Such a Big Girl & Lunchtime Entertainment

Thursday marked the day that Ellie moved to her big girl bed. She has been requesting to sleep in it for a while-we just weren't ready. Yesterday evening, Andrew and Jackson went fishing and Ellie and I moved stuff into her new room. We moved all of her clothes and what else up to her new closet and dresser. We also took the bows, books, and dolls. I cleaned out the baskets in the closet and bagged up all the baby girl stuff just in case we ever need it again. I also went ahead and cleaned out old clothes from Ellie and Jackson's closet-boxed up clothes we may use again and bagged up clothes for a garage sale. Ellie found all sorts of stuff to play with. By the end of it she had a dress on over her clothes, several bows and clips in her hair and a sun hat on in addition to her new Dora glasses. I also brought out all the boy sheets and blankets for Lincoln and hung up some outfits I have already bought. The nursery is slowly changing back to blue. It was kind of sad getting Ellie out of the crib after her nap yesterday-she is growing up. She is fine with it, but Andrew and I are not.

Ellie decided that she constantly needed her hat and sunglasses on.

And then it was time to go to bed. I kept her up a little later than usual, but then she wanted to go to bed and up the stairs she went. She climbed right up into bed and loved being under the covers. I gave her a couple books, took a few pictures, turned off the light, and closed the door. Not much later, I heard her yelling for me-she wanted her hat and sunglasses. I found them for her and she put them on. I didn't hear from her again. Andrew was on the phone and missed the event, so he went up later to tell her good night and she was still doing fine. She didn't get out of bed once. This morning, I heard the pitter-patter of little feet around 7:00 and knew that Jackson had woken up Ellie even though I had told him to just let her sleep in the morning. They came downstairs after sometime and I heard Jackson telling Ellie he had found some more of her lipgloss the night before and that now they get to watch cartoons. Ellie asked where I was and Jackson told her I was just taking a shower. I think he was very excited to introduce Ellie into this new little world of freedom. I imagine we will still have some battles in the future and Ellie will not always stay in bed. I think Jackson and Ellie will soon discover that they can sneak into each others rooms-what are siblings for anyways.

So this afternoon, we were all just sitting down to eat lunch when what do we see right out the kitchen window?

Yes, a big black snake. It was probably close to 4ft long and 1 1/2 in wide. Andrew immediately went to the garage and got a shovel. I thought he was going to come back with the BB gun. He and Jackson watched it for awhile and soon discovered this.

The big black snake was getting ready to attack and eat another snake. Needless to say, I didn't get too close. It did entertain the kids for a little bit. Andrew eventually killed the bigger snake (I'm not sure what happened to the smaller one) but he just left it out on our patio and laid it out so it looked like it was still alive. He and Jackson tried to keep it a secret, but I found out and Andrew said eventually some animal would get it. There were conversations about taking it out to surprise Granny (she HATES snakes) but I told Jackson she would probably never buy him any Doritos or toys again. Then Ellie talked about the snake getting in her bed. Andrew didn't want to foster any nightmares so he got rid of the snake-kind of. It is now hanging from a tree branch in the brush behind our house. Hopefully something happens to it soon because I can see it from the house and it still freaks me out.