Pie and a Challenge

Today started like an average day; but around 4:30pm everything changed.  There has been a hornets nest near the top of my house near the hexagon shaped vent for most of the summer.  I had had put out some of those yellow plastic traps that they are supposed to fly into, but I only caught one over the summer.  With the colder weather we have been having I figured they had all left their nest or were still tiny larva.  I got the 15 foot ladder out and began to climb.  It was a little shaky but I made it to the top.  I went to put my foot on the shingles and stopped.  I thought, holy crap I hope I don't fall and get hurt.  This roof is pretty steep and if I fall I will have two kids scarred for life.  After going up and down 4 or 5 times I finally made a courageous crawl from the top of the ladder to the roof.  I brought a long piece of PVC pipe with me and began to crawl on my knees further up the roof until I was up against the wall of the second story.  On the roof I saw a dead hornet that looked like it had just frozen there and died.  I thought; awesome that is probably the last of them, this shouldn't be too bad.  With a couple of swings I finally knocked the hornets nest down beside me only to find there were plenty of hornets hanging around.  Instantly I was transformed into Jackie Chan and without thinking kicked it off the roof.  Only after I began to think oh crap a couple of my kids are down there and so I began to shout out to them to run.  Luckily they flew away quickly and no one was stung.  Afterwards we had dinner and had Apple and Peach pie to celebrate the 364th day of the year (the other pie day besides March 14th).