Hopagator Eggs

This week I have had a lesson in fostering creativity in my children... no matter how weird it gets!

A few nights ago, my storytellin’ five year old began telling us a tale about the Hopagator:

“ In the Wilds of San Diego lives Jumpy the Hopagator. This amazing animal has a frog body and an alligator head.

Jumpy’s favorite food is mashed potatoes. He finds the potatoes growing in the forest and uses his powerful legs to mash them up. Jumpy the Hopagator also loves pizza. He has it delivered to his favorite lily pad, and uses his sharp teeth to cut it into the perfect slices…”

The story goes on and on. The adventures include hunts for the Hopagator by pirates and ninjas, and buried treasure protected by Jumpy himself. The tale has continued all week and I understand that our next family vacation is probably going to be a trip to San Diego to search the “Wilds” for the elusive Hopagator.

Anyway, I have fallen in love with the word “Hopagator.” I am using it for all my new passwords.

My older son is using it for his dueling name on an online computer game.

We even searched for him online and came up with the incredible picture above.

In the meantime, my older son discovered last night that one of our “real life pets” a corn snake named Ewok (who knew it was a girl) has just laid about seven or eight eggs.

Tonight, the whole gang (all four kids) is going with Daddy on a trip to the pet store to buy an incubator and set up for corn snake babies.

My five year old believes that maybe and probably one of those eggs will hatch a Hopagator…

Maybe!