Spiders, Centipedes and Mice...Oh My! (with a birthday somewhere in there)

What you are about to see might give you the willies...it sure did for me when I saw these! (Note: there are normal pictures in here as well so please don't be afraid...;-)

This creature (I believe it is a locust) was in our backyard at my graduation party. It landed on one of the guests shirts before Jeff picked it up and it bit his hand...this is literally the length of an adults hand stretched out. HUGE!!

This monster was sitting on our wall right outside our front door! I had walked out...BAREFOOT...to unlock the gate to the courtyard and Ginny says (in a calm and interested voice...which is SO not her when it comes to critters) "mom, come look at this spider".

So...I ran inside, closed the door, and ran downstairs (Jeff was downstairs watching a movie). I MADE Jeff pause his movie and come "look" at this spider Ginny found. He always gets irritated at me when I say things like that because the biggest spider I've seen is about the size of a nickel...MAYBE a quarter, and he thinks I should just kill them. (I usually want to find out what kind of spider something is so we can tell a bug guy or make sure they aren't poisonous...etc.) He huffs and groans about having to pause his movie just to see a stupid spider... and then he sees it! At first he says its a vinagaroon (which are extremely poisonous) so I'm starting to freak out and shut him outside to kill it so it doesn't try to run inside. He smashes it with his shoe that he is holding in his hand and everything is fine. I post the picture on facebook and several people say its not a vinagaroon but a sun spider or camel spider so I look it up online. Sure enough, it wasn't a vinagaroon but a sun spider, which are NOT poisonous and that made me feel a little better.

Jeff put it in this plastic bag and stuck it in the freezer so we could show the bug guy what it was. I also read that it looks like a mix between a spider and scorpion but it is not categorized with either group. Interesting...

On a more positive note, it was my birthday Saturday (June 18th) and Jeff brought these beautiful flowers home from the store!

Another great picture of the flowers.

Saturday we celebrated at Jeff's parents house. They just moved into a beautiful house with a pool and the grandkids LOVE it!! Jeff's dads birthday is June 19th, which was also Father's day so it was a combined celebration.

The kids swam and played in the pool for probably four or five hours!! They were covered in sunscreen and we didn't have any sunburning issues. The way their pool is set up, it's shaded for most of the afternoon so the kids were shaded a lot.

They had just gotten a few floating toys (the orange monster looking thing) that the kids could sit on. There are handles for them to hold on to also but Ginny kept trying to sit on them but it would roll over and she would fall off. She just about hit her head on the deck a few times!

Another shot of the kids playing in the pool.

The "fog" you see is from a misting system that they have all over the back yard...it was nice to have in that heat.

However, at points throughout the day, the mist would hover over the pool and make it hard for the kids to see and hard for us to see the kids.

That didn't hinder the kids play!

It kind of reminds me of scary movies that have a bunch of fog at the scary parts...=)

This is trying to see across the pool and as you can see it was very hard to see anything.

Justin enjoying the water...what a goofball!

This was the start of my Sunday...which was also Father's Day. This is the handle to one of my mugs. I was bringing my drink up to my mouth when the cup part just broke off and dropped to the tile floor!

Of course it had to have happened in the one room with cardboard boxes to soak it all up and shattered everywhere. Jeff just started laughing at me but said "what else are you gonna do but laugh..." I guess that's the best way to deal with something like this happening.

We got to spend the afternoon at Grandma Truman's house with our cousins. This is Ginny playing with Eva...liven the expression up a little Ginny! ;-)

Justin got to see his cousins Grant and Drake. They played for awhile at Grandma's house and then we got to have them stop at our house and the kids got to play there for awhile too.

This is the end result of me finding a long critter scurrying through my kids bathroom Sunday night...That's right, this was INSIDE my house! I was not happy!

Thanks to all the people on Facebook who helped me identify what this is. It is a centipede...which, again, is NOT poisonous. (The goop stuff you see at the top of the picture is it's guts...;-)

Even though this thing is not poisonous...it was inside my house and we had the bug guy here Tuesday morning, first thing! Thanks to Stacy for letting them inside our house while we were gone...I wanted everything sprayed!!

