mom, you're radical...

Another tale from the sixth grade special education world...the following is a real event that I experienced today. I must say that it is days like this that make me love my job.

We were wrapping up our poetry unit today and the students were putting their best poems into a little booklet to give to their moms on Mother's Day. Inevitably, the students included an acrostic poem using the word "mother" or "mom" in their booklets. We were encouraging them to use a thesaurus to look up good words to use.

With that in mind, a student (we'll call her K) walked over to me and the following conversation ensued:

K: [pointing to a word in the thesaurus] Mr. Davis, is this a good word to describe my mom?

Me: [with a puzzled, yet humored look on my face] K, I don't think "extremist" is a very good word to use in a poem about your mom. What made you think of that word?

K: [pointing to a synonym next to "extremist" in the thesaurus] Well, it says that "fantastic" is a synonym.

Me: K, that says fanatic, not fantastic!!!

K: Okay, Mr. Davis. You can get up off of the floor. It wasn't that funny.

So, I didn't really fall on the floor, but I came pretty close. I thought about calling her mom to share the funny story, but unfortunately her mother doesn't have that great of a sense of humor!

a Richmond visit...

We got back last night from a 4 day weekend in Richmond. We haven't made many trips up there since we moved here 10 months ago, mostly because it's pretty difficult to make a 6 hour road trip with the kids. They did pretty well in the car this time and they always love hanging out at Gaga and Papa's (Sarah's parents) house.

On Friday night, we also had the opportunity to meet our niece Elizabeth! The girls had fun playing with our nephews Micah and Jonah too.





































Kyla and Micah worked out some pretty good dance moves!











(Jonah, Avery, Micah, Kyla and Elizabeth.)

Then, on Saturday night, Sarah and I parted ways and went out with our respective dads. Sarah accompanied her dad to her sister Charlotte's opera. Charlotte plays violin in the VCU symphony.

I went with my dad to the school where my mom used to work as an administrator. They have set up the Beth Davis Memorial Scholarship Fund there and were holding an entertainment gala to raise money for the fund. It was a great night of entertainment by students and members of local dance companies, musical groups, and play houses. But most importantly, it was warming to hear great things being spoken of my mom! It was especially encouraging to meet new people who were touched by my mom's life. She was truly a special lady!

on becoming best friends...

I've witnessed people becoming good friends over time before, but not quite like this. Our two daughters, Kyla (4 years old) and Avery (she'll be 2 in July), are slowly becoming inseparable. Avery is getting old enough to play with Kyla and Kyla is beginning to enjoy having someone to role play with. Avery is also ready and willing to do and say whatever big sis desires.If Kyla tells a neighbor that she's four, Avery does the same and tries her best to hold up four fingers. If Kyla wants Avery to knock on her imaginary door and come over to her imaginary house for a visit, Avery gladly obliges.

Of course, they do have their moments of friction, especially now that Avery has learned the word "mine" and "my." They argue over whose baby it is, whose turn it is, or whose hairbrush it is. We try to remind them that everything we have really belongs to God, but then it becomes a match of who can shout "It's God's baby!" the loudest!

Here are a few pictures of the girls splashing in the puddles today after the rain:

you thought gas was expensive...

So you think $4 for a gallon of gas is expensive? Try $100 for a cup of coffee! Now before you caffeine lovers run out and stockpile your garage with coffee beans, don't worry. I'm not predicting a coffee shortage. I'm talking about the most rare coffee in the world, Kopi Luwak.

Never heard of Kopi Luwak? I hadn't either until a few months ago. Even during my two years as a coffee master at Starbucks, I never ran across this one. So you ask, how can this coffee be worth $100/cup? Oh, you're not really asking that. Well, humor me. Go ahead, ask.

Well, I'm so glad you asked! You see, there are only about 450 lbs. of this coffee harvested each year. This beautiful Indonesian creature called the Palm Civet, which is a mix between a cat and a monkey, eats the beans which are mellowed in the camonkey's stomach and mixed with everything else a camonkey eats. Once nature takes its course and the beans pass, the beans are harvested, roasted, and brewed. mmmmm.....

