Helping out…

We took off early this morning and headed to Granny and Grandad’s house. I am helping my sister out a few mornings this week by watching the little ones while she does some major spring cleaning. She and the kids are on Spring Break. Noah and Ryan played all around the house today, they really liked being in the sandbox together making sandcastles. Noah chose the biggest shovel and kept digging under Ryan’s foot. They thought it was funny and giggled about it. Ben, Hannah and Marissa got their suits on and went running in the sprinklers. Brrr… cold! The sun was out and it was warm but not warm enough for the sprinklers! They didn’t mind though, Noah didn’t want anything to do with it.

As we were leaving Grandad was coming down the driveway with the empty trashcans and quickly told me to get a shovel because there was a rattlesnake in front of him. I wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with the shovel but Marissa heard him and ran for it. By this time, Ben, Hannah and Noah were running up to see the snake. Marissa carefully gave the shovel to him and then he went slowly to it. He was going to kill it. All of a sudden I didn’t want the kids to watch anymore and I was desperately trying to shield their eyes from what he was doing. He took a jab at it and it scurried into the bushes. We don’t know if he got it. Grandad couldn’t find it. On our way home Ben, Hannah and I had a little discussion about killing animals. We didn’t like that he was going to kill the snake but Ben brought up a point that Daddy kills rats in the attic. Hmmm… we don’t even like to kill bugs around the house and are sad when a roly-poly bug is dead by one of our hands. We talked about how beneficial the rattlesnakes are to the environment and even though they are poisonous we shouldn’t kill them if we can help it.

We’ll probably be back tomorrow because there’s lots more playing to do.