A Fall Surprise!

Fall is here in Park City, and with it comes so much! Red and orange hues on the mountains, speckled Aspen leaves in our yard, cool mornings and warm Chai Tea, sweaters that have been packed away (for a short time - really, most of them remained within reach), fall scented candles, college football, beautiful afternoons and evenings, bike rides across golden leaf paved trails, home football games, Young Life clubs, and Halloween candy aisles at the grocery store. (I already bought Milky Ways and stuck them in the freezer. I love frozen Milky Ways!) With the good also comes a lonely hummingbird feeder on our back porch, the occassional downright cold morning where ice covers the grass and roof, empty trees, school (but I'm not teaching this year so who cares!!!), early sunsets, the end of summer, a farewell to flip-flops and shorts, and spiders making their way into our house for a warm place to sleep. We are used to and can handle the typical, smaller spiders that are easy to get rid of and are not very intimidating. However, as Sawyer and I were leaving the house a few days ago, this is what was resting on the door frame of our front door!






The pictures do no justice to the size of this HUGE spider. The good news is he was outside the house and not in! Rob and I did a little research and think it is called a Wolf Spider. The name sounds bad, but the spider is pretty harmless. They bite but they are not deadly. (For a while, we thought it was a Hobo Spider whose bite can take up to TWO years to heal.)

I caught our friend in a tupperware container and Rob took him to one of our Young Life kids who took him to his Biology teacher. He reported that he will probably kill and disect the spider at one point this year.

Spiders aren't the only creatures haunting me. Yesterday morning, I almost stepped on a snake while I was jogging on the trail near our house - I jumped over him in mid-stride. When I got home from my jog, Rob and Sawyer were in the garage and we discovered a dead bird under my car. My car stays parked in our garage and the garage door stays down. That means some critter carried it under there. Great.

OK grandparents. Who cares about a stupid spider. Here are a few photos of the boy.