Finally, last night we had a visitor in our courtyard again! This little guy was scurrying along the ground and was trying to hide from Jeff and I.

He was able to squeeze his little body between the drain pipe and just sat there, probably scared to death. Again, I MADE Jeff take this picture and I shut the door because I didn't want it finding it's way inside my house!

SO...who wants to come visit us and maybe meet some new and interesting critters? ;-)

House, House, and more House

Just to forewarn you, this is lengthy for my posts but it's mostly pictures. Enjoy...

So...come on in and take a tour of the new place:

This is the street view of the house...there is a driveway on the right and left of the house. They are both VERY steep as well and let me tell you, Justin has already figured out that you can ride something down them and go pretty fast. He has also learned that you can wreck and it hurts pretty bad as well! Ha!

Here is the view looking down from the driveway.

This is the left side of the house where the garages and dog run are (that's the fenced area next to the car).

Another view of the dog run...the shed in the gate is a "shelter" for the dogs. There is even a whole in the shed so we can put a swamp cooler on it to keep the dogs cooler in the summer!

Looking out the back door to the left. The shed in this picture is a play house for the kids. There is a trampoline and swing set for the kids to play with and a built in barbecue for Jeff to play with. ;-)

Looking straight out the back door with Justin on the hill in the background. The trail that Justin is on leads up the hill and straight out to the desert...which probably explains all the critters we see!

This is looking out the right side of the back door. Yes, that is a hot tub...not sure it's gonna get much use during the summer but come winter, watch out neighbors...keep your blinds closed!

This is looking from the corner of the backyard to the back of the house.

Come on in...the front entryway. This is before the owners were completely moved out so all the stuff you see is their's, not ours.

The boys room...there dad is a firefighter which explains the decor, plus they were boys (twins). The bench behind Justin lifts up for more storage.

The girl room...the kids bathroom is to the right in this picture and it is a "Jack and Jill" set up where there is another entrance to the bathroom through Justin's room.

The master bedroom. The door you see to the left of the picture is one closet and the other closet is below through the bathroom.

The master bathroom with his and her sinks as well as an old fashioned looking tub.

This shower is AWESOME!! It has three shower heads and doubles as a steam room! There is also a seat you see at the bottom right corner...

The office has a built in desk with cabinets and we also purchased those chairs from the owners to accompany the built in desk! Very comfortable!

This is the "kids area". It is the upstairs loft and has the Wii, Playstation, kids computer, piano, and old couch. The loft is open to the living room and kitchen on the main floor.

This is one angle of the living room looking from the kitchen. The french doors in the background is the office. The white door on the left goes to the loft and the white door on the right goes to the basement.

Looking from the hallway in front of the office into the living room.

The kitchen...

The other side of the kitchen. The wooden door looking things are the fridge doors...the whole left side is the freezer and the whole right side is the fridge, HUGE and one of my favorite parts of the house!

The "man cave" as Jeff calls it...I call it the theater, which is in the basement. We also purchased those theater chairs from the owners so we can watch our movies/TV on that 150 inch screen comfortably!

The theater is complete with a wet bar and elevator or "dumb waiter" (the wooden square next too the cabinets) that also has a stop on the main floor in the kitchen as well as up in the loft.

We will be enjoying our time down in the theater! (The chairs in the back also have theater speakers under them so you can "feel" the bass during a movie...so cool!)

If you look at the first picture of the theater room, up at the top is the projector that the owner was using when he was here. When Jeff said we were getting a projector for the theater I was picturing a small unit like that but NNNNOOOO!!! This is what we got...a humongo projector that is one hundred times better...of course!! If you know Jeff...you TOTALLY understand!

This is a picture of the screen while I am sitting in the front row watching Food Network...not sure this picture does it justice because it is awesome! Not sure how else to explain it...

SO...who wants to come over for a movie night/day or just to watch TV...;-)