Monday, September 20, 2010

Hoodies, Building, and Spiders

Fall is coming. There are tiny hints in the air, more and more every week.
Sunday after naps we ventured out to the garage to finish up as much as we could on the play structure while we wait for the replacement brackets to come in.

The girls were chilly in the shade and wanted their bulldog hoodies to play.

They rode around and climbed around as we built out the cross beam and support for the swings

Before we started working, Mommy went out to sweep the garage free of stink bugs and other creepy crawlies. If we go more than 12 hours without moving the remaining wood planks or hardware, the stink bug hide underneath them. This time, as I was sweeping behind Daddy's moveable tool bench I saw a little red belly scurry away. Now being in the desert we knew there were tons of black widow spiders here. Finding them in high corners of the patio or hiding in dark corners of the garage is not unusual....but it doesn't the discovery any less desirable. We had little black widows in the back yard in Simi Valley, too. They are not terribly unusual for Southern California. That all being said, we have some pretty HUGE ones out here and that takes some getting used to. The biggest one we found thus far had a round belly the diameter of a dime! We were told she was probably pregnant. Gulp. Good thing we killed her! Just to give you an idea, we laid down a AAA battery for size comparison of the two 'small' ones we found today.

Disgusting, I know. The girls know to let Mommy and Daddy know right away if they see a big black 'girl' spider. They know the difference now.
Here is another less scary, but equally yucky spider we found taking refuge under our building materials...and a squished stink bug peeking out, too.

Needless to say, bugs are not one of my favorite parts about our new location.

1 comment:

Sarah D said...

Ahhhhhh!I am so creeped out right now.