3.15.13

 

 

 

What do you do on a warm spring afternoon?

If you are MY kid, you...

 

 

Put on your prettiest bathing suit...

Throw a couple of water balloons...



And spray your biggest brother with the hose!

 

Sounds good to me!

-Kerry

Snake Pit!

Now that we have just over a year left in Texas, I feel the need to get going on my LIST. That is, my list of places to see and do while we are here- my list of "real" Texas experiences. Which explains how we found ourselves surrounded by rattlesnakes. Thousands of rattlesnakes. Angry, rattling, rattlesnakes.

Every year in Sweetwater, TX, thousands of rattlesnakes are rounded up for the aptly named Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup. This is apparently a huge event- with a parade, a carnival, bouncy houses for kids, hundreds of vendors selling whatever you can imagine, and... of course... there are snakes.  There are pits of rattlesnakes everywhere. We watched rattlesnakes being "milked" of their venom:


Sorry for the terrible picture quality. We forgot our good camera. Here you can just barely see that there is a man, holding a rattlesnake, and what he is doing is "milking" the snake of it's venom. The boys thought that this was awesome.



Also, for $20, you could gut and skin your own freshly killed rattlesnake, AND keep the skin! No, we didn't do that. And Owen lost his appetite watching this being done.

Here, these lovely ladies have been handed a freshly killed snake (still wriggling) and they are hanging it on hooks so that a customer can come gut and skin it. Those hand prints on the wall behind? Those are hand prints in snake blood. Yep.

Oh yes. My sweet baby with a fresh snake skin. See how he's leaning away from it??

Oh, boy, what else did we see? There was a man who got into one of the pits (with protective gear, thank goodness), and there must have been 500 snakes in there with him. He basically riled up the snakes so people could see them attacking his boots. I lost my appetite at this pit...


It was gross. It was overwhelming. The smell of thousands of rattlesnakes is not a pleasant smell.

We had a great time. :)

-Kerry

Jacob's 6th Birthday

Oh my! My "middle" baby is 6!

Jacob is my comedic relief throughout the day... I never know what is going to come out of his mouth! He is loving, sweet, funny and smart. This kid- what can I say? My life would be a lot less bright without him.

Jacob is the absolute "man's man". He loves cars, trucks, airplanes, sports, and all things cowboy! I will say that as much as Texas and I don't see eye to eye, this is the perfect place for this rough and tough boy to have been.

So- his birthday. He woke up to find balloons hung on his bedroom door (our family tradition), then I brought cupcakes to his class at their snack time and all his classmates sang "Happy Birthday"to him. After school, he came home to find a pile of presents on the kitchen table, but mean Mom made him wait until Dad came home to open them... The suspense about killed him!

I think the wait was worth it, because he said that every gift was his favorite one! After gifts, we went to Applebee's for dinner (yuck! But his choice!) and he REFUSED DESSERT after dinner! He said he was too full... I am starting to wonder if there was a mix-up at the hospital 6 years ago... Hmmm. I'll have to look into that!

All in all, he had a great 6th birthday. A BIG thank you to those who sent gifts and called him, I can say for sure that you all helped make his day so much fun. And now... the pictures!

Anxiously awaiting Daddy's return home... Let's get unwrapping!

Birthday door balloons!

Money is always a great gift!

"I love this one SO MUCH! I want to hug it!!"

This one is for Grandma Lissa... look at that face!

Yee-haw! He was super happy with the vest and chaps from Mom and Dad- he even wore them to Applebee's!

I sure love this kid. I'm so glad he had a great 6th. :)

-Kerry