Back From the Country for Surgery

We arrived back at our old home last night. Brent is here for the day, but the kids and I are here until Sunday. I have my sugery this afternoon, and I have to admit, I am a little nervous.

Brent says I shouldn't be, but I just can't seem to help it. The surgery is supposed to be a simple 45 minute procedure. But I am not exactly known for having anything simple when we are talking medical stuff. The surgery will be at 1:30 this afternoon. Will you please pray for it to be simple, for there to be no suprises and for the recovery to be fairly easy...after all I do have two wee kiddos to be taking care of.

Now, about the country life. Samantha was so excited when we pulled up to our new house on Sunday afternoon. She saw her swing and slide (Thank you, Memaw for taking them and getting them set up before we got there!) and she immediatley recognized them and was excited about them. And she was also happy to see her toybox in her room and her flower sheets on the bed at bedtime. Once again...thank you, Memaw! These things helped her feel right at home as soon as we got there.

Just a few hours into living in our new home, we had the dubious privilege of teaching Samantha what a scorpion is and that she must NOT touch them. And I figured that while we are at it, we would talk about snakes, too. I told her that if she ever sees a snake, she must go away from it and yell for me. She said OK.

On Monday morning, just before we went outside, I asked her what to do if she sees a snake. She replied "Go away, pees." Hmm...while we are teaching her to be polite, even when she asks someone (or something...ie the dog) to go away, I don't think that a poisonous snake deserves that consideration. And since there is no way to teach a 2 year old what is poisonous and what is not, we are just going with the "all snakes are dangerous" approach.

So after her very polite answer, I reminded her that she should not talk to the snake, but just run away and yell for Mommy od Daddy. She said OK. We'll see if she remembers. On the bright side, when we saw another scorpion at Aunt Ginger's house on Monday, she backed up right away without anyone having to tell her to. Woohoo! We will, however, keep the reminders coming.

And just for good measure, I think that we will add spiders to the dangerous category. I know that the odds of any spider she sees being a brown recluse or black widow are pretty slim...but I really don't want to take any chances.

Now for the good things about living in the country...

Samantha is LOVING how much time we can spend outside. She thinks that rocks and leaves and dirt are the best toys ever. And when she wants a taste of civilization, she has a sandbox and her swing and slide. But those don't last long with the allure of rocks, dirt and leaves. :)

We are also able to look out our window in the living rom or the kitchen and see the resident wildlife. We have seen "Daddy deer and baby deer and weally weally 'ig 'abbits!" at various times during the day. We can see hear birds singing, crickets chirping and cicadias serenading us each evening. We can see about a million stars at night. And there are no sirens or car alarms going off that wake our child up and/or scare her.

We still have quite a bit of adjusting to do, especially while we are in this transition of travelling back and forth each weekend to get the house ready to sell, but once we are more settled, I think things will be absoluetly great!