The ringneck snake

On Saturday, my dad was lifting up a tarp in our backyard and he saw a tail go under a hose. He yelled for me, "Riley there's a snake out here!" I ran out the door to the shed in the side yard. I looked at the snake and I saw that it was a ringneck. I grabbed the snake. I ran to the front yard and showed it to my brother and sisters and mom. We looked it up in my reptile and amphibian book to see what it eats and to check if it was poisonous. I was pretty sure that it wasn't poisonous, but just to check. The snake sprayed something that stunk on my hand. I think it was trying to protect itself from me because it didn't want me to harm it. Right after I caught the snake, my brother, Luke, caught a treefrog. We got a picture of both the snake and the treefrog together. They were facing each other. It looked awesome because of their colors and they were looking straight at each other. It looks like the snake was thinking about eating the frog. After we took pictures of them, we let them go under the storage building. I hope I catch the ringneck again.

PS. This was right before Luke cut his foot on the boardwalk. I'm saving that story for next time.

My grapefruit tree

I've had a grapefruit tree for 3 years. I didn't buy it. Once when I was up in Woodstock, Georgia, I cut open a grapefruit. There was a grapefruit tree growing in the grapefruit. It was a little seedling that had sprouted. I was excited! I told people about it. Then I got a pot and Papa put dirt in the pot. We put the seed in the dirt. Then we watered it. After that we let it sit in the sun because plants need sun and water and shade and dirt. Once we finished planting the seedling, Papa and I ate the grapefruit. That was a couple of days before we left to go back home to Florida.We brought the potted grapefruit  home. It is not the same pot because it got bigger and bigger and bigger and it needed to be in a bigger pot. I have watered it. Papa likes to see it when he comes down and when we take pictures of it. And now this is what it is like today.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Daytona Lagoon

The blue ride was my favorite.

Yesterday, my brother, Luke, and I went to the Daytona Lagoon with John Carter and Henry and Miss Beth and Mr. Ed.  The scariest thing was when I did a back flip on a tube, going down the slide and over a hump.  I lost my tube and slid the rest of the way down.  The most fun was the, well I forgot what it was called, it was one of the ship's names from Pirates of the Caribbean--it was called the Kracken.  It was fun because you went down on your belly on a mat that was like a sled--whss, whss--and then you landed in the water, splash.  It was four lanes.  It was a race.  I won once, Luke won twice, and Henry and John each won once.  There was a tube in a circle, that was dark, but it had lights in it.  You would go down and there would be lots of lights.  The heaviest person has to go in the back so you go fast.  It's enough for three people.  There was a wave pool too. We were on tubes in the wave pool and it definitely wasn't relaxing.  I scraped my knuckles on the Lazy River ride.  There was a ride where there wasn't enough water and I had to push myself down the whole slide.  It wasn't fun.  At the end of the day we ate pizza and bread sticks and chicken wings at Pizza Hut and I came home and fell asleep.