Now, I've often thought about who the first person was to try certain foods. For instance, who was the first person to eat an egg? "Wow, did you see that white thing pop out of the bottom of that chicken? I think I'll crack it open and eat it!" We eat some pretty crazy foods that had to have originally been chosen out of desperation. However, why in the world would someone try to brew some coffee made from camonkey poop? That is just plain wrong.

nightstands...

A few weeks after slicing my arm on our bed rail, we decided that we wanted to ditch the metal frame and get a little more cultural with a platform bed that is low to the ground. One problem...we didn't have any money to buy a bed. So we did the second best thing...put our box spring on the ground!

If you've ever been to our house, you'd know that we don't have an overabundance of furniture...mostly just the necessities for daily living. The one piece of furniture that were were lacking, however, that we felt we needed, were nightstands for our bedroom. It's not a big deal, the lamps, alarm clocks, and books sit on the floor beside the bed. Although, last summer, it was pretty disappointing when Kyla stepped on my glasses and broke them in half when she came in to wake me up one morning.

At any rate, I had been itching to get back into my garage to build something and I had a lot of scrap materials that I thought could become end tables. So I seized my opportunity, ran to Home Depot, bought $15 worth of materials and put together two platform-bed-sized night stands. Sarah helped me sand them down and I stained and sealed them as I had time over the course of a few days.

I'm pretty proud of how they turned out because I didn't have any plans, just a picture in my head of how I hoped they'd look. One of my summer projects will hopefully be making the matching platform bed...we'll see!

no comment

I was searching for a picture on google images that had absolutely nothing to do with bodybuilding and somehow came across this picture. I don't have a comment for it and I apologize for posting it, but wow. I'm hoping it's been photoshopped!

crisis averted...

We got an email a few days ago from Sarah's aunt. It was an email she was forwarding from her mother-in-law regarding the sale of their minivan. It seemed as though they were looking to get rid of their Ford Windstar because they didn't need two cars. The email said that it was four years old, but only had 16,000 miles on it!

For those of you who may not know, we are a one-car family. Our paid-off Honda Civic is our family car and we've always been rather opposed to the thought of buying a minivan (partly a cost factor, but most certainly a pride factor too). People sometimes have a hard time believing we take road trips with 2 kids in our Civic.

The crazy part about this crisis, though, was that they were asking less than what we thought we could get for our Civic! How often do you get the chance to upgrade to a bigger vehicle for no cost at all? I flip flopped back and forth trying to decide what to do. Sarah and I talked about it. I researched it. I talked to my brother who is an expert on the topic (he and his wife own two). Finally, this morning I prayed about it (aren't you supposed to do that first?). I prayed for contentment and for direction on what to do.

We got an email a few hours later saying that it had been sold. Deal done. Crisis averted. No minivan for us...whew! That was close.

replaced by a tornado...

Right before Easter, Sarah's sister Rosie (and Jonathan too) kept Kyla for a whole week. It was an awesome break for everyone and Kyla had a blast. Towards the end of the week, though, we were looking forward to getting Kyla back. Our reunion was one of excitement, mostly on Kyla's part. She was so giddy and ran around in circles saying how much she loved us! We had never really seen her so happy before.

So I must say that I was rather disappointed when she pulled out a card that she made while she was visiting Rosie. It was a cute card made of construction paper complete with three stick figures and a bunch of scribbled circles (Kyla has become a good little artist). Sarah asked who was on the card and I was thinking that it was Sarah, Avery, and me since she had missed us while she was gone. But then she explained, "This is Mommy, this is Avery, and this is Kyla." No Daddy.

"Kyla, what are these circles over here?" we asked.

"That's a tornado."

I guess Daddy got taken up by the twister.

I'm on google!!!

I just searched for my name and found myself on Google! I've finally become someone! Don't believe me? Just type in Peter Davis into Google and click over to the 4th page and I'm the 4th one from the top! Wow, talk about a sense of accomplishment. This is my apex. I don't think I can ever top this...it's all downhill from here. Thanks for reading, I couldn't have done it without you! I dedicate this award to all of you, my two faithful readers. I'm off to bed.

craigslist differences...

