Ant Farm

During our first week of school, one of the ways we were supposed to enjoy God's creation was to explore things outdoors that were close to the ground.  The curriculum also suggested purchasing an ant farm.  Living in Texas, I really thought that we wouldn't have any problem finding large ants (they needed to be large so that couldn't climb out of the air hole in the ant farm), but after several days of looking in various places with no luck, we broke down and ordered ants.
The ants arrived earlier this week.  Branna was super excited... I'm still getting used to having ants in the house.  It's rather startling to be cooking dinner and see out of the corner of your eye something crawling on the cabinet.
It is pretty neat to see how hard they work, though.  After only a few hours, they had burrowed out several tunnels and transported alot of dirt out from their mound.  Watching them, I am reminded of Proverbs 6:6:

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.

God's creation truly is amazing!

As I mentioned early, Branna was thrilled when the ants finally arrived.  However, that almost didn't happen due to a "mishap".  Someone (who will remain anonymous) that was helping her get the ants into the mound read the instructions wrong and put the ants in the freezer instead of the refrigerator for a brief time.  (This was to help slow them down for an easier transition.)  After a scare of seeing them balled up and not moving, the ants eventually thawed and most survived.

After observing the ants for a while, I thought it would be fun for Branna to make a short video of what she had learned.  This is what she said:

Flag Football

Branna started flag football!  This is her second time to play an organized sport and even though she was familiar with soccer from playing last spring and enjoyed it, she was insistent to play football this fall.  I was a little worried that she would get on the field and be clueless.  But, she actually did really good!  I don't know much about football, so in my book, running in the direction that you're supposed to is super.  Branna did all that and more. 

The hand-off...

and she actually made it pretty far down the field...

...before the biggest boy on both teams tagged her!

Of course, Atlie watched the entire game with the utmost concentration. (Haha!)

I think Branna must have seen other players in this stance (or maybe from watching football with Daddy)

And she even got the ball again at the end of the game!  She was so excited, as you can see from her expression, but almost right after this picture was taken, her flags were taken... by her own team mate. :(

Now, we're talking 4 and 5 year olds, but over all the first game went pretty smoothly.  Her coach is great and gave each of the kids a turn playing the different positions.  I felt like he also gave Branna really good direction.  We're all looking forward to seeing and playing more football this season!