New House Camp Out...or In

Get ready....get set...JUMP FOR JOY!  We are new home owners!  Escrow finally closed on Wednesday. So, last night we decided it would be fun to camp out at our new house.  Actually we camped in.  I brought over a blow up mattress for Will and me (courtesy of mom), sleeping bags and a little pop tent for the kids. I also grabbed all our DVDs, our mini TV/DVD player in one, some cozy blankets, and a TON of pillows.    I can't believe I actually remembered toilet paper too.  I did forget a couple important things like socks for Will, trash bag(s), and food.  The food part was ok though cause the kids and I added to the adventure by stopping at the gas station in the morning and getting a roll of donuts and some chocolate milk (mommy got coffee :).
I thought it would be fun to re-cap some events from our first night camp in:

Mommy wolf carrying babies on back

1. Upon arrival, we were greeted in our kitchen by a giant mommy wolf spider carrying her babies around on her back.  Luckily I've seen this before at my parents house so I wasn't too freaked out.  Plus, I know that our house is full of spiders and insects because it has been vacant for a while so I was already planning on having it sprayed before we moved in.  So after we had fun ewwwing and awwwing at the poor thing, I told Will to somehow take it outside please.  Thankfully I wasn't around for this next part.  He told me later that when he went to try and move it into a bag to take outside, the mom must have panicked and the babies all jumped ship!  I remember hearing Will stomping around in the kitchen and then wiping the floor down for what seemed quite a while.  He said that when they all started running everywhere he decided to just squish as many as he could and he could actually hear them popping under his boot.  AHHHHH, gross!  So, that was visitor number one.  Actually, to them, we were the visitors so I should call them inhabitants.
2. Inhabitant #2:  Mr. Scorpion.  Yes, a real scorpion with the tail
   
    and front pincers and everything.  Now this was a small little guy (as you can see from the picture on the right) but, HELLO, it's a scorpion.  I mean, aren't those things really dangerous?  Anyway, we ewwwed and awwwed at this guy too and once again, we decided to take it outside (Will told me quietly that he was going to "crunch" it as soon as he got outside).  So, Will grabbed a McDonald's french fry box (did I mention that our camping food was McD's?) and scooted the scorpion into it.  As he brought it near the kids and I to inspect, I noticed a little movement on the bottom of the fry box.  Genius idea.  The little guy was wiggling his way out of the bottom hole.  He was half way out by the time Will decided he better hurry on outside and do his business with it.  Crazy.
3. Inhabitant #3 (yes, #3!):  Lizzy.  Little Lizzy was locked in the loo.  She looked something like this.  I was very happy to see her there since they eat bugs.  You know, I just realized while typing this that I have no idea if they really eat bugs or not.  In any case, as far as my little brain wants to know, they eat bugs.  So, we all teamed up to sort of herd Lizzy out the side door where hopefully she will be fruitful and multiply and (hopefully) eat lots of bugs.
4. Adventure #4 of the evening.  Although this last character in my rather long saga was not an inhabitant in the house, he (they) sure made themselves known.  I woke up in the middle of the night to an awful noise.  I couldn't really decided if it was a baby crying/screaming (keep in mind that it's the middle of the night and I was half asleep), a dog dying, or a pack of rabid wolves.  Turns out it was a little of both of the last two.  Adventure #4 was:

A pack of coyotes howling/tearing up the neighbors dog...I'm not really sure.  I woke Will up and we sat there listening to the ruckus for a while and then went back to sleep.  It made me a little nervous about getting our new puppy (next post!).  I decided that I will be getting him a dog bed for the house and letting him stay inside at night for sure.  My mom told me that the best protector against coyotes is a llama.  So, as you might have guessed, a llama is definitely in our future plans.

More adventures to come as we begin the move and explore our new home so stay tuned!