The snake

Okay, so the neighbors said they finally cleared the brush from their backyard, which is where we think this snake was living. That is, when he wasn't in our yard! A few weekends ago we were doing yard work and saw him in our palm tree. Here's just a couple of pics...

You can see his black body wrapped around the palm tree...

And here is his head... he really wasn't that big, just more of a nuisance really.

Hopefully he's gone for good and found another home someplace else. Both Doyle and myself have tried to kill him at least once each when we were working alone in the yard. He has always just been too fast. I'm sure you'll hear if we see him again.

My Surprise Visit!

My forever nieces and nephew stopped by the house a couple of weekends ago for a surprise visit. It had been a couple of years since I had seen them last. Here are just a few shots from the quick reunion...

Joshua, Sarah, me and Emilee

Here's Joshua playing with Kit

Emilee has really shot up. She is almost as tall as Sarah.

And look how grownup Sarah is getting!

It was so good to see the kids again and to hear how they are doing. I hope they will keep in touch.

New York City!!

After Pop Pop's birthday weekend, Doyle and I spent the day in New York City, before my work seminar started. Here are some pictures from our room at the New York Marriott Mariqee. We were right in the middle of Times Square!

Of course I had to take Doyle to Serendipity... or should I say, he let me take him there.

The ice cream there is SO good. I had just had a migraine earlier in the week, or I would love to have gotten the Frozen Hot Chocolate drink!

After lunch we started walking back towards the hotel and wouldn't you know it, we came across the gay pride parade. Some of these guys were just too hilarious looking.

After watching about as much as we possibly could of the parade... we headed down to the Empire State Building.

They did warn us that it was a cloudy day... like we couldn't see that for ourselves already. There really wasn't any wait at all which was extremely nice. No sooner than we got up there and King Kong came up to me from behind and scared me to death! Doyle was quick to take a picture as I was still trying to catch my breath from gasping so hard!

The below picture is looking out towards the business district where the Twin Towers had been. We did not get a chance to make it down to ground zero on this trip.

We hung out Monday night with my group from Landstar. This is Kevin, my first boss at Landstar and his wife Shannon.

We hung out at this Irish Bar for awhile and then headed down to join Jim, my boss and his wife and 3 kids. We had dinner at the ESPN Zone. After that, we set back out on the town by ourselves. It had been a pretty long day so pretty much just headed back to the room after taking some last pictures of the NYC night life.

We had a great time in New York, but when the trip was over, we were very happy to get back home.

Pop Pop's 80th Surprise Bday Party!

Okay, so Pop Pop's birthday was much earlier this year, which is why when everyone showed up it really was a big surprise for him! We had a tent outside where everyone could hang out. It ended up being a beautiful day and we all had a really good time. Here are some pictures from the day... Uncle Darryl and the kids played kareeoke.

Here's Mom Mom with the kids... are those flowers not just gorgeous?

Tyler played around in Pop Pop's new shed.

Poor Tyler got tricked into putting this girls pink nightmare thing on. I'm not even sure what it really was... but it totally reminded me of The Christmas Story!

Tyler also liked sporting around in his dad's Robin outfit...

At the end of the day, we finally cut into the cake!

We hope you enjoyed your surprise birthday party Pop Pop! :)