Caterpillars and Cleaning

The last few days have brought some gorgeous sunshine here to western Washington. I think it was 60 degrees out yesterday afternoon! It was the perfect opportunity for me to get outside and try to get some fall clean up done in the flower beds. I worked about an hour total, but had to take some breaks due to these little creatures:

Aren't they so cute? I'm talking about my girls here... ;)

Becca & Elise found two of those black & orange fuzzy caterpillars and we spent quite a lot of time letting them crawl around on our hands and curl up whenever they got scared...which, for Elise's caterpillar, was most of the time. She kept trying to unstretch it whenever it curled up, which just made it curl up more. But watching Becca be calm and gentle with her caterpillar gave her some ideas and she finally was able to hold still long enough to let her caterpillar walk around freely on her hand too.
Eventually I made them put the caterpillars into the field behind our house. I promised them God would take care of those caterpillars and that made it OK to leave the caterpillars there. It was a fun afternoon outside, that's for sure!

I've finally finished reading The House That Cleans Itself and I have to say, the woman that wrote the book is a very good writer. She's a novelist, apparently...she writes fiction novels...and I think this book has a bit of fiction in it also. ;) I do think it has some good tips, especially for those organizing-challenged people, but it certainly didn't cure me of my "I love a clean house, but I hate actually cleaning because it's just going to be dirty again" attitude. But you know, I think I need to learn to appreciate the dirt - it means that my house is full of our fabulous children and that we are all living life here together.

Life is dirty.

There. I said it.

(Not sure I can actually accept it, though.)