catman, I've seen one or two praying mantis around our yard since we've lived here but we have many, many hummingbirds and enjoy watching them. Needless to say, I'd freak if I saw once being eaten by a mantis. I do like the mantis too because they are so interesting to observe.

This looks like a variant of the Green Lynx spider. As the name implies, they are usually green, but can change the coloring on their abdomen to shades of pink/purple/brown to better blend in with their surroundings. These beautiful spiders are no threat to humans. They don't even make a big orb web that you might blunder into. They just lie in wait, usually around the tops of flowering plant stems, for an unspecting bug to get close enough for them to grab. Here is a link that might be useful: Green Lynx on BugGuide

It's one of the "false Widow" spiders, Steatoda grossa. These are, as Jean001a pointed out, in the Theridiidae family, which includes true Widows( genus Latrodactus) and the American House Spiders. These, however, are not considered "medically significant" in terms of venom.

rhizo_1, thanks for identifying this one. The "official" one is my favorite too, but as long as they're making that zig-zag in their web, they're writing spiders to me. We used to have HUGE ones on the island where my grandmother lived. They would make webs all the way across the dirt "roads" (actually just two ruts going through the woods), and my cousins and I would take big sticks with us when we went walking to knock them down & beat the weeds to scare off snakes.