the 1700's I believe. And there was a child born in a castle way back then. I forget the name of the castle or child but it is there. The From side has gotten a little more difficult. On Andy's side I am stuck. The Perkins side is good. Carmicals are coming along. But the Fausett and Nevins side are a little tricky. I did find on the Davis side that there was a Jethro O. Davis that I believe died in the Civil War only months after his son Jethro jr was born. I have two different burial sites though so I am still trying to get through that stuff.

The boys are doing fine. Our water heater went out this week so that has been fun trying to get that fixed. The girls are all coming on saturday afternoon so that should be fun. Got to get my house clean before Melissa gets here. LOL Well that is about all. If any of you have any questions about the family history please ask. I am looking into software so that I can print it out or find a way to better share with you all what I have found so far. Love to all!

Happy Halloween!!

So like I do every year I put up this year cemetery, but I also added to it. These are the new headstones. I think they look better than the first ones I made a couple of years ago. Made out of pink foam, paint, glue and the skull is paper mache. Then I painted them with glow in the dark paint and blacklight paint. I could not take pictures at night with the blacklight on them but I loved how they turned out.

My paper mache skull with fishing worms stuck in him. I know, I am sick!

This is the scarecrow that sits on our porch every year. He is mainly there to hide the box for the spooky sounds mat that is under the door mat. That doormat gets people everytime!! LOL
I hope you all enjoy my sense of humor as much as I do. If you can not read these just let me know and I can send you the link I have of them on snapfish. I believe I have already sent it to most of you but I could have missed a few people.

An Update on, Well, Nothing

So not much has been going on here in the Carpenter house. I am just putting the finishing touches on our cemetery for the front yard and then I will take pictures of it and post those. I am trying to get ready for all the company that will be here next week. Knowing full well that my house will never be clean enough for a certain Aunt of mine, we like to refer to her as Martha. Belinda has been here this week and we went out to see Ed and Joys new house. So that was fun, The rest of the time has just been spent sitting around the house doing just about nothing but trying to stay warm. It has definetly gotten cold here in the last couple of days. I might actually have to turn on the heat soon. I know, I know that makes most of you sick that I don't have it on yet but I am holding out that I don't have to turn it on for a couple more weeks at least. Well, like I said, not much going on here. I need to get better about posting here, I have just been busy creating my ghoulish scene. Pics will be up soon so check back with me.

Card I Made

This is a card that I made for my baby sis, Jess. I am so proud of her, she decided to go to school and get her degree and become a teacher. The part with the white flower is the envelope, that I also handmade.
I am so proud of this. It is the first card that I have made. I mean other than just folding a piece of construction paper in half and decorating it. I think it turned out pretty good. I just need some more stamps...hint hint hint. I mean christmas is coming up pretty soon. =>

D strikes again!!

So D decided to feed the fish yesterday morning. He ended up feeding them about half the can of food...needless to say the aquarium needed to be cleaned out. I mean it is not the fishes fault that he decided to not listen and feed them, why should they die?
This is what their water looked like in the entire aquarium. Very gross!

Back home! They love it. They can breathe again and it is clean, sparkling clean.
I found this while out curb shopping the evening...I am not sure what it is but it is cool. It was made by Lane but I can't look it up. There used to be some green felt type stuff inside the drawer. If you know what this is let me know. Thanks.

Picture taking in the Cemetery

The boys and I went to some of the local cemeteries to take pictures of some of the headstones today. Here are just a few that we thought were the best. This first one her finger is broke off, but she is still a very cute angel.
This one the harp has real metal tubes in it and Nate thought that it was great he could play music on it.
Not much to say about this one. Just cute
This one is in the old cemetery downtown. We think it is definetly the best.
The cemetery downtown has a lot of headstones that are broken and/or have fallen down. Some of the family plot areas have fences around them and they are falling down, are broken and rusty. There is a wooded area behing this cemetery and all along the tree line is nothing but trash. The boys picked up all the trash they saw as we walked through the cemetery. It is a little disappointing since this is the oldest cemetery in town and is right along the civil war route. The oldest headstone we found was dated 1766, you would think that something with that much history would be taken better care of.

Anyways I am going to take some of these pictures and make them into jewelry. So I will show you those when I get around to making them.

Random

So it has been a relatively quiet couple of days. So I figured I would share a few pictures with you all. This first one is of D cleaning up the toys out of the backyard. He obviously didn't want to do but he figured out a way to make it fun by driving the power wheels around and picked up toys then dumped them off on the patio.



Maggie had just gotten in trouble and I guess she thought that Nate was going to save her. I think this one is especially cute since he rarely lets her come near him.


These next two would be the reason that it has only been a relatively quiet couple of days. It rained some today but the boys wanted to go out so, I told them they could go drive around the back yard and swing. They decided to start a mud fight! Thank gosh I was paying attention and stopped it before anything got thrown.




And this would be my really awesome thrift store find. I believe this is an old metal record holder, but it fits my 12x12 scrapbook paper just right. I can't wait till tomorrow to decorate it and make it beautiful! Hope all of you have a wonderful day!

Boys can be so....gross, weird, rough, inventive, etc.

