Silly Old Snake Hunter

I killed a snake on our property this week. Chris and I were taking our spring tour of the place with the kids looking at all the beautiful flowers God has sent. Joseph and Natalie were playing in an area where there are trees and a little brush. Jose starts running yelling " Run Natalie, SNAKE, SNAKE"! Chris is deathly afraid of them so I asked him to go get a shovel. I told Joseph to show me where he saw it. I was stepping around, not seeing anything, then I looked down at my feet and noticed a hold close to my foot and realized I might be standing on the nest. Sure enough a few seconds later I saw a brown snake standing up at me with it's red tough going nuts. I jumped off the nest and got to Chris with the shovel. I started chasing after it and caught it with the edge of the shovel enough to get in there to finish the job. I've never seen any this long here before, it was about 3' by the time it all came out of that hole. Par for course of where we live but the funny thing is, I pulled a muscle in my arm killing it and I'm still taking ibuprofen. Guess I'm a silly old snake hunter or perhaps one that is just really out of shape.

Last night Chris was in Col. working so the kids and I finished up most of the spring cleaning I wanted to get done this week. After supper we got out all of the camping books we got from the library. We had so much fun. We are planning lots of different games, crafts, cooking over the fire, hiking with the purpose of teaching how to leave a trail to find your way back and recognizing animal foot prints and dare I say "scat trails". Yes they are fascinated by the pictures of the different scat which is a nice way of saying poop in the books. They want me to be sure to print off the poop pictures of different animals so they can recognize it on the trails. Funny the things kids get interested in. Anyway we had a great time planning all of the fun. We are all so excited for our first official "School's Out" camp trip in the bus. Perhaps a new tradition for the Beck family. I'm going to go to Richmond this week to see about finding some fabric to make new curtains for the "Big Red Bus". Can't wait for all the fun.

Hope you are all having a great weekend!!
Chelle