Weekend Recap - reptile surprise

I kicked off the theme of this weekend on Thursday. I scheduled myself off from the birth center so I could be home for our new driveway gravel to be delivered.

We selected recycled asphault, it's supposed to be less dusty and it's inexpensive so win win! As they delivered we got our quote on getting it spread and it was four times the cost of the gravel! I am a big fan of supporting small businesses and I understand that services have lots of hidden costs and it's important to charge a living wage but oh my gracious. Let's just say we will be figuring out spreading the gravel on our own!

As the kids played in the new gravel I sat on the phone for 3 hours trying to get a dig test done by people who had never heard of a dig test. We suspected a water leak in the front yard but last week our small, "oh that's probably a water leak" became an "oh my gosh, we have a huge water leak that must be dealt with". We had hoped to put this project off because we knew it meant running an entire new supply line to the house.

Friday I had a doula interview with a potential client and while the kids were with my dad I ran child free errands.


I picked up an old television hutch for $20 from a local Goodwill to become our homeschool central. I've been gathering and putting things away since getting it home. After John got home Friday evening we went to town and finished school supply shopping. We've decided to do ABC - Jesus Loves Me with both girls this year and I'm scrambling around to try to get started this week.

A post shared by Rebekah (@bekah.jane) on Aug 4, 2017 at 6:52pm PDT

On Saturday morning I took the girls to church where they hung out with other children while I attended our Summer Rendezvous.

It was exactly what I needed in life right now! Fellowship with other moms, lessons on thriving in life, facing and dealing with anxiety and fear and some fun arts and crafts!

I'm trying to figure out what else I can emboss! I see the embossing heat guns and powder at our local thrift stores all the time but I've never considered getting one before.

When the girls and I got home after a quick gatorade run at Target John and my brothers Robert and Jacob were hard at work on the water line. Our ground is a very hard rocky clay dirt that even with the rented trench digger it took 5 hours to dig the supply line.

We worked well into the night Saturday and finally went over to my dad's house to sleep since we didn't quite have water supply to the house again.

That's what 1/2 a Ton of sand looks like! There was another half under it... turns out putting a ton (litereally) of sand in the truck was a poor decision. 

Sunday we managed to sleep right through church. Poor John and my brothers were all so sore (and sunburnt). We got up late and headed right back out to the house to work some more. Satuday afternoon and a good bit of Sunday we were in and out of the house and my children (and likely an adult or two...) are apparently incapable of closing doors behind them. I'm pretty sure I said "we don't live in a barn, close the door" around 100 times.

When water was working again we went to town to grocery shop with two tired, grumpy children. I really don't like grocery shopping on Sundays, the stores just seem to be so crowded and the shelves seem to be more bare - just not my favorite way to spend the day.

We returned home and put away the groceries. Both girls had gone to sleep on the way home but Ada woke up as we tried to transfer her to bed. She was standing next to the dining table drawing when I turned around from putting something in the school hutch and realized with absolute horror that a snake was slithering right at her! At first the snake stopped for a second and I yelled at Ada to freeze but she was entirely oblivious to what was happening and kept stomping her little feet which seemed to aggravate the stupid reptile. I ran up and grabbed her and stood on the couch yelling for John (mind you Cora has slept through all of this one room away).

I took Ada outside and put her in her carseat and began planning an escape to my Dad's house. John grabbed the first tool he could (a post hole digger, so not ideal) and sought out the snake and got a few good blows in but failed to decapitate it which turns out is pretty key in killing one. It was definitely dying but it managed to get between the baseboards and floor where apparently we had a small hole and while he was coming to tell me it was dead/dying it escaped into the wall. :(

I took Ada to town to get the necessary supplies to seal up the hole it crawled up into and every single heavy-duty glue board that walmart had. John searched the house and under every single piece of furniture to make sure that we didn't have any other surprises hiding. After we got it all secured we went and slept at my dads house. So far no sign of the snake. Today our friend was out here helping us finish the water project and he thinks it was a garter (harmless) snake. They live even further out in the country and they deal with many more (and poisonous) snakes and he helped us strategically place the glue boards so I've agreed to sleep at home again.

We're pretty sure it came in through an open door at some point. I doubt my reminders about the door will be seen as nagging anymore... and suddenly installing a self-closing screen door jumped up on the priority list. Some days I really hate living in the country! Now that we've dealt with this, my Dad told the story of when he killed a snake in his kitchen (came in from the garage door left open), a friend told me about killing several in her garage, my brother remembers hearing of my grandparents having a snake get in their bathroom and my grandfather shot the snake leaving a huge hole in the bathroom floor.

 How was your weekend? Do you have snake stories that will make me feel better?