Mom, don't read this.

Knowing my mother's abhorrence of snakes, this would not have been a fun activity for her to be at, or to hear about.... but for our kids, it was a different story.

This morning our friend Elizabeth turned 7, so Rayna went to her party. The whole family ended up crashing, though, when we found out what the activity was... a man with all kinds of live animals!. The guy had quite a show planned... from the very beginning when he pulled a snake out of his front shirt pocket, to when there was suddenly a lizard on the top of his head, to when he hauled out a 25-lb tortoise that Rayna was convinced was coming after her.

The first big attractions were the snakes... including a python that for some reason the kids (and a few of the adults) thought was fun to wear as a belt. Crazy if you ask me.

And there were other creepy crawlies, like geckos, bearded dragon lizard things, frogs, turtles, as well as the cute and furry animals that everyone loved to hold. In each case, the man brought around the animal and each kid got a turn to hold or pet it.

Strider clapped with glee -- literally-- each time a new exotic one was lifted out of its secret crate, and at one point turned to me and said, "This would be the BEST job!" Rayna was a little less enthusiastic about some of the creatures, but she did think the huge tortoise was pretty cool... once it wasn't chasing her. I remained mostly a hands-off observer, having inherited a small/large bit of my mom's fear and distaste of reptiles, I guess. But I kept myself entertained by constantly swatting my kids' hands away from their faces and reapplying hand sanitizer every 5 minutes... Something about the combination of a bunch of kids with runny noses, exotic caged animals, and the fact that I'm about to bring a newborn into this world was making me a little wired.

It was quite the fun birthday party, though... afterwards we all went outside and played in this spring-like weather -- beautiful. And the kids are not likely to forget this experience for a long time!