Ramblings

If you ever wanna blow the biggest, coolest bubbles, you've gotta get this thing my dad got for the kids at walmart. Not only are the bubbles huge, but little bubbles float around inside huge bubbles...it's very cool!!

As promised, here's a new picture of Turbo (basking on his rock):

Kylie has decided she wants to play baseball. No T-ball for this kid! She and Michael have been practicing and I've gotta say she's really good!!

Connor goofing around:Kylie took this shot of Connor at the park with Michael's cell phone:Turtles, turtles everywhere! My friend Ron had a snapping turtle in his pond (who has since been relocated to the James River)! And yesterday morning, there was a huge red-eared slider (bigger than the one my dad found!) on our driveway. Kylie and I went out to see it...here they are getting to know each other:And you know I had to get a shot of that face! He eventually started to walk across the road, so I just carried him across and put him into the weeds. He disappeared after about 5 minutes. I wonder how old he was. I'm gonna have to do some research and see how big these guys get!My roses are blooming!I signed up for an online scrapbooking class called Got Sketch 101 taught by Valerie Salmon and Janna Wilson. I love Val's sketches, so I figured I'd sign up for the class. It doesn't officially start until June 9, but the forums and chats are already abuzz with excitement! If you're a scrapper and love sketches like I do, you should sign up! Go here to get the info:http://valeriesalmon.typepad.com/

Ok, that's it for now! Gonna go watch the Lakers game!

Summer vacation is here!!

The last day of school at Carpenter's Kids is always "Red, White and Blue" day. Everyone dresses in patriotic colors and the kids spend time with their class going to different stations around the school to play games and make crafts. Kylie had fun playing games with Connor's class. She also got to see some people she hasn't seen in a year...she didn't remember any of them, but they sure remembered her!

Connor had fun with his friends playing games and singing songs. Having Kylie there with him was the icing on the cake. He held her hand everywhere we went and made sure she was right there whenever they stopped to play a game.

I only have a couple pics I can post from Thursday because most of the shots I took have other kids in them...and I don't feel comfortable posting pics of other people's kids online. Anyway, here's C doing the egg relay:

Waiting in line for the ring toss:
Lovin' each other:
So, yesterday was the first day of summer vacation and guess who came in and woke me up at 6:30 just because the sun was up?! Yes, Connor said "Mommy! It's morning! You have to get up!" Uugggh...maybe I'll be able to get the kid to sleep a little later one of these days!!
This morning I got up for a while, went back to bed for a while, went to the scrapbook store, came home and watched some stuff on TruTV. Oh...I took some new pics of Turbo, but I'll have to post those later since they're still in the camera. Now I'm gonna go work out and then maybe do a little scrapping! Hope you're having a relaxing 3-day weekend!!

American Idol

Really, all I can say is YAY!! Oh...and when's the album out?! I LOVE David Cook!!!

Last day of kindergarten!

I can not believe that the school year is over!! It's so crazy to think that in just a couple of months, Kylie will be starting first grade! She's grown so much in the past 9 months...the kid can read! Miss Berry was an awesome kindergarten teacher and we hope that Connor will get to be in her class when it's his turn!

Just to compare...here was the first day of kindergarten...walking down the hall to her room and posing for her teacher:
And here's the last day of kindergarten...smiling for me and walking down the hall away from her room on the way out (that's Miss Berry in the green pants):

Connor's last day of school is tomorrow; it's red, white and blue day. Kylie's very excited to be going back to "the little kids' school" as she calls it. Now she gets to be the big kid! I'm sure I'll have more pictures tomorrow!

Kylie's new smile!

Check it out! She's been playing with that loose tooth for about 2 weeks now and tonight it finally came out!! The toothfairy will be stopping at our house tonight!

Mission Accomplished!!!

