You know you live in the country when...

You know you live in the country when.....

You go to leave for church and this is your bon-voyage gift. Yuck! 

Poor Sierra is the one that spotted him first. I was getting the younger girls ready to head out the door and I asked her to go get in her car seat, since she is always ready first because she can get her shoes on herself. I opened the garage door and ushered her out (we were running behind, as usual). 20 seconds later, I hear her come running inside shouting that there is a snake in the garage. Honestly, I thought she was kidding, or Brian maybe left a toy snake in there or something funny like that. I asked her a couple times what she was talking about and my non dramatic kid, just kept squealing about a "snake in the garage". So I opened the door and went out myself. Needless to say, I came running right back inside and went to get Brian (who was sleeping at the time). Thankfully he came outside, our "Knight with Shiny Shovel" and he took care of it for us. :)

I did feel bad when he texted me later (after a little research) to tell me that it was probably just an ordinary black rat snake. I am sure those things are good for killing bugs and rats and mice, but when they show up on your garage front step and you have 3 little ones in tow, they gotta go. I do have second thoughts about killing it every now and again (but I am not losing sleep over it, that's for sure!) If we weren't in such a hurry to get to church, next time I might do some quick research (as long as no one is in imminent danger) and maybe we would just relocate it instead of chopping its head off. But really I am just praying that they get the memo and don't even come near the house any more. That sounds good to me! Another way to look at it, we were just contributing to the food chain / cycle of life! Hopefully he was a yummy snack for the birds around here! :)

Yuck!!!

You know you live in the country when....

You know you live in the country when....

you hear a noise out on your back deck around 9pm and then proceed to chase away an "intruder" 

who is happily cleaning up all your grill drippings for you.

It was just a big ole opossum making a meal of all our grease drippings from the grill. He must have had a good nose because the bowl of grease drippings is not too easy to find all the way up here on our back deck. And he wasn't in too much of a hurry, moving his fat butt back down the stairs either. B was shining the flashlight on him and trying to scare him off; all the while, he took his sweet time lazily walking back down the steps before running off into the woods. :)  Silly opossum. Of course Sierra was so thrilled to hear the story the next day and see the pictures I took. She then told everyone she knew what had happened. :)

You Know You Live in the Country When...

Here's another one folks! 

You know you live in the country when...drying your clean clothes looks like this....

Major kudos to my hubby for putting this up for me; this is definitely another child hood memory I have - clothes out on the line! :) He actually installed a pulley-type system for me. So I stand at one end where I can reach and I push or pull (depending on if they are going up or coming down) the clothes away from me. I have only used it for drying cloth diapers so far, but it is great! I also learned a little trick via youtube; if you put your cloth diapers in the sun, it completely bleaches out the stains. It is amazing to watch and actually see how powerful the sun really is when it comes to bleaching. Some of the diapers had stains from when my sister used them, and it even got those stains right out. Amazing!!! Thanks Babe for my new clothesline! I LOVE it!!!!

You Know You Live in the Country When....

This Country Girl (growing up in Bergen, NY; not much "country-er" than that), gone Suburb Girl, gone City Girl, gone Country Girl again definitely can appreciate the "country" things in life. :) It has been a HUGE adjustment for me, but I wouldn't change a thing. One of the main reasons why Brian and I decided to move to this area, away from Virginia Beach, is because we were tired of "City living". We wanted room for the girls to roam and play, we wanted to drive some country miles, and just all-in-all slow down a bit. I sure have been learning a lot about contentment (could write a whole blog post on that subject); but I honestly wouldn't trade it for a thing. 

There are many days where I will do things and think to myself, "you know you live in the country when..." The other day I thought this and then thought it would be a good blog post series. As more "You knows..." come to me, I will be sure to post them here. Here is the first one! 

You know you live in the country when saying you need to take the trash out, looks like this.... :)