I am addicted to Craigslist. We just sold some stuff over the past few weeks and made a few hundred bucks! We've also bought a few things and even found an apartment when we lived in Los Angeles. My favorite section, though is the "free" section. For some reason, I love checking to see what people post for free. I've never gotten anything off of that section, but I look all the same. One funny observation I have discovered is differences in the type of free stuff posted here in the Charlotte area vs. what was posted in Los Angeles. Here ya go:

Los Angeles posting

Charlotte posting

Bonus Charlotte posting - free! No extra charge for this one.

This post was in no way meant to degrade the Charlotte area...it was a simple observation. Please do not send any inflammatory messages if you were in some way offended by this post. Charlotte is a nice place to live.

the junk mail war is on...

I've been growing quite tired of receiving 3-4 catalogs, 3 credit card offers, and coupon circulars in the mail nearly every day. That is an amazing amount of wasted paper because they automatically go in the trash! I finally decided the other day that I'm done with it all and I declared war!

What I've started doing is immediately calling the 1-800 number on the back of every catalog and removing our names from their list. I also called the 1-800 number on the back of the credit card offers and opted out of receiving any pre-screened offers in the mail. One of the things that bugs me the most is the coupons and I had a hard time finding the source, so I did some investigating and found one company. Check out Valassis' website and put your name on their do-not-mail list. It still takes a few weeks for it to happen, but at least you can cut down on wasted paper and wasted time throwing that junk away.

I also just found a site called Pro Quo that actually takes your name off of a lot of lists. It also gives you forms and numbers to call to get off of lists they don't have access to. It looks pretty good, but I haven't done anything with it yet. They promise that you'll be down to almost no junk mail in 3 months! Sounds pretty good to me!

I know it might seem like a winless battle, but if everyone would spend a few minutes each day unsubscribing from all the junk mail they get in their boxes that day, we might just save quite a bit of paper and energy. Plus you might just find that you're less tempted to buy all the junk advertised!

hangin' tough once again...

Have you heard the fantastic news? I know you thought it would never happen, but New Kids on the Block is back and better than ever!!! That's right, I know you are as excited as I am that Donnie Wahlberg, Jordan and Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre, and Danny Wood, better known as NKOTB is releasing a new album! I can hardly believe it. They were my first real concert in 3rd grade and now they're back! Oh, this has made my night. Dad, I know that you just got me BB King tickets, but wouldn't it be great to take me back to see NKOTB? We had such a great family outing that night! After 14 years of rest and relaxation, they're sure to be amazing! Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, the Right Stuff!

in the audience of the King...

B.B. King that is. My dad has recently started attending music events and concerts, places he never really frequented before. I began to get a little worried that he might get a chance to see my two favorite musicians before I would...Eric Clapton or B.B. King. So I did what any loving son would do. I threatened him. I made sure he knew how unfair it would be if he saw either of those artists before me and that I would be forced to sock him in the nose if he did! A bit harsh, maybe, but I meant business.

So for Christmas, he either responded out of love or fear and bought us two tickets to see B.B. King here in Charlotte! Either way, I am extremely grateful! He bought himself tickets too for the Richmond show, which luckily for him, falls after the Charlotte show. The show was last night, so Sarah and I arranged for babysitting and were on our way!

We headed downtown to the Belk Theater, which was a fantastically intimate setting for such a show. We made it downtown in time to grab dinner at a brewery down the street and get seated before the concert.

I must say, I was quite surprised at how unhealthy B.B. looked. He shakily walked out on the stage and had a seat in front of his band while a few men helped him get situated with his guitar and microphone. He did look sharp, though, and his voice was strong and clear. All of the thoughts I had about how bad he looked quickly disappeared when he announced his age...82 years old! I knew he was getting older, but I thought he was younger than that! He might be old, but man can he still play! They put on a fantastic show complete with trumpets and saxophones.

My favorite part, though, was when they scaled down to just drums, guitar, bass, and B.B. The rhythm section kept grooving while he told stories about his past 60 years of recording. One of his songs talked about old age and said that every first of the month, the social security check comes. Then the ladies keep calling and he needs to disconnect his line! Like I said before, he may be old, but he can still play, sing, and put on a great show! I hope that when I get to be 82, I can still have that clear of a mind and a shear enjoyment of what I do. He still has about 10 more shows in the next few weeks!

Thanks, Dad, for the tickets! I'm sure you'll enjoy your show next month.