Danielle lost her first tooth yesterday morning. To say she was excited is an understatement. I'm pretty sure she walked around like this all day yesterday:
Danielle and I went for a walk to collect leaves for an art project today. She wanted to make leaf rubbings, which I thought was a good idea. While we were out, we found a ton of acorns - with and without hats - and collected those, too. Of course, we had to pause at the playset for a few minutes. 
Once Tyler got home from school, we decided to make acorn families with our collected acorns. The kids had a lot of fun making these. I made a Halloween scene which the kids thought was pretty cool.
They added some Halloween elements to their creations, too.
We also made leaf rubbings. It seems like there are so many fun fall crafts to do with the kids. We had a lot of fun working on these together this afternoon.
Today was Tyler's first Cub Scout outing. It was a big outing that involved several troops from several cities. Siblings were allowed to participate, too, so we made it a family affair. We had a lot of fun.
Tyler's favorite activity was shooting the BB guns. The gun was a little heavy for Danielle, so she had a little trouble aiming it. Tyler did pretty good, though, and has decided he should own his own BB gun...which is not going to happen any time soon!!
The tomahawk throw was fun. Ron and I got to try it, too. Tyler actually hit the target (see picture), but the tomahawk bounced off. The tomahawks were too heavy for Danielle, so she got to throw wooden ones.
The kids also tried water balloon catapults, which is where their rear ends got all muddy, and marshmallow shooters. 
Danielle's favorite activity was archery. It was her favorite because she hit the target twice. She hit the target twice because one of the rangemasters personally helped her the entire time. She did get a lot of attention today. I guess in the sea of boys, a little girl tends to stand out. Tyler did really well, too, and was very close to hitting the target with a couple of his arrows. 
If he'd had more time, I'm sure he would have figured it out. His troop is having an outing in October that will include a lot of these activities, so he'll get to try again soon. He did earn a patch today and was quite excited about that. It was a good first experience for him.
Today is Tyler's 8th birthday. 8 seems so old. I can't really think about it too much or I get a little sad. You know, in the grand scheme of things, we have our children for such a short time. These days that we tend to rush through are so very special...and limited. Sigh...
had a good day. I took a special snack in for him to share with his class this morning, and tonight at Cub Scouts everyone sang to him. He asked for an ipod for his birthday this year. I don't know why he was convinced he wanted one, but he was - so he could listen to his "rock" music. The funny thing is that we don't let Tyler listen to anything except the Christian radio station, and usually it's the one I prefer, which is rather mild. But, we got him a ipod shuffle and he was thrilled. I feel like I short-changed him a bit on his cake this year, but we were so busy this weekend and this morning that I just didn't have time to do much. Thankfully he didn't seem to mind.
His birthday celebration is being strung out a little this year. We were going to take him to drive the go-karts yesterday, but it rained and the karts weren't out. We're going to try again this weekend. Last week Mamaw took him shopping at the Lego store, which was quite a treat. He also got a cool rocket from Grandma & Grandpa R, which he's hoping to set off this coming weekend. And in between my cousin's wedding and reception he got to open presents from my brother and Grandma & Grandpa C. 
Here are a few of my favorite pictures from this weekend, and one of Danielle before school on Friday. It was picture day, so I wanted a picture. :) Danielle drew the picture, above, for Tyler while he was at school today. I thought it was cute.
This afternoon we went to a park to see if we could round up some native butterflies to observe. We took our nets and our small butterfly enclosure and headed out. We were quite successful!
The first butterfly we caught was a viceroy. We actually ended up catching 3 of these today. In our area, the viceroy butterfly mimics the monarch. You can tell it's a viceroy mainly because of the solid black line across the veins on their bottom wings. In other areas of the country (like Florida), they mimic the queen or soldier butterfly.
Here is a spicebush swallowtail. It is a big butterfly, but there are other types of swallowtails that are larger. Swallowtails are the next type of butterfly I would like to attract. The caterpillar of this particular type looks like bird poop, which Danielle thinks is both cool and gross.
Here is an orange sulphur butterfly and a cabbage white butterfly. We also caught a pearl crescent, which is a very small butterfly. We saw a few painted lady butterflies, but they were too fast for us today. We didn't see any monarchs in the field today.
Danielle really wanted to "hold" our monarchs. We've looked forward to having monarchs since last fall, so I hated to disappoint her. I've read it's harmless as long as you don't touch their wings much, but I was afraid she was going to squish them against the top of the enclosure. They are so much bigger than the painted ladies. So, this morning we took the enclosure into our 1/2 bath and let Danielle hold them. They flew around some and landed in some funny spots, but mostly they just crawled around. Danielle had some orange juice on her hands, which I think helped. 
Sorry, I'll get this out of my system soon, I promise.
Butterfly #2 made her debut today, too. Here is a picture of her right after she came out. Her wings were still very wet and looked heavy.
