Gecko Sightings

I recently mentioned a gecko sighting in the garage when Elizabeth caught one and it lost its tail. However, I wanted to take a moment to tell you a true gecko tale!
About two months ago, just before Julia's wedding, one of the little buggers got into the house when I opened the back door to pick up some toys from the patio. To make a long story shorter, upon trying to catch it, it immediately disappeared! My neighbor was trying to help me and we both agreed that the thing just vanished out of his hand! So, I went to Julia's wedding, hoping for the best, which was that it had gotten back outside. Weeks go by. Then one night, when Elizabeth wasn't going to bed, her sharp little eyes spotted a gecko crawling on the floor along the edge of our entertainment tower, past the bookshelf and underneath the subwoofer. We pulled the tower and shelf out and even took apart the subwoofer, but did not find the thing. We found quite a few other odds and ends inside the subwoofer, though!
Well, today, at least a month later, I was hunting for a certain large and empty plastic coffee cannister in which to potentially store some school supplies. I thought it was on the floor of the pantry. It was. I shoved over the bag of bags to get said cannister and that's when I screamed. I knew it was just the harmless gecko, but seeing it crawling it's creepy crawl away from me still elicited that shocked reaction when one sees something alive in your house that isn't supposed to be there. I told Elizabeth, lizard-catcher extraordinaire, that she had to catch it when I lifted up the coffee canister that it had hidden under. Well, she did make several attempts before it crawled under her! She jumped to get it but missed and the darn thing scurried under the oven! It'll probably be another month before we see it again. At least we ended up doing a thorough cleaning of the pantry floor and a fairly decent cleaning out under the oven!
Here is the link to see a picture of our accidental pet (though ours is a little bigger than the one pictured). http://www.outdooralabama.com/watchablewildlife/what/Reptiles/Lizards/mhg.cfm

Elizabeth, the reader, bike rider and lizard catcher!

Yes, folks, she is something! She began reading with gusto last week! She said, "You tell me the letters to write and I'll write them!" and then she would read what I had told her to write. We started on some simple sentences yesterday.
Also, she has finally started enjoying riding her bike. She is a few inches taller than she was in April at her birthday (go figure) and can maneuver better.
And, at four years old, she is lizard catcher extraordinaire! We have quite a population of geckos around the house (we've watched it grow in the 2.5 years we've lived here). But, today, one youngster is now without his tail. He had found his way into the garage and was hiding in between a piece of cardboard and the garage wall. Andrew found him and then called Elizabeth to catch him! Well, she did, but she pulled off his tail in the process. It was great, though a little disgusting to see the tail continuing to wiggle around on the cardboard for the next five minutes! I was shuddering! I'm so so so glad, that even though we live in the suburban south, that my kids still get to experience nature and life all around them.
Speaking of nature around us, there is also this subtropical spider living in our front yard. We looked it up in Andrew's spider guidebook. It creeps me out to flip through the pages of that book, but this spider is not very creepy at all! He is very cool looking. He has a very hard, very large, oval-shaped, shiny white abdomen with 6 black spots and 4 spikes around the outer edge of his abdomen. He has this really tiny head and legs, but builds beautiful webs. The kids and I go check on him every other day or so.
So, Elizabeth is growing and learning so much every day. I wish she'd learn to take a nap on the days she had ballet, though! She's loving ballet and doing fine with it, though it's very introductory. She just focuses much better when she's had a nap. And so do I, for that matter. I think I'll get my 20 minutes in real quick!

Hannah walking on the beach.
David and the kids flying a kite.

Andrew helping Hannah as she is a little slow and unsteady at the bottom of the pirate boat water slide!

This is a good view of the hotel with David and the kids at the slide. Our room was behind me and on the right. On down were more pools and then the beach. See David's review of "Waterscape" under "Reviews" to read more!

Ft. Walton Beach

As promised here are some pictures from our trip! Above: we went for a long walk geocaching! Look it up if you don't know what it is!

The kids very happy with their balloons that were made for them at dinner. E: Flower; A: Dinosaur; H: deflated Alligator

Playing on the luggage cart the day we arrived.

Andrew boogie-boarding! He had so much fun doing that!

It was like the happiest dream! I can't believe we really relaxed and played as much as we did! David was amazing with the kids and they were so enamored by his love and attention. Little Hannah really won him over, too. He hadn't seen her since she was 13 months, and as most of you know, there is a huge difference between 13 and 20 months!

Garage Sales & The Alabama Nature Center

Well, today was a fun and fairly productive day. We woke up early and did some garage sale shopping in our neighborhood. It's a lot of fun because it's neighborhood wide and there's at least 1000 homes in our neighborhood! Obviously not everyone participates, but it's busy and fun.

Then we drove up to Prattville/Millbrook, AL area to a special place called the Alabama Nature Center. They have hiking trails where many schools come and learn about biology, rocks, habitats, all that great stuff. Today, they were having what they called "The Good Ol' Days". They had a blacksmith making horseshoes (the nice man gave Andrew and Elizabeth and old one), several woodcarvers, and pottery-makers. There was a refurbished home where ladies were spinning wool into thread, crocheting, and quilting. Then, there was a native American hunting tent set up where they were making Three-Sisters Soup (squash, corn, beans, rice and venison) over the fire. The woman was weaving these amazing baskets out of long needle pine straw. They had tomahawks, blow guns for the darts they made, and real arrows with arrowheads he had made. He had the fur and hides of beaver, possum, fox, rabbit, skunk and raccoon. They were dressed as they would have been in the early to mid 1800s.

Oh, and then there was this herding dog demo! The trainer blows commands on a whistle and the dog herded these really strange looking ducks into pens and over and under steps! The ducks were very tall--over two feet and yet walked and waddled like ducks, but they would fall on their faces fairly often, which made us laugh. They would get up so quick, if you blinked you'd miss it. It was fairly entertaining to watch and it was the kids' favorite, but my favorite was the Indian hunting camp.

After all that, we partake of the hot dog lunch and prepare to go home when I run into a woman I knew in Alaska! I got distracted and after we were done talking, loaded up everyone into the car to go home. Well, about 10 minutes down the road I realized that I left our cooler with our name on it on one of the tables. We'd brought some juice boxes and fruit along, but forgot them when we got to talking and watching the blacksmith and woodcarver again! So, I decided to go back and get it. Well, that was slightly annoying, but we did it and got home for some much needed rest time. I opened the van tailgate to make sure I had gotten everything out, and it was then that I realized, once again, that I am very fortunate my head is attached to my body or I would forget it. The back of the van was empty, which meant that after I had gotten the diaper bag, the camera, my purse and the baby out of it--and then gone back for the silly cooler!--I had driven off leaving the stroller in the parking lot.