Backyard Adventure (and Bugs!)

This past Monday, after a busy morning spent in the van driving back and forth from Lebanon to Harrison to take my mom to the doctor (she's recovering nicely), Gabe and I took a much-needed break relaxing in our backyard. We found the first five red, ripe strawberries...we each ate one, then saved the rest for Daddy, Elijah and Isabel...yum! We smelled the honeysuckle and tried to drink the "honey" out of the flowers, and while we were looking for the best blooms, we found an unexpected surprise...this robin's nest, right in the honeysuckle tree, just above our heads. At first, I thought the momma was sitting on her eggs, but when she flew away, we could see two babies poking their beaks above the nest. Right away, Gabe started quoting from "Are You My Mother?" by Dr. Seuss...too freakin' cute.

Upon further inspection of the nest and the honeysuckle, we discovered something even better, at least in Gabe's eyes...CICADAS! I thought we were out of the zone for the 17-year cicada invasion, but apparently not. There were at least 50 shells on the leaves, plus gobs of holes in the ground where they came out! Gabe had the best time collecting them, putting them on his shirt, and making a huge pile of them to play with. I had the great idea of getting one of his Hot Wheels playsets, and we made a "Cicada Playground". Soon after, we were hit with a big scary thunderstorm, so we had to bring the "cadas" into the house to keep them safe :) The boy and his bugs...future entomologist in the making?

Hopefully the cicadas don't like strawberries...I don't want to share!