Fall in Florida

The weather is finally nice here. Unbelievable. I was beginning to become a complete grump towards the end of October when it was still getting into the high 80s. We now are enjoying lovely weather in the 70s and it's actually chilly enough to wear a long sleeve shirt in the evenings. Progress!

Natalie, Dean and I have been enjoying all this fabulous weather. After a summer of feeling trapped indoors or only being outside while submersed in cool water, we've been enjoying neighborhood walks in the afternoons and playing in our backyard again (I almost forgot we had one!)

All this new outdoor livin' has it's drawbacks though. We are still in Florida. Which means when you play outside and run around, you find these in your backyard:



That, my friend, is a photo of an actual ant from my backyard. And it is as creepy as it looks. If you look closely, you can see his eyes, aack! Yes, I now live with the biggest ants I have ever seen in my life. I realize there is no point of reference, so you'll have to believe me when I say these ants are almost an inch long. Ugh. I get the hibbie jibbies just thinking about it. When we first moved here, I tried to hide all my general freaking outness about all the insects and bugs here from Natalie. I didn't want her to be scared and pass along my fears. But you know what? Game off. She needs to be afraid of these things. I screamed, grabbed her and yelled some craziness about fire ants and ran. Sadly, Natalie knows first hand about the pain of fire ant bites. She's been bitten by several twice now. And those ants were like fire ant lite. They were less than half the size of these and left a nasty bite for weeks. Yes, be afraid Natalie. Be very afraid.