I can't believe I'm going to say this...

For Christmas, we (I mean Santa) got Alyssa an ant farm. It's a plastic container with this blue gel stuff in it that the ants tunnel through as well as eat, so you don't have to find any special ant food for them. It was Jeff's idea and he agreed to be in charge of the ants because I wasn't exactly thrilled to be inviting creepy-crawlies into my house. In fact, my general position on anything in the bug category is that it's fine outside where it belongs, but if it gets into my house, I'm going to squish it.

So they've been waiting for it to get a little warmer before they ordered the ants so they wouldn't freeze in the mailbox or something. The ants arrived last week. I was not amused at the little test tube filled with ants. Big, black ants. That came compete with a warning not to try to handle them because they sting. And the first aid treatment of said stings. Ick.

The ants were installed in their new blue home and at first didn't seem to be doing much except hollowing out one whole side of the gel (trying to escape??). But the past couple days, they have built some honest-to-goodness tunnels, just as promised.

Here comes the part I don't like to admit: those ants are pretty cool! I find myself going into Alyssa's room several times a day to check on them and see what new tunnels they are building. Brendan and I were particularly excited to see what he called "an upside-down rainbow" yesterday afternoon that wasn't there in the morning. As soon as Alyssa got home from school, she had to run and check it out. Last night they made a spiral slide to connect with the rainbow. Pretty cool.