Birthdays, Turtles, and Snakes

I have to say that I had a great Memorial Day weekend. I went home to Blountstown on Friday because it was my mother's birthday. Here she is with her birthday candle blower-outer helper, Barrett. Barrett helped me decorate mom's cake. Can you tell? 

Barrett was in love with those cheap little cake decorating letters. He thought they were the coolest thing in the world. Guess Sissy got some cool points for that!

Saturday I went to a bridal luncheon for one of my best friends. She is getting married next weekend. I can't believe that the wedding is almost here! She found a wonderful man to marry and I am so happy for the two of them. I can't wait to see what a beautiful bride she makes. While I was at the luncheon, my mother, aunt, and cousin went to St. George Island to go to the beach. Since it was too late in the day for me to drive down and join them, I decided to go to Panama City and go shopping. (what else? haha) That turned out to be trip number one to Panama that day. Later that night, a group of friends went back to Panama to go to dinner and watch a movie. We had a wonderful evening of laughing and fun. On the way home, we got to listen to the musical stylings of my cousin Stacey. I tried to tune it out and sleep, but for some reason that wasn't happening!

Sunday I worked my little butt off with my daddy. We have a swimming hole behind our house and daddy had it drained so he could clean up the grass that was growing in it and remove some of the mud that has accumulated over the years. Even Oscar joined in on the cleaning up fun. I shouldn't have let him out there due to his back problems, but he had so much fun, I couldn't resist letting him swim and play in the mud.

Above is what the creek looked like on Saturday. And with two water pumps going, this is what it looked like on Sunday:

And after walking around in that mud all day, I looked like I had just gotten some tribal tattoos done on my legs!

It was a messy job, but the creek will be so pretty and sandy after all of our hard work. Later that night, we went to our friend, Brett's house to a half-and-half party. His wife came home out of the blue three weeks ago and demanded a divorce. He is letting her keep the house, but he wasn't going to let her keep half of the meat they had recently gotten from having a cow slaughtered. So we feasted on steaks! I like the way he thinks. He has a fish pond on his property, so later that night we went out to get half the fish out of the pond. (ha ha) We threw out a large cast net and came up with tons of catfish, bream, and what else? An alligator snapping turtle. This thing was huge! Of course, the kids wanted to get close to the action, but this guy was super mad. I wish I had taken pictures, but I didn't. Sadly, this is not where my story with scary reptiles ends.

Sunday, a bunch of us went down the Chipola river to go sit on the sandbar and relax. It was a gorgeous day!

Let me set the scene: We were all sitting in the water kind of like the above picture. There was me, Brett, and Keith sitting with our backs to the current. In front of us was Brad, Stacey, and Barrett. Barrett was splashing around in his little blow up ring. We were all talking and laughing. I looked behind me and about two feet behind me was a snake coming right up in between me and Brett. I about died! I stood up and looked at Brett and yelled SNAKE!! I have never witnessed a bunch of grown men get up so fast. Stacey snatched Barrett's ring and drug him to safety all the while his poor little head was hanging down into the water. She didn't even look back to see if she was drowning him in the process of trying to get him away from the snake! Needless to say, we had a critter filled weekend, made some good memories, and had lots of fun. Hopefully we will get to do it again next weekend!

Again, sorry for the randomness of this post. It was a random weekend!