And of course, not a hippo

I got my kids back on Saturday morning!! They had a wonderful week at "Camp Grandma and Grandpa."  They got to play outside, see some snow, go to the movies and visit a coal mine in Beckley, WV.  My mom didn't look too tired or worn out when she dropped them off, so I will assume she had a good time too.

We met up at Henry's soccer game and transferred stuff from her van to my van.  Henry's game was fun because he only has six kids on his team and three of them didn't show up!  The other team donated some players and they just went out on the field and had fun.  That's the point at this age anyway!

On Sunday, we went to Mass, as usual.  We dropped Frances off at Sunday school after Mass and then I tried to figure out what to do for an hour.  Usually I take the boys to the grocery store, but we had shopped the day before.  We all walked over to Ken's store and dropped him off there before walking downtown to our town's community garden.

I have never used this community garden, but I had heard of it.  It is a public garden where anyone can plant, care for, and harvest homegrown veggies.  It is obviously in a dormant stage right now, but there are walls around it, so I thought it would be a good place for the boys to run around a bit while we waited.

I was in the "mom-zone" while we were there.  The boys were running around asking me questions about rocks and plants and dirt and I was answering the best that I could.  Henry found some honeybees and watched them, fascinated for a while.  Benjamin joined him and both of them were enthralled. 

Henry already knew quite a bit about bees and he told me that these were collecting pollen to make new flowers.  We even got to see the bees covered in pollen as they went from flower to flower.

We also found a lot of ladybugs.  They were not moving as much as the bees, but the boys got excited each time they found a new one.

At one point, the boys were looking for a ladybug that was crawling around.  I pointed at it with a stick because I was across the bed from them.  Benjamin immediately yelled at me, "Don't kill the lady bugs!!!"  I laughed and told him that I would never kill a lady bug.  I explained that ladybugs are good bugs because they kill the bugs that eat your garden.  Henry told me that spiders catch bugs and kill them too.  Then he asked, "Mommy, can a ladybug get caught in a spiders' web?"

"Yes, I suppose the do every once in a while."

"Can a person get caught in a web?" he asked me next.

"No, not really. People are too big to get caught in a web.

And then, in a very serious manner, he looked at me and said, "And of course; not a hippo."

No, son, hippos don't get caught in spiders' webs.