Creepy Crawlies

Last year, my friend Lori Derrick told me how much fun her boys were having with her neighbor's Halloween decorations. Particuarly, the neighbor had a spider that would drop down when her boys rang the doorbell. A couple of weeks ago I found a spider like that, and bought it thinking that our kids would get a kick out of it. The one thing I forgot? We have a baby around here. Jalen hates that spider! He cries and clings when he sees it dropping down and hears the sound it makes as the motor pulls it back up. I moved it from the pantry door to the bathroom so that Jalen wouldn't have to see it anymore, but he can still hear it (even if he's a couple of rooms away), and he begins to cry and cling again. We've turned the spider off, but still Jalen goes past it, steadily looking at it, wary for it to drop again. (Ignore the date on the picture - the camera's date got off - this was actually taken Aug. 2008) Then, one of my favorite moments this week, was Monday morning. We had an unusual cold snap for a couple of days, and the weather was just beautiful! I went outside to work in the flower gardens in the backyard, and Rebekah and Joseph came too. They had the day off from school for Columbus Day, and they couldn't resist being outside in the cool weather either. Soon they were digging around in the mulch pile, and excitedly collecting grubs. James, who is extremely hard to wake in the mornings, woke up instantly and bounded out of bed when his siblings told him that they were finding really big grubs. Somehow they even got Christine in on the action (usually she's too old to play like that anymore), and she was digging through the mulch as well. In fact, she was finding such BIG grubs, Joseph dubbed her their "lucky charm." That's about when she quit helping - didn't want to be known as a big grub finder, I guess. Soon, the kids put the grubs (and some grub food) in the kitchen sink of the playhouse, and set about creating an experimental lab. They had the best time! It was so fun to watch them play like kids, and get along! Those are the kind of days I want to remember!