Parades and Pets

This Saturday we had our Primary parade. As we were getting ready, Ellie asked, " So is this parade for The Sound of Music, or for School house rock?" I guess she is getting used to the "parade circuit" she's been on lately. BTW School house rock is our next theatrical adventure. It's the cities children's play. They asked me to help direct months ago and I said yes (um, what was I thinking??)....this was all before I knew how tired I would be at this point! It will give Casie a chance to be on stage, so that's a plus. :-) Anyway, back to the parade.....The kids all dressed in Red, White, and Blue, and brought instruments to play. We had about 10 people watching, but it was still fun. The fire truck even showed up to escort us down the road. We ended up at the park where we were fed a nice pancake breakfast. Mike was at Scout camp so he missed all the excitement, but we had a good time. :-)
On the way home, the girls found a strange caterpillar. The texture feels just like human skin and it has two little spots on it's head that look like eyes. My research on-line told me that these, "pretend eyes" are to make the caterpillar look like a "big scary snake" so that birds wouldn't want to eat it. Do you ever wonder where this information comes from? How do they know that the caterpillar wants to look like a snake? How on earth did they extract that information from it's little brain? I'm thinking torture,... but it could also be a tiny lie detector test....Anyway, the caterpillar is now named"Pumpkin", and resides in a jar on Annie's dresser. We are all awaiting the transformation of our new pet.
I had to laugh as I watched the girls fight over who got to hold Pumpkin. They were all taking turns between Peaches( the hamster) and Pumpkin, (the caterpillar),.... and there sat BIG ol' Brandon (the dog) without a hand to pet him. Why must things be "tiny" to capture my daughters affection? :-)