Matthew, Samantha, and Aaron Wurts: Movie night

Tonight, we had pizza, ice cream, cherries, milk and water to drink and a movie night.

Aaron got a Venus fly trap a couple weeks ago at the Natural History Museum and seemed disappointed that it hadn't caught any bugs.

It's Memorial Day weekend and my dad's been on my mind. He used to teach me to catch bugs off geranium leaves and to throw them into spiders' webs and then we'd watch them spin their prey. He did this to teach me to not be afraid of spiders and to have a respect for them because they keep the bug and pest population in check.

Seeing my kids' disappointed with that carnivorous plant, I told them "the only way you're going to see it eat is if you feed it small bugs...go to the geranium plant that's growing into our yard from the neighbor's yard and pick the bugs off of it and feed that to your plant."

They looked a little stunned but while I was heating the pizza, they went outside to the backyard for a long time. After a bit I heard Aaron say "why don't we just use the big ants?" And then Samantha yelled "we got one!" But by the time they got to the plant they'd balled it up to death and it rolled right through the Venus fly trap's clutches. The dumb thing closed up after it was gone.

They went back outside and the next time they came back with a live one, put it in the center of the trap's wide open "trap" and this time they watched it close in on the bug. I showed them that you could see the bug through the trap's side because it's black.

The kids were fascinated for a while but after dinner they went to the living room and built a fort stocked with supplies of food and ice cream (I didn't catch on to the latter right away, but in time).

In the meantime, Matt flooded the kitchen and emptied the bird bath all over the dining area floor. I made him mop it up (he's very good at that) and then he was upset with me. He left to his room. I tried to get him to join us for movie night but he refused.

I came downstairs and found this :