Of Dogs and Snakes

Earlier this week, Rob informed me that our neighbor's dog was bitten by a cottonmouth water moccasin snake and died. The dog was bitten in his back yard. Next to our back yard. Which means the snake was practically IN OUR BACK YARD!

Oh yeah and by the way, Rob has been finding snake skins in our yard.

And (unbeknownst to me) he has seen alive snakes in our yard too!

Not cool. 

Now I'm not going to lie. I didn't really like the dog next door. It barked All. The. Time. Come to think of it, it has been quieter than normal lately...Sorry. That was mean. I guess if i had to pick between the dog and a snake, I'd pick the dog. But just barely. 

Anyway, back to the snake... Needless to say, I'm not venturing out into our yard until winter.

Flashback

This is an old picture, but it's one of my all time favorites. She's got his eyes. 

Suburban S'mores

School Friends

The only thing better than swimming is unexpectedly seeing a friend from school at the pool!

Jesus Needs New PR

I'm hesitant to write this post. When somebody else writes this kind of post, my hypocrite radar goes off when I read it. So let me be clear. This is something I struggle with too. It may manifest itself in more subtle ways, but it's in me too. This post is first and foremost a reminder to me.

As I was driving home yesterday, I noticed that the car in front of me had a cross pendant hanging from the rear view mirror. Suddenly, another car in the adjacent lane merged over in front of the cross car. In my opinion, it wasn't a super dangerous maneuver, but I could see where the lady in the cross car could have felt that she was cut off.

In response to being cut off, the lady in the cross car honked her horn profusely and flipped off the driver of the merging car. She then proceeded to change lanes so she could get right up next to the merging car, roll her window down, yell at the other driver and flip him off again. Nice.

I would roll my eyes at this behavior under any circumstance, but the fact that the lady is openly professing to be a Christian and still chooses to conduct herself in this manner really bothers me. Now I admit that I am making several assumptions here. First, this may not be her car and even if it is, she may not have been the one to hang the cross on the mirror. But, for the sake of conversation, let's just assume that it's her car and she hung the cross.

I realize that this is a relatively insignificant example, but it's no wonder why people have trouble rationalizing Christians with Christ. We preach love and grace and mercy, but are we living it out?

Am I living it out? Can strangers tell that I love Jesus? Can my co-workers? Can my family?

St. Francis of Assisi is credited with saying something along the lines of "Preach the Gospel always. Use words only as a last resort." Easier said than done, but I for one am going to try harder in this area.

Seriously?

When I tuck my daughter into bed at night, she has one blanket, a pillow, a baby doll, and a glow stick or two in bed with her.

When I go into her room in the morning to get her up, this is what I find in her bed. Ridiculous.

The First Cut Is The Deepest

I finally caved. Harper has been asking to get her hair cut for a while now. Until Friday, I couldn't bring myself to do it. 

I'll admit, it was starting to get a little uneven in the back. But look at those ringlets! I definitely did not want to lose those.

I took her to the place that I get my hair cut. I couldn't bear to take her to an ordinary Great Clips (which I do realize sounds ridiculous). I really like Alana and I knew she would do a great job.

This is the before shot sitting in the big girl chair. Not surprisingly, this salon was not really equipped to cut kids hair, but Alana made it work.

The first cut

Harper sat completely still the whole time.

Sometimes beauty is rough.

Putting on the finishing touches

All done! 

And yes, Alana does look exactly like Lauren Alaina from American Idol...

What was the verdict? Well, the ringlets may be gone. I took this picture yesterday.

But, she's still pretty cute in my opinion.