Bringing Home Treasure

We headed to our friend's house this morning for a treasure hunt!  We are very blessed to have another homeschooling family that has kids with the same interests as ours.  It is an added bonus that their mom happens to be awesome!  And that they live in the country and have a beautiful place that we love to visit. :)

Today's hunt....

had an Egyptian theme....since we are both studying ancient Egypt right now.  The clues were written in Cuneiform. 
I don't have tons of pictures because between the two of us we were managing 8 children.  :)  But we had lots of fun!  See the treasure?  The kids got a reward if they returned the treasure to the people of the land. (good thinkin' mama J!)

And here is one more super exciting part of our day!  We actually got to bring home a treasure of our own today.  A snake!  We are keeping her for the summer....to take care of and learn from.  Why you ask?  Why would I let a snake in my house?

Well...I don't really like it either.  But I do love my boys.  And I'm committed to letting them learn about what they are interested in.  All of the boy's are really interested in snakes, but especially Cricket.  These friends are both veterinarians and have experience with caring for snakes.  Their son actually has a fox snake (or should I say snakes? since it laid eggs that hatched!) and our boys have had so much fun watching the snake be fed and interacting with it.  Anyway....the snake we are caring for is a very common snake for our area and our friends often find them on their land.  They offered to let us keep him for the summer as a good way to see if Cricket is interested in following this passion a little further.

She is a Northern Brown Snake.  Sometimes called Decay's snake (did I spell that right?) or Little Brown Snake.  Ours is rather large for it's species, but still it is only about 14 inches long.  She is rather cute.  (I'm guessing its a she since female snakes are usually larger than males.)  The boys have named her Lavender Brown.