Catch All

Justin took the kids Mother's Day shopping - yes, all 3 of them. I thought I might read. He insisted that I do no work. I thought though that if I picked up a book, I'd get to read now, then who knows when I'd read again. I'm way behind on some knitting projects, so reading isn't even on my list right now. At this point, knitting is work, so I'm not doing that either. But, if you are Mandy, which I am, then laying on the couch with the laptop on your lap, Coldplay playing and writing is a fantastic way to relax. In fact, one my favorites, though I'm not sure how much actual writing I'll be doing here.

There is one thing I'm sure I won't get to because it requires some scanning of photos, which requires booting the computer downstairs up, which I don't really want to get into right now. Maybe though, if I get this caught up, I'll get to the other stuff later.

Deadly Spiders

Last year, a little later in the summer, I went out to the back shed, opened the door and saw a spider. Having spent my entire adult life in Chicago, I don't know much of anything about anything outdoors. Really. It's sad! The spider didn't look quite right to me and I was afraid to go in, so I went and got Justin and said, "hey, will you come look at this spider for me?" I'm so glad that I did because it was a black widow. A HUGE black widow at that!

We ended up calling The Brown Reclusinator. We found him in the Christian phone directory. Then it turned out a few months later that Kristen had his daughter in class and they've become really great friends. Anyway, he came out and sprayed and we've not seen any since. We had seen several of them too!

Then last week, Justin and I were doing yard work. Jaden was helping me pull weeds. I turned over a log and there was a big, huge, fat black widow. They are so scary looking! We called Mr. Reclusinator to ask him if he wanted to come pick up a live one. He'd expressed interest in having a live one before. He said, yes, but wouldn't be able to come by for a few days, could we keep it in a jar until then?

I do have some canning jars but had them all packed up and the only thing with a lid that we could find was a bottle that Jaden never really used. You should have seen Justin trying to get him in there. He was so freaked out! I wanted to take pictures of it but I had to be ready to rush him to the hospital if there was a mishap. It was scary!

Then we decided that we weren't crazy about having this deadly spider sitting around our house - no matter how locked up he was, so we called Mr. Reclusinator back and asked him if we could bring this thing to him. He said he'd catch us "on the next one". Ugh!

So, this scary, nasty looking thing, met it's fate.

Even killing it was freaky!

Jump Around

Justin is one of the neighborhood attractions. The neighborhood kids come over to ask if he can bounce them on the trampoline. From the look of these pictures, you can see why.

And, if you didn't know it already, Migc is a strange kid. He makes things and wears them. This is only a tip of the iceberg. While some of the neighborhood kids are playing, Migc is wearing a paper bag that he has cut up. He has no qualms about it either. He's just hanging out with his bag on his head.

Jaden was loving the action too!

And one more picture for good measure. How do you deny this??? I can't believe my baby boy will be 1 year old in 4 days! It's making me very sad!!!