So this post is mostly about my baby, Nate. He is a handful as most of you know especially from the previous post involving cooking. Friday he made this wonderful looking hat and wore it most of the day. It was a little big though so it was usually a necklace. This would be the inventive side of one of my kids. This would be the gross...I have no idea what this is and neither can either child that I have asked. The dogs were not in the house at the time and I had just wiped this table down. Your guess is as good as mine...
This would be the rough side...Nate's lip after his older brother got mad and threw a car at his face. It was bleeding and bleeding and he kept crying and crying. It is a little fat but not as bad as I thought it would be at first.
Since he loved trying to cook on his own I decided that maybe I should start having me help in the kitchen whenever possible. Friday night he helped me make Turkey and White Bean Chili from the South Beach Diet. He won't eat it, but he liked dumping in cans of stuff and breaking up the turkey, and of course stirring. Maybe he will be the next Emeril! Well I can dream anyways.

My Life With 2 Boys, 4 Goldfish and 5 Dogs

I only had the extra dogs for only 1 1/2 days but boy am I tired. The boys decided they needed to wash their power wheels the other day.
Nate decided that just washing the power wheels was not enough. So he washed the table and the cement ...
Oh yeah and the house. I mean it was only soap and water but once he washed the tree and the dirt then washing the house was no longer cute.
One of the dogs that we had slept in her cage at night, but during the day it was Nate's cave house. He loved climbing in and out of that thing all day long. Then he was mad that I would not let him sleep in it. Boys are so weird!!
I don't know if you can really tell or not but the door is not locked and he is capable of getting in and out on his own. As much as I might have liked to at times lock him in it, I refrained from doing such things.

The Fair

After hours of fighting with my children about cleaning up the house and doing chores I decided to take them to the County Fair. Mostly because today was the demolition derby and I have not been to one of those in a long time, and seeing as they are boys that is something I figured that we would all like to go to. Nate absolutely loved the cars running into each other, probably because that is what he does with cars while playing with them. Drew really didn't care to much he wanted to go and play ping pong in the bowl or whatever carnival game and win something. Just my luck they won 4 goldfish. Throw a ping pong ball into a little glass bowl, now how many people actually win at that game, well my children for one. Then there was another game and they were giving away rabbits, that just was not going to happen. The next game in the row on our way out of the fair was giving away iguanas, yuck! It is such a good thing that I did not let Drew take his own wallet today, we would have came home with each and every type of animal they were giving away. Anyways here are the pictures from our day.

Curb-Side Shopping

So I didn't have time to go 'hunting' this week so I thought I would share some of the items that I picked up within the last couple of weeks. I found both of these rugs rolled up on the curb in our neighborhood. They are dry, not stained, no rips or holes, no fraying and now they look great in my living room. I also found two white cribs, the hardware is missing but after an e-mail to the manufacturer, hopefully that stuff is on its way, otherwise it is back to the hardware store for me. Nothing wrong with either one of them! And now they look great in my living room! I have only been curb shopping for a few months now but I have found some great stuff. Here are some pictures of the other things I have found.

There are two of these cribs but this one only needed the screws. The other one can go together but the side won't slide down because I can't replace those.One of these tables was missing a bolt. Need paint but would make great kids craft tables since the top is like a dry erase board. This coffee table needed the leg reattached. One of the drawers is missing a handle so I am just going to replace both. Could stand to be refinished but I don't have that time. I also have another coffee table in my garage that once this stuff is gone I will be working on and an end table that is almost the same style as this one so I might sell them together.

I usually find things that need to be repaired in some way and if that is the case then I sell it to at least get out what I put into fixing that item. Keeping things out of the landfills and hopefully helping someone at the same time!

My Newest Creation

This is a paper bag book that I did the last couple of days about Drew. I had a lot of fun with it and thinks that it has turned out pretty good. It definitely shows his personality or personalities in this case. I hope you enjoy. Please let me know what you think.
Page one reads...It all started around age 3... My sweet, sometimes crazy boy, all of a sudden ran around the house arresting and shooting everyone. He said he was Sheriff and we were all bad guys! We never got a name but we call him 'Sheriff Bob'!

Page 3 reads...Little did we know 'Bob' was just the beginning. Later that same year another personality appeared. He called himself 'Sarge'. Sarge was a proud military man through and through always in control of his men during battle.

Page 5...Shortly after 'Sarge' was replaced by a rather young PFC named Johnny. PFC Johnny was very new to military life as he often seen wearing his rank upside down on his hat and carrying his weapon backwards. Oh poor Johnny, hope he never runs into Sarge!
Page 7...2004 was a busy year so it wasn't long before PFC Johnny disappeared and out came a Ninja. His name was Scott and he was not a scary kind of Ninja but more cool and laid back. It was nice to have Scott around after all the others.

Page 9...There is not much known about this personality. He was only around a couple of days. He seemed to be a mixture of all the personalities of earlier.
This one was quite a character. The day he appeared he wanted to go said the seven seas and find his buried treasure. I didn't want my baby to get hurt thought as I hoped he was still in there somewhere. ' Captain Jim'

This pirate was not as nice as Captain Jim. He loved to fight others and steal their booty! He was one evil and scary guy! No one dared cross him of he would not hesitate to make you walk the plank! 'Dreadbeard'

The End. Drew absolutely loves this book. I made it about him and so he can read it over and over. Nate wants one now also.