Catching Fireflies

I don't like bugs. I don't like beetles. I don't like creepy. I don't like crawly.  There are few exceptions. One of these exceptions is the firefly. Especially catching fireflies on a perfect evening in the summer. I didn't grow up in an area where there were fireflies, apparently fireflies aren't west of the Rockies (sorry SoCal family). But, I have very vivid memories of chasing them around my grandparents' Midwest yard when we would visit them on summer vacation. I think we called them "Lightening Bugs." If my kids can't grow up by the beach, at least they have fireflies.

Each child approaches "the hunt" differently. Annika spends most of her time planning the habitat and kinda forgets about the actual catching of fireflies (regardless of the fact that we let them go before we go in for the night). Taryn usually catches most of them. I think she gets a bit competitive. Landon zones in on one firefly and follows it around, even if that means wandering through the neighbors' yards and ending up 5 houses away. At one point our firefly hunt turned into a Landon hunt. For those of you that know Landon this doesn't surprise you one bit. Simon was the most excited, even though at one point he forgot what we were hunting for.





In the end, we caught quite a few.

This picture wasn't set up at all. ;)

There is a short window when we can see fireflies (when it doesn't get dark too late and it's comfortable to sit outside), and we are glad we have had a few nice nights to chase a firefly or two. Good times and good memories.