I woke-up Tuesday morning and told Nathan I had decided on a great party for him and didn't tell him the theme or anything. But I did tell the boys to keep an eye out for lizards or frogs because I could use them for the party.
I was way stressed about throwing a party from scratch at our home in just 3 1/2 days. Of course I prayed about it, because I only say about 50 "Heavenly Father, Please Help Me's" each day. Sorry, make that more like 100 now that I am the Primary President:-)
Who knew that offering a simple, "Please help me find something to make Nathan's Party fun" would turn me into Stephanie Almighty. Seriously, it was like if you plan it--they will come.
LITERALLY! Tuesday afternoon, just a few short hours after my prayer. We found a snake by our fence between the house and the garage. Where did he try to go to escape??? To my back door. I could have opened the door and that little guy would have slithered in. Instead, I screamed for Ken to come and catch him.
Which Ken does not like snakes! AT ALL! He whacked to death the last snake we found in like 2 seconds, and that was just an innocent Gardner snake. It took some doing to convince Ken to catch it. First, I convinced him to catch it for the afternoon. Then, I talked him into taking it to his Boy Scouts to show the boys that evening. That was kind of a miracle because the snake kept striking out when Ken was catching it with a rake. And finally, he relented and said we could keep him until Friday. I am so glad that Ken listened to all of my pleadings and crazy excuses that this snake was meant to be at Nathan's Birthday Party.
Here is the creepy guy. He was about 18 inches long. By far the smallest snake we have seen in Texas but he was also the meanest and fastest.
It turns out that he is a Rat Snake. Which isn't poisonous, but sure is ornery. He really was. He hissed constantly if you were ever in a room with him, and struck out at the glass every 15 minutes or so. Which made him fabulous at the party!
Of course a smart mom probably would have wanted to make sure he wasn't poisonous before subjecting 13 boys to him. But, I talked Ken into duct taping the lid of the aquarium down and calling it good. 
Oh, so back to Stephanie Almighty (as in Evan Almighty)... We not only had a snake show up at our back door, but we also had two huge frogs! They jumped into our house one night when we were walking in. We also caught 3 green lizards, and could have caught more. Which is pretty darn amazing because we always try to catch them but in the 5 years we have lived here we have only caught 2. We were really blessed, with reptiles, but blessed all the same!
It really was a miracle for those 3 days leading up to Nathan's party to catch all these slimy things. In fact, a couple of days after the party a frog was at our doorstep, but when we opened the door the frog turned around and jumped away.
The rest of these pictures is on the day when we decided to release him. This is probably the only snake Ken has ever let live. But the snake was a pretty cooperative little guy and wasn't dangerous so we let him live.
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