Lady Bug Lady Bug, fly away home

Another great morning. That bouncer has provided hours of entertainment this weekend...nice!! The three were out in the front yard this morning while I worked on raking up millions of elm seed pods and they were having so much fun collecting lady bugs. We have some sort of ground cover in our flower bed that the lady bugs evidently love! One of the plants had at least 20-30 on them. My cousin Nicki would have freaked.....lady bugs give her the creeps!! It was so sweet though when Laurel came across a lady bug that had uh, let's just say met the bottom of a shoe? She was so sad that the lady bug had died.

Eric very sweetly and matter of factly told her

'that's the circle of life Laurel. you live for a while and then you die. But it's OK, we go up to the sky. We can be next to people but they can't see us....'

Awh, that just melted my heart since Eric is a sweet kid but hasn't had too many tender moments with the little guys. I thought the whole circle of life thing was rather grown up of him!Laurel seemed satisfied with the answer and wasn't so disturbed when she found other lady bugs that hadn't made it. This picture is of some of the lady bugs they collected-I think they ended up with at least 35, oh and a few caterpillars too (although I wouldn't be surprised if they were grub worms since they weren't exactly the cute and fuzzy kind).

The kids have slept so great the last 2 mornings...I think we'll be chatting with G and J about being quiet in the morning :-D!! They'll be home tomorrow afternoon and Bill will leave for Portland in the evening.......

Good night.....