Going on a Bug Hunt!

For those of you who don't know out there, John and I are Sunbeams teachers at church, so we teach the 3-4 year old kids.  The kids in our class are really cute (one of which we babysat when we were parents for a weekend), and we have a lot of fun teaching them.  Lately most of our lessons have been about things that Jesus created for us and how thankful we are for them (i.e. "I am Thankful for the Day and Night," "I am Thankful for Animals," etc...).  Well this last week happened to be "I am Thankful for Birds and Insects."  Whew, a whole 50 minutes talking about that with kids that have the attention spans of goldfish?  We came up with some fun things to keep them entertained though...  One of which involved John and I going on a bug hunt!  

We had heard a cricket in our garage earlier that night and decided it would be fun if we could catch the cricket to show the kids.  So we geared up...

 

We used the red lights on our headlamps so as to retain our night vision and not scare off the bugs.  Then we got our cups ready and had a few practice runs to make sure we were swift enough to catch them.

Once we were sure we were ready we went in.  Mind you, I've never really been on any kind of a bug hunt before.  We found that cricket pretty quick, he was right by the door.  John went for him and just as the cup hit the ground I squealed!  Anyone who knows me knows that I can be jumpy at times.  Yeah, this was one of those times... We then started looking for any other bugs that we could catch to show the kids.  I lifted up our broom to find a NASTY COCKROACH!  I was super grossed out, but I managed to pull myself together and catch it.  I had to think of the children!  Again, I squealed when my cup hit the ground.  And I'm pretty sure there was another squeal in there somewhere...

We took them inside and put plastic over the cups.  Here are the bugs we caught:

DISGUSTING!

All in all it was a pretty eventful night.  We had a lot of fun, and the kids loved looking at the bugs last Sunday.  We just told them that the cockroach was a beetle, so as not to gross them (or their parents) out.  I told John we need to make sure there aren't any more left in our garage and kill them if there are.  So we'll be setting up some nice cockroach hotels in the garage, that's for sure.  Luckily they're not in our house, so that's a blessing.  That being said though, we do have another bug in our house....

CSA

Thanks to our friend John H., the three of us get to enjoy DELICIOUS fresh produce from a local garden.  We are participating in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and have been LOVING it so far!  We really wanted to put some garden boxes in our backyard and grow our own produce, but with us planning a trip back to Utah this summer we didn't want to have to worry about finding someone to take care of our garden whilst we're away.  Thus the CSA!  We've been getting a lot of greens the past few weeks and have been eating lots of yummy salads!  Hep really enjoyed the rainbow chard.  This is last week's haul, and it keeps getting better every week!  This week we even have some asparagus.  

I just can't wait until we start getting lots of tomatoes!  Nothing beats a fresh-from-the-garden tomato. Mmmm!  Per John's request, you may want to enjoy this classic John Denver song...

For more information about CSA's and links to find one close to where you live, CLICK HERE!

Parenting: What we learned...

As some of you may know, Hep made a few more friends last weekend.  John and I babysat for a family in our ward from Friday afternoon to Saturday night.  We became instant parents of 4 kids ages 1 (M), 4 (T), 6 (B), and 8 (K).  Lucky for us, they were really good kids.  

Here are 10 things that we learned or realized from this experience.

1.  Everything takes 5X longer than it should.  I.e. getting to bed, getting ready to leave somewhere, etc.   We can now appreciate why some people with kids are late.  And now I'm even more impressed with those people that are always on time!

2.  Kids use a lot of cups!   Pretty sure when I ran the dishwasher Saturday night the whole top rack was full of cups.


3.  If we have girls, John may to need to learn how to play princesses... (T loved princesses and was especially in love with Rapunzel from Tangled.)

4.  We're not as young as we used to be.  My arm was sore Sunday from carrying M around on Saturday, and my back is all sorts of stiff and sore from jumping on the trampoline with them.

5.  Still not a fan of mini-vans.  Whilst babysitting we were cruisin' in a "swagger wagon" ... Okay, not the "real" swagger wagon (aka Toyota Sienna - watch the music video HERE), we were driving a Honda Odyssey, but we decided that since we were the ones driving, we totally gave it swagger.  

John asked me if I would rather have a Ford Flex or a van.  I said Ford Flex.  Which is saying a lot because I'm not a huge fan of the way Flexes look...


6.  Watching 4-year-old kids play soccer can make anyone's day better.

 
7.  We realized the importance of a good coach.  T and B both had soccer games.  T had pictures after the game, but she didn't want to wear her soccer jersey.  We tried everything to get her to wear it (bribes, peer pressure--"the rest of your team is wearing theirs"-- everything), but her coach was the one that was able to do it.  


8.  Despite my worries, I do have maternal instincts and heard M wake up in the night.  I was also the one to get up with her (a sign of things to come?)...

9.  Nap-time is the BEST!  M slept for 3 hours! 

10.  Lastly, through this experience we learned some of the joys of parenthood and are really looking forward to it, but Hep is not quite ready to be an uncle...