I have a great video from my birthday of the kids & I opening my "meowing" birthday card. It was great fun! Unfortunately it is a long video and is taking forever to load, so you'll have to take my word for it. Grandpa finds fun cards!

Here is a photo of our latest acquisition: two basketball standards! A neighbor was getting rid of these (free at the curb) and offered to deliver them for me! It has been fun to watch Martin & Alia shoot hoops in the evening!

Elena and Alia were outside playing this afternoon when Alia came running inside. "Elena is in the tree!" She got her camera and took a picture. What a monkey!

"So is that a plastic snake or a real snake?", asked the neighbor boy pointing to Tanner's collection of sticks near the front door.

Hmm. I don't recall seeing any plastic snakes in our toy collection. Nope. It must be real.

And it was.

Identification (via various online id trees): a black king snake.

We think it came out of the field behind the house (the field was planted the night before).

It came. It sunned itself on our step. It went away.

I told the kids to just leave it alone if they came across it while they played. None of them mentioned seeing it again.






Here's as close-up of a shot as I was willing to get (~3 feet away). There are faint markings on the back.




















Here's a head-shot while he was sunning himself. Note the light colored underbelly.













And then he left. Bye Mr. Snake. Did you eat any of my chipmunks while you were here?