This morning around 10:15, the UPS guy brought the newest addition to our family! Here's Turbo (named after our first turtle)!! He (or she...we're not sure yet) is a baby Ornate Wood Turtle. He was bred and born in captivity. He's very cute, very tiny (like 2 1/4 inches-ish) and is very outgoing! He's a fast runner and has been having fun exploring his tank. Kylie is soooooo happy!!! She read him a story this afternoon! :-) In other news...
~I had poison ivy on my arm. That was fun. UGH! Man, it itched so bad I was ready to tear my skin off!!
~My parents have been here the past 10 days. In fact, they left this morning. (They just called and they're in Tucumcari, NM tonight.) Anyway, we had fun while they were here...except for the fact that Kylie was sick last weekend and Connor was sick yesterday. We went fishing a few times and the kids had a blast! Kylie caught 12 fish and Connor caught 5.

Here are Kylie and Pepaw being silly...

Kylie with just one of the many bluegill she caught...Connor was yelling "I ROCK!" after he brought in this bluegill...~In our quest for a turtle, my dad actually found a huge red-eared slider in the middle of the road and brought him home. He was so pretty, but he was just way to big to keep...and I didn't really want to take a turtle from the wild. So, after the kids got to check him out (and I photographed him of course), we let him go at our neighbor's pond. Here he is...~Here's a toad my mom found in the front flower bed that same day:~Our monarch caterpillars all died! :-( We did everything exactly as they told us to...but none of them made it. 2 of them were big and I was just positive they'd pupate, but they didn't! Even Kylie said "No more monarchs! Painted Ladies are better!" Here's the last caterpillar...~Birds, birds and more birds have been here! The orioles are migrating thru and we've had lots of Baltimores eating grape jelly and oranges! I've gone thru 2 1/2 jars of grape jelly in the last week!! Here's a male...Here's a male Indigo Bunting...

I could post a ton more pictures of birds including the hummingbirds and some others, but they're on my flickr page, so you can go check them out!

Well, I think that's it from here for now! It's spost to be a nice weekend here! Hope you have a nice weekend and are able to get out and enjoy the sunshine!

The quest for a turtle...

So who woulda thought that finding a little turtle for Kylie would be such a big problem? Here's the deal...

There are 44 sight words that are required for kindergarten that Kylie needs to know. She's also been bugging M and I about wanting a pet turtle like the one we had before (we had a small box turtle named Turbo way back in 2004). Michael told her we'd get her a turtle as soon as she knew all of her words. Sounds pretty easy right? Wrong.

The other night she came running into see me and told me she'd read all of her words and she was ready to go get a turtle! The next morning while we were getting ready for school that's all she talked about. After dropping her off, I called every pet store in this area and the only thing I could find were Sulcata tortoises for $130 (!!!!!) that grow to be about 300lbs. (!!!!!). Not a chance we're getting one of those guys!! Went online to discover that turtles and tortoises are really, really expensive!!! In CA and NV it was easy to find an exotic pet store...they were everywhere. This isn't the case for SW Missouri!

After school we went to 3 different pet stores and looked at snakes and lizards and fish, puppies, rabbits, ferrets...pretty much everything except for turtles. A nice guy at Petland even let Kylie pet a baby water dragon and then showed her how well they can swim...and then we saw how fast it can run and vetoed that idea. BUT the nice guy said he could order a Russian tortoise so we could come check it out. The good thing about Russians is the males only get to be about 8 inches. Nice and small! Plus they don't need a lot of protein which means no crickets or mealworms or earthworms!

Sooo...the choices we have are as follows:

1. Find a box turtle in the wild and bring it home...which I don't think is a very good idea. I'd like to find a captive bred animal. BUT the wild ones are free and relatively easy to find...they're always crossing the road!
2. Get the Russian tortoise from Petland for $60 and make Kylie happy, but put money into the pockets of people who sell pure-bred puppies (that probably come from puppy mills...we are in Missouri afterall) for about $600+ each.
3. Not get a turtle at all which would suck for Kylie! And wouldn't be very nice on our part since we promised.
Anyway, here's a photo of Turbo before we let her go. She was a cute little thing. Wish she'd come back...
I'll keep ya posted on the turtle saga!