Lizards, snakes and frogs oh my!

I was grieving the fact that I could no longer use my Toledo Zoo membership when I realized that there is tons of nature right here in my very own backyard! Is that a good thing? First of all, there are tons and tons of lizards. They are all over the screen on the pool area, the yard, the outside of the house...It's like an Alfred Hitchcock movie! Today I even discovered one in the house on my paper towel roll. They are harmless, but it startled me nontheless so I threw the paper towel and screamed like a maniac into poor LB's ear (did I mention I had been on the phone with her when I started screaming with the Palmetto bug too). I'm sure it is dried up in the house somewhere by now. Then there are the frogs. We have all kinds...cute little tree frogs, big frogs, yellow frogs, the list goes on. Thank the Lord one of those hasn't gotten in, but I'm sure it's a matter of time. Last but not least there are the snakes...the very same day that I saw the lizard in the house, I discovered my 1st snake and it wasn't no gardener snake either! It was a big black one, a black racer. I figure the names appropriate because it sure got my heart a racing! Luckily, I'm on high blood pressure meds or I might have stroked out on the spot! Later my other "helpful" neighbor was filling me in on other kinds of snakes I might encounter in the neighborhood - as in right in my very own backyard. Let's see first there is the pygmie rattler (yes as in rattler snake), next we have the coral snake (as in 3rd most deadliest snake in the world), and then the harmless variety such as the large 5 1/2 FOOT bright yellow one he had removed from his garage. So now my motto is walk LOUDLY and carry a big stick!

Oh that's just a roach...

Today I was minding my own business trying to feed the troops when I opened my pantry and discovered, to my horror, a lovely Palmetto bug. This thing was about half the size of my hand!!! So I did what any Michigander would do...I slammed the door shut, screamed like a maniac and called Kevin to come home and "deal" with it! I kept calling it a beetle. It looked kind of like a June bug but on steroids. Kevin graciously came home and made it go away. Later that night at church I mentioned the incident to my class to which they very calmly said, "Oh that was just a roach". SAY WHAT?! I said it couldn't possibly have been a roach - it was huge and besides, my house is clean darn it! They said "no, no not that kind of roach...it's a water roach". As if the kind matters right? All I could think about after that was the Orkin man. When we got home from church we found 2 more. YUK! So the next morning when Kevin left for work I told him to go check the house. I informed him that if he left any in the house, he would come home and find everything including us packed up and on our way back to MI! And He knows I could do it...I packed the whole house in 3 weeks and would be up for a new challenge - plus we were still half way packed! My next call was to Orkin. I told them that I was hiring the 1st company that could come out TODAY! I was relieved when they were able to come out that afternoon. So no more Palmetto bugs (I prefer the term).

Floridians are not color blind!

Today was the 1st day of school for CM. I took him in with all the documents from my checklist I got from the school. They told me to arrive at 8:15 to get him registered. Me and all 3 boys arrived right on time...just in time to wait...for 45 minutes! During this pleasant wait time the boys fought over the one toy I managed to find in the stroller then Cm told me his lunch box was leaking! Huh?! Well his drink box had exploded! I had to do major clean up quickly in order to save the rest of the food. Right about this time, the "pleasant" secretary called us back. She said, "I hope you have your paperwork". I swear she sounded just like Roz from Monsters Inc.! So I handed her my forms. She looked at his immunizations and said, "this needs to be on the blue state of FL immunization form", and she said it like duh! Well of course I would know that, who doesn't?! So anyway, after some questioning I found out that I needed to go to the county dept. of public health to get the proper color form. No big deal, I could finish up here, get CM situated and come back with it later right? WRONG! She then proceeded to tell me she couldn't register him without the immunizations being on the crazy blue form instead of a white one! WHAT?! So I packed up the gang and headed down to the public health dept, where I kid you not, they transferred my info from my white paper to their BLUE paper. I then had to stop home for a new juice box and finally got CM to his class around 11am!

Don't even get me going about AM's school registration! I should have known...his physical had to be on a Yellow form instead of my white one then I also had to have his immunizations moved from the white form to the blue form. Good Grief Charlie Brown! Who cares what color the paper is? Well Florida, obviously!

To Unpack or go to Disney...that is the question?

Well our first few days were very productive. I managed to get the kitchen unpacked, and we actually made dinner at our new home on Wed. The boys were like a tornado behind me. I told CM he could get "a" toy out of one of the boxes which translated to him as permission to open ALL the boxes in his room! By the time he was done, there was not a spot of open floor left. You had to literally climb over stuff to even get in! Oh did I also mention that Kevin thought he would "be nice" to the movers and just let them put boxes wherever?! So much for all that careful labeling I had done. We had bathroom boxes in the dining room, bedroom boxes in the garage, etc. It was a complete unpacking nightmare! I had to wonder what he thought we paid them thousands of dollars for...the service maybe? So by Saturday, I needed a diversion and what a better diversion than Disney World! This you will see will become a habit. That darn Disney World! How are you supposed to get anything done living near the Happiest Place on Earth?!

Welcome To The Sunshine State...Hey, where's the sunshine?!

Well we arrived in FL on Thursday August 22 and guess who threw out the welcome mat? None other than Tropical Storm Faye herself! We drove right into the storm. Now, up until we reached Ocala, I was thinking along the lines of really bad thunderstorm. Nope...not even close! It rained so much and so hard I think you could have literally drowned out there! It rained NONSTOP for days! Kevin's cousin, Betty said it had been raining for 4 days before we got there - 4 DAYS! It continued to rain for days after. I have never seen anything like it. I started wondering if snow was such a bad thing afterall. Kevin says yes, but the jury is still out for me.

We left one of our cars at our lovely cousin, Betty's, house then went to check in at Disney's Pop Century Resort where Kevin's mom was waiting for us. We had a nice but wet vacation for the next 5 days. The movers showed up at our new house on Monday. Kevin met them there so they could unload while the boys, mom, and I went to Epcot. It was only fair. Afterall, I did most of the packing! Then Tuesday we said a tearful goodbye to mom as they picked her up for the airport to head back to MI, and we left to start the next fun phase of our journey...unpacking!

3 Weeks to Move...but who's counting?

I have always been an overachiever, and my good buddy LB calls me "Superwoman", but I was about to take it to a whole new level...

In July my husband flew down to Tampa for a job interview. We pretty much knew that since they were flying him down he was going to get the job..unless he really messed up the interview (you never know...he is a man!). He got the official job offer on July 28. We were going to be going down on August 22 for a trip to Disney World that we had planned back in February. So we decided that we should just move at the same time! Why not, right? I mean how hard could it be to find a house in FL and pack up a 2000+ sf home with 3 children underfoot in 3 WEEKS?!! Well let's just say that it got done, but along the way I had such a panic attack on US23 that I had to pull over and call 911. Talk about embarrassing!

So on August 19 around 9pm, after the movers packed up our entire house in their truck, Kevin and I piled in to our 2 minivans with the kids, the dog, our fish (yes, I said fish), and my beloved Christmas Cactus and said goodbye to our life as Michiganders. The trip took us about 2 days and we lived to tell about it.