Pavers and Things that go BUMP!

Just before this last amount of rain set in, I managed to do one of those jobs that you keep meaning to do but just put off.

I was given a huge pile of pavers to pave my stud pen with and just hadn't gotten around to doing it. I knew I had two girls coming to stay soon and figured it had to be done. So, I bought some sand and raked out the pen. Aiden was busy throwing a spectacular tantrum (I'm NOT cleaning my room and YOU can't make me...yes, I can't make you but I CAN make you stay IN your room til you do!) so Caitie and Conor buckled down and helped me. It was another example of having lovely kids helping out to make a chore go quicker. At the end of the hour it took we had run out of paver but had enough room left to put two lovely grass plants in for the cats to play hide and seek amongst. Tick another job off the list!

and then down came the rain and it rained and it rained and it rained and it rained and are you starting to see a pattern here?

And I want to share another quick story about the kids before I go back to sulking about the rain.

We had about a half hour when the rain stopped so we took Nell, the stafford, to an area down from us where she can go offlead and we could look at the flood water from a safe distance. The kids were around five meters from me and slightly behind me when I noticed movement around a meter or two in front of me. It was a young brown snake.

Brown snakes are deadly. And this one was only small, around a meter long, but still deadly. I froze and called, "Stop, SNAKE" and every single one of my three kids froze in their tracks. Caitie fell apart and kept whimpering, "Mummy. mummy, mummy" but she didn't move. Nell was coming toward me, directly in line with the snake when I dropped one hand, spun on my heel and gave her another hand signal and she ran around to my right, missing where the snake was (gotta love agility hand signals!)

We then quietly turned and walked away. I was so proud that my three kids froze and did exactly what I had taught them to do. We live in an area where snakes are common enough and this one was awfully close. It had right of way and we left it to go where it needed to go without any hysterics on our behalf. Well done guys!