It has begun

The weather is cooler.

(but the A/C is still on)

It gets darker earlier.

The windows are open.

The decorations are starting to come out.

My favorite time of year has begun!

I love this time. You are constantly trading out decorations for the next holiday. It is wonderful. I love making my house look festive and telling my girls about the next holiday that they can look forward to.

The girls were thrilled when I pulled out their witches hats!

They have been playing with them all day.

My next task is to make sure that the scorpions are out of the house.

I want to get a cat. To protect me from scorpions of course.

Does anyone know if this is true? That cats kill scorpions?

Move like a butterfly, Sting like a scorpion

I wanted to title this post, "Never Spoon a Scorpion" but Rich voted for the other title... and he said since he got stung more than me, he had 5 votes to my 2.

What does this title mean, you ask? Well, this morning, around 2am Rich woke up dreaming of his leg hurting. So he got up and went to the bathroom. A minute later he yells at me to wake up. I pulled myself out of bed and he told me he saw a scorpion on the bathroom floor. I ran to get the duct tape (our method of choice for killing scorpions). After killing the scorpion Rich started telling me how much his leg hurt. I thought that was weird but all of the sudden I realized my knee was hurting as well.

I took a look at the back of Rich's leg and I counted 5 welts- or what I thought was bites. It wasn't until about 2 or 3 minutes later when we connected to two and realized that they were scorpion stings! The scorpion had been in bed with us. It was in the middle of us and it got my left leg and Rich's right leg. I guess I should mention it also stung my butt- but you only get a picture of my knee.

The little red dot in the middle is where my bite was. Almost 18 hours later and it still hurts something bad!

Immediately after we figured out that these were scorpion stings I was on the phone with poison control. They were excellent and told me everything I could expect. And guess what? I basically got every symptoms. By the time I was finished talking with them my tongue was completely numb. I laid in bed and felt the neurotoxins move all over my body. I felt like Bella from twilight when she was turned into a vampire. :)

I could tell when the neurotoxins reached my feet, my hands, my lips, my nose, and even my ears. I felt really weird pressure and numbness and tingling and PAIN! I also woke up around 5:30 from my alarm and my vision was really blurry. By the time I got to work at 8:30 my vision was normal, I was just having a lot of random numbness and tingling all throughout the day. (*still am! the poison control people said this could last for hours, days, or weeks!)

Fortunately for Rich his neurotoxins were contained in his leg. He limped all day and is in a lot of pain on his leg, but he isn't having all the other weird stuff going on. This picture above is the redness from the stings. It looks worse in person.

But guess what? There is always a silver lining... and this one is the fabulous dinner that was brought to my house from a wonderful friend!

We found out that Cara really likes Jell-o.

Baby Carrier Love

I know--- another day posting about our camping trip.

On Saturday we took an easy hike around a small pond (also called a lake by the locals- don't be fooled by the lake name- it is a pond)

Starting the hike:

As you can see- Cara started out exhausted after a rough night sleep.

Middle of the hike (break time!)

We spent some time at a little lake- Rich and the other dad's were teaching the boys how to skip rocks. I was very impressed with some of their skipping abilities. Also a little fearful with how many times we almost got hit by rocks.

Finally- The end of the hike. Cara got her nap!

I am a huge fan of the ERGO

I got it used from a friend and I seriously would love one in every color. Fortunately I don't need one in every color- Cara loves this one just fine.

Aunt Judy's Kind of Camping

Many of you don't know, but my Aunt Judy has a weird obsession with Bears. Cara and I on the other hand do not like them. So we decided to cuddle and play in the tent to stay away from the bears.

She was sporting her "best buddies" beanie (actually I think it is Auntie Devyns!) and we had a tickle fest.

We actually never saw or heard a bear on the trip. We did have everything locked up in bear lockers every night though. I did get a little nervous at 1am one night when I remembered I had an open bag of starbursts in my bag. Then of course I started hearing things outside the tent and of course Rich wouldn't go check it out.

Eventually I fell back to sleep- only to be awakened like 30 minutes later to a kick in the face by Ryann or Cara or both.

We're Back

What an exhausting trip.

A successful, exhausting trip.

Cowboy smores were good, but I will stick with good old fashion smores.

Ryann climbed up rocks and scraped her knees and shins. But she kept on climbing. She loved hanging out with the "big kids" and trying to ride a scooter.

Cara spent hours picking up rocks and redecorating the forest. Some dirt over a there- a little branch over here.

Rich and I just ran around like crazy trying to keep these kids safe.

More to come tomorrow.

Cowboy Smores

I am eating these tonight!

They are "Now Famous Coyboy Smores" according to my friend April

When I get back I will let you know how they were. I actually made a couple with Nutella instead of peanut butter. yummy....

Cara Takes a Hike

Hopefully this afternoon we will be able to take another hike when we are camping.

As you can see- Cara loves to hike- or maybe she just likes to say hi to the people who do hike.