This Week and a Menu

This week is going to be VERY busy in our house!  It's just a crazy time of year for us as hubby is "in melons" as we like to say.  This really means that he is harvesting our watermelon crop.  Sometimes he will leave the house at 6 or 7 am and get home at 10 or 11 at night.  LONG, HOT days.

We have a few trips planned for the summer and I can hardly wait to share with you what they are!  You'll have to stay tuned for that!

On my menu for this week is....

Monday - spaghetti (because I already have the meat thawed and it's easy)
Tuesday - onion baked pork chops
Wednesday - shepherd's pie?  (not sure yet about Wednesday)
Thursday and Friday we will be at a baseball tournament
Saturday - up for debate! HA!

I hope to be back to regular posting in the next week or so.

A SNAKE Encounter

Growing up in Florida, snakes were a natural part of our environment.  I can remember being taught about snakes beginning at a very young age.  In fact, to this day I still remember "red on yellow kill a fella, red on black, friend of Jack".  (the Coral Snake rhyme).

I'm not deathly afraid of snakes.  I'm not terrified of snakes.  I don't "like" them, but I know they are in our environment and inevitably, I'm going to "run" across one in my every day life because of where we live and such.  Most certainly though, I'll kill one in a New York minute if I run across it though.  HA!

We've tried to teach our boys snake safety (for lack of a better term).  We've taught them not to touch them, don't try to pick them up, call an adult if you see a snake, etc. etc.

Last Saturday afternoon, I was going out the back door and felt something hit my arm.  I happened to look down right about the same time a LONG snake was slithering off my arm and fell onto the back porch.  Oh yes my friends.  A snake had slithered up the door jam and fell on my arm when I opened the door.  I.Almost.Died.

Did I scream?  YES.  Did I drop what was in my hands?  NO.  Thankfully I had Carter home with me and he went out our other back door and got a "sword" and chopped the snake's head off.  I did at least have the wherewithall to take some photos of the snake so my husband believed me! HA!

The snake looked like it had a diamond pattern to me and it sort of did, but I wasn't about to start freaking out just yet.  Carter said it was an oak snake (but I think he may have been just guessing?).  It looked like some sort of rattler to me.  Here's a photo (taken through the door of course).

Anyhow, Carter to the rescue and he was SO proud that he helped Mama get rid of the snake.  Yes, that would be a sword he's holding.  Yes, he's supervised when using it.  Don't judge.

I did get some good pictures of the snake with my good camera, but I haven't cleared the camera card yet, so these photos will have to do.  Hubby got home and thought it MIGHT have been a Pygmy Rattler, but after looking at the snake and the pictures, decided it was in fact an Oak Snake.

I'd say it's a dead snake now.

A Disney Birthday

There's nothing better than celebrating a birthday at Disney!  It's just MAGICAL!  A girlfriend of mine has a daughter who, instead of having a big party, decided she wanted to go to Disney for the weekend.  Being that her girls and my boys get along great and we all have passes, she asked if we wanted to tag along with them for the weekend.  Did she even need to ask?  WE LOVE DISNEY and of course said YES!

Clearly the sun was in our eyes here, HA!

Of course it was May in Florida, but we didn't care! We were there to have a good time!  We fought the rain all weekend but that didn't affect us at all!  We trudged right through to have our good time!

Our trip was also during Epcot's flower festival, so the flowers and topiaries were BEAUTIFUL.

My friend's daughter brought along one of her little friends and her older sister (whom we also know) so there was a pile of us, but all the kids did GREAT and we just kept saying over and over how much fun we had and how well behaved the kids were!

In fact, every time we turned around, my friend's youngest daughter had a hold of my youngest boy's hand.  It was TOO PRECIOUS for words.

The parks we visited while in Disney were the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios.  We even had dinner one night at Trail's End which we all LOVE.  It's very low key and relaxing.  The restaurant is at Fort Wilderness, so you have to get there by boat or bus.  The kids had a great dinner of "home-cooked" food and then we let them play tetherball before we boarded the boat.

What a great trip with amazingly good kids! 

Late week randoms

A few random thoughts for today...

*I still haven't finished all my laundry.

*Operation Clean House is full-on as my cousin flies in Sunday night.  I haven't seen her in years and she's coming here to watch another cousin graduate high school.  SO EXCITED.

*Carter made the All Star baseball team, so we're still in baseball through at least late June.

*I cleaned my truck out this past weekend.  How does so much trash get in my vehicle?

*The school year is winding down for us (we are out in June) and I have lots of events to attend.  Awards ceremonies, spelling bees, breakfasts, etc. 

Looking forward to the weekend....

"Plastic Surgery"

As noted in previous posts, our family is on a mission to become debt-free.  We have put dollars and cents toward debt and have made a little progress but this past weekend, we made a HUGE step.

We did some plastic surgery.  Otherwise known as cutting up credit cards.  We haven't used our cards in a few years (except one or two) so it wasn't THAT big a deal to do this but I was a little nervous about it.  There's just something about cutting up the card that is a little unnerving.  But, we did it and I haven't looked back!  Yes, I even cut up my beloved Disney Visa!

Another step in our journey......

My Purse

I've always been into organizing things and like my things to be nice and neat.  I've had to let go of some of that in the past year because we're REALLY busy with the boys and sometimes, everything is not "in its place".

The same goes for my purse.  I like it to be where I can find things I'm looking for quickly.  It had gotten out of control lately, so I decided over the long weekend to organize and change my purse.

No, I don't normally carry around my kids' birth certificates but I needed them for something and I had a few other extra documents in my purse this past week because I need to renew my driver's license and they need about 52 forms of ID for me to renew it. HA!

The first step was to take everything out of my purse so I could sort it and throw away the trash!

I saw on another blog somewhere a lady that "containerizes" everything in her purse so she can switch easily if she needs to.  I really liked that idea so each of my like items went into various pouches and such.

There.  MUCH better.  Now I can switch purses if I need to quickly and easily AND all my things are organized.

I'm left with a great summer purse that is well organized!

Again?

How is it possible that I went another entire week with NO posting on the blog?  I HATE that I don't have the time to post every single day.  I'd LOVE to post every day.  I have plenty of material to blog about between trips to Disney, baseball, the boys' accomplishments, organizing, etc. but the problem is no time!

Here are a few things for now -

• All-Stars baseball started this week and that means we still have 2 nights a week of practice.
  
• I haven't lost any more weight, but I haven't gained any either.  That's success in my book.  HA!
  
• I have BIG plans for this weekend which include setting up some blog posts for next week.  We'll see how those plans go.
  
• I plan to get back to my weekly menu postings on the blog and in life!  I've been slacking due to baseball season and my wallet nor my waistline like it.

Who has big plans for the weekend?  What are you doing?