lizards, etc

I'm trying to update my blog with a ton of pictures and feel like I actually have time to, but I can't get this blog to upload my pics! Oh well, I'll just say this...

I have a neighbor that I've become really good friends with. Her name is Dawn. She's a funny mother of 3 outrageously cute boys- ages 6, 3, and 2. I think Millie is in heaven because she LOVES boys (we'll worry about that later, but for now, we're just glad she has friends so close). We've had their family for dinner, and they've had us for dinner and we've watched each others kids, etc. Kyle is going to watch the Gators football games with her husband Shaun tomorrow- he's excited to hang out with a guy and do a guy thing like that.

Here's a funny story about Dawn:
She grew up in Florida, so when we were on our way to the pool and I was excited to see a bright green lizard and insisted she come look at it, she laughed and told me it wasn't that exciting to her because she's seen them all her life. Then she told me that in high school, the kids would wear baby lizards on their ears as "earings" (alive lizards!) They were teeny tiny and they were so small they could not walk off your ear. She said people would wear them all day, and then take them off when it was time to go home from school.

Am I super gullible, or can this really be true? I don't know...

Anyways, in case you haven't gathered, Florida is crawling with lizards! At first I was not too happy about this because I've never been a reptile person. But, I am not at all worried about them anymore- they run away the second someone approaches. But somehow one got in my apartment- I took a pic of that that I'll have to post sometime.
There are also plenty of spiders here. The biggest kind is about the size of a hand- seriously!- if it's legs were stretched out. I don't remember what they're called, but I was afraid to go outside for a while after I saw the first one. Now I've realized that during the day, they just stay in their webs. I've never seen one outside of its web (which is HUGE!) and their webs are pretty high up in trees. Millie and I like to go on a spider walk every day so we can see these spiders (there's about 5 webs around our apartment complex). Last week, we were sad because two of the spiders were missing (I'm guessing someone was freaked out by them and got rid of them instead of leaving them for our viewing pleasure).
Last night I was driving home from watching my VTee's kids and a very large frog jumped on my car- that made me smile- I was very excited to discover another creature here.
I've only seen one snake since I moved here- I black one that looked about 4 feet long and was about an inch thick. Millie was disappointed that she didn't get to see it.
We haven't seen any crocodiles yet, but we hope to see them eventually. There's this lake called Lake Alice that we've heard has a lot, so we need to go walk around it (there's a walking path around it so people can check out the bad boys- or girls as the case may be).
The End.
Now you know about some of the wild life here in the sunny state that we are starting to call home. We LOVE it here!

We went to some botanical gardens and got to see a huge collection of bamboo last week. Kyle is in LOVE with bamboo (because he served a mission in Jamaica and misses seeing it around) and I certainly don't mind it either. Someday we want to have hard wood floors made out of bamboo.

Right now, Kyle and Millie are hanging out with another daddy and daughter from church. This guy from church called Kyle up yesterday and asked if he wanted to get together with their girls and go to the museum on campus. Kyle was soooo excited.

Savannah is napping and I just made a grocery list. What could be more fun than grocery shopping on a Saturday night? Nothing that I know of :)

Savannah is napping and I will now bid you all a fond farewell so I can empty the dishwasher wilst listening to The Counting Crows, or maybe the Dixie Chicks...

TMR