TURTLES and TOADS......MUD and MESSES

Finally an update- (Just for you Chels, since you so politely asked)


What have we been up to in the past 2 weeks? This:



John came home with this the other day telling the kids he had caught a monster. Unluckily, they believed him.



Ava wasn't actually traumatized by the turtle. It was the other way around. She had just thrown a ball at it and hit it in the head and we got onto her about being mean to the turtle. She bawled, we realized she probably didn't have that good of aim to actually mean to hit it, and besides, the thing had just been run over by a baling machine in the field- did we really think a neon pink soft football was gonna hurt it?



Nathan obviously didn't think so. For those of you that may be wondering what this really is, it's some sort of snapping turtle. I'd never seen one up close, let alone this big, but John definitely had. He grew up not only in the country but also in Florida, where he wrestled gators and such.



The turtle wasn't too impressed with us though. He had had a rough life since his back was all gouged with marks and he had scars all over. John figured he was pretty old since they don't usually get this big. We finally let him go, but not before Ava asked repeatedly if we were going to eat him. Where does she get these things? (oh yeah, I forgot that that guy I married has told her many stories of eating turtles. yuck.) The turtle was lucky to get away with only a football to the head.


And that night when we tried to put Nathan to bed he kept talking about the "mun-store" that Dada caught. We finally convinced him that we got rid of it but when you live out here, you may really find something like this under your bed.....



Or if not that, then definitely something like this:


We found a hatching of these down the road the other day on a walk and they were quickly adopted by Ava.




Toads seemed a nice reptile after the turtle so we let them stick around for a little while. And besides, they do cute things like this:


And little girls who play with them do not so cute things like this:


We found her like this about 15 minutes after she had come in and after she had attempted to wash her feet off in the bathroom sink. I didn't take a picture of the sink but it looked worse than the feet. And my kitchen rugs didn't fair much better. I think I'm done with turtle and toads and messy little girls. And I still have 2 more boys to deal with. Oh yeah, and her:



Who isn't allowed inside but still finds ways to make my house messy somehow. Lovely.


But for now, this little boy isn't too messy and is just getting cute and fat enough to try to photograph.



A few shots from my failed photo shoot to try to get a birth announcement.










Ok, so I did wake him up 10 billion times to try to get him in the right spot and it was over 90 degrees outside but really.....


I did get a cute one of his dimple that's popping up. He's also dimpling in quite a few other places since he's plumped up to over 12 lbs in 3 weeks.



He's actually a really good baby, but he doesn't like to sleep anywhere but in arms, which really doesn't fit into life with 3 kids. Life is settling into a rhythm but it's not there yet and we're still not out of bed before around 10 in the morning. Give us a few weeks......