My Tia!

One of my all time favorite friends, Tia, came to visit today with her sweet girl, Ellie. Tia & her husband Chris (who I also went to high school with) and Ellie all live in Cleveland but Tia comes back during the Parker City Homecoming week every year and this was the first time we've managed to get together!!! She & Ellie came over to play, eat pizza king, and watch the great snake massacre of 2009. (more on that in a moment)

Here is Ellie driving the Jeep!!! She gave Tia a sticker earlier in the afternoon telling her "this is 'cause you're a really good driver, Mommy" I think Ellie must have learned all she knew from Tia, cause she was a really good driver too. Here she is wrecking into the basketball goal that obviously leapt out in front of her!
OK, so today, Chris was out mowing the yard and came in to tell me he had seen a snake in our backyard. A SNAKE! I told him that he needed to get. it. out. now. He told me he was sure it had surely found its way out of the yard. I aggressively asked him to please be sure and he told me he was sure! Fast forward to a few hours later when the kids all want to play outside. We head out and Tia and I, being the brave souls that we are, venture slowly and gingerly over to where the snake was last spotted making sure we didn't see it. When Chris came out later, he told us we were looking in the wrong spot. He also assured us that it was definitely gone. So, we continue letting the kids play. Ellie is on the swing of the swingset when I catch a glimpse of something big and long and brown along the fence and I scream "OHMYGOSHTHEREITIS!" and run away causing Tia to run away with me....until she realized she just ran away from Ellie leaving her 3 feet from the monster reptile. Ellie was none the wiser and continued swinging peacefully.

When I was done hitting my husband for trying to pacify me by telling me the giant man-eating anaconda was gone when it really wasn't, he went to get a rake and a shovel. The venemous serpent was up against the fence so he decided to throw things at it to get it to move away. First a beach ball (see the picture above) then a rock, and finally a tennis ball. When he finally got it to move away from the fence, he threw the rake down on it which captured it, and then hit it with the shovel to kill it. This was the extra scary part because that thing was lunging at him with its fangs dripping with venom. (exaggerate? me?) No, but seriously, it was really lunging at him. Thank the Lord it was pinned down by the rake or else it would have really gotten him. Morgan started crying at this point and Tia thought it was because Chris was killing the snake...but really it was because she was scared that the snake was going to get him. I just know we are ALL going to have nightmares of this stupid snake tonight! I'm getting the heebie jeebies just retelling the story!!!!!!!

When we came back inside, I did a little research online and it turns out our giant man-eating reptillian anaconda was nothing more than a 2 foot garden variety garter snake. No fangs, no venom. It was still big and scary.

My husband....the serpent slayer!!!!!!

Ok, enough stories......back to pictures. This is terrible of me, but good of Tia.

And of course, Miss Ellie!!!!! (this kid is SMART! and CUTE!)

The little kids....we decided we'll have to do this every year when they come to town and take pictures of them as they get bigger! They look about the same size, no? Carter is 18 months younger!

Anyway, we also filled Tia full of Pizza King pizza & breadsticks and gave her a crash course in sibling rivalry so she can be more confident in her decision to have an only child! Although the girls did play really well with Ellie....just not each other! Fun Day!!!