Butterfly Update

Our butterfly eclosed on Tuesday and looks perfect! I wasn't sure at first because his chrysalis looked kind of spotty, but he looks great. We must have just missed his grand entrance by seconds because his wings were quite crumpled when we first saw him. Within minutes they were full and beautiful, though. We wanted to wait to release him until after they fogged for mosquitos tonight. We'll let him go tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully he will hook up with the female monarch that has been frequenting our milkweed. (She looks like she's laying eggs, but there's nothing there when she leaves!)

We have 2 little caterpillars left, and there are 2 eggs that haven't hatched yet. I keep reminding Danielle that the reason butterflies lay so many eggs is because so many of them won't make it. Still, it's frustrating to see the caterpillars die off!

While we were out today, we stopped by the park to look for caterpillars on the milkweed plants. We didn't find any, but it was a nice day to be outside.

Farm Day

We had such a good day today! The kids were so well behaved and really just a lot of fun to be with.

The highlight of our day was attending a program at a historical farm. The kids got to water the garden, pick & snap green beans, look for eggs in the henhouse, milk a cow, strip broomstraw, make rope, grind corn, and learn several different games kids in the 1800s might have played. The program was 2 hours but the time went so quickly. The "actors" did a wonderful job and made it a really great experience for the kids. After the program we enjoyed a picnic lunch in the shade. When I signed the kids up to attend this program (weeks ago), I also signed them up for another program where they get to help the farmer feed the animals. They only take 10-12 kids for that, so it will be an even smaller group. After our experience today, we're really looking forward to that program, which we'll attend late August.

We Have Eggs!

We watched a female monarch fly around our milkweed plants on and off for several hours today. She looked like she was laying eggs, but we couldn't find any on our tall plants. We did find a few eggs on some of our smaller, potted milkweed plants, though, and brought those inside to keep safe from the mosquito fogging. While I was looking for more eggs tonight, I found 3 teeny tiny, newly hatched caterpillars. That means there were already eggs on the plants before this morning's butterfly visited! Hopefully this summer's attempts will turn out better than last year's. I just don't know how to successfully battle the mosquito fogging.

A couple weeks ago a naturalist at the metropark gave us a few caterpillars to take home. The ones we put outside died after the fogging (even though I attempted to cover our plants), but the one we kept inside is now in its chrysalis. Hopefully it will eclose soon. The chrysalis is looking a little dark, so I'm not sure it's going to make it. We'll see. As you can imagine, Danielle is thrilled with the eggs and caterpillars.

Summer Fun & VBS

We didn't have time to go to the pool today, but since it was the hottest day of the year, the kids HAD to get in the water at some point. They were content with an hour in the sprinkler. Clara absolutely LOVES the hose and enjoyed playing in the sprinkler, too. (That squeak in the video is my sprayer - I wasn't holding it down all the way because I didn't want to blast her in the face with the full force of the spray.)

I used my old camera to take pictures of the kids & dog. When I downloaded the pictures, I found some on there that Danielle had taken earlier in the week. I know she was just fooling around, but I thought a couple of them were really cute. Other than changing them to b&w, I didn't do anything else to these.

The kids have been attending vacation Bible school this week at Mamaw's church. The theme was High Seas Voyage. They had such a good time. They were both sad that today was the last day. Tyler took great interest in the penny challenge and was quite pleased that the boys won. They also enjoyed the water games, the crafts (which Mamaw led), the songs and storytime. Well, I guess that's just about everything, isn't it?! After VBS tonight, they had games and a cookout. I loved the way they rationed out the water balloons. In order to get a water balloon, the kids had to walk across a balance beam with a cup of water balanced on their head. When they got to the other side, they were given 1 balloon. They had to cross the beam each time they wanted another balloon. The kids enjoyed earning balloons to throw at Ron. It was a lot of fun. (Thank you, Mamaw.)

More Vacation Pics

The kids were in the mood to pose for pictures the day we walked the trail to Cascade Falls.
































One of my favorite vacation activities was looking for salamanders in the creeks with the kids. We got pretty good at finding and catching them. Tyler is looking at a tiny salamander on a rock. We found some good size ones, too.





























The butterflies were EVERYWHERE! And they were so pretty. I think Danielle is the butterfly whisperer. :)
































We drove to Cherokee, NC one day. The kids wanted to feed the bears. That place is so depressing, though. We felt so sorry for those poor bears. There wasn't much else to do over there, and it was SO hot and humid. We've decided we can cross this stop off our list of places to visit the next time we're in the Smokies. After we fed the bears, we got slushies and ice cream at the DQ (which did NOT have chocolate ice cream!) and then found a couple geocaches.

























On Thursday we went tubing. There were 4 or 5 sets of rapids that were a little stressful for Danielle and me, but Tyler loved them. It wasn't as relaxing as I had hoped, and I have lots of bruises from hitting the rocks, but it was still fun and I'm glad we did it...ONCE.





























We also hit up the go carts on Thursday. Tyler was tall enough to drive the bigger cars by himself. Still not tall enough to drive the Wild Woody, though. He did a really good job and had a blast!


































Travel tip #1: Do not let your 8 year old pick out 1st Degree Burn Jalapeno Doritoes for a car snack. They are so spicy they had to be accompanied by at least 2 1/2 bottles of water, which meant we had to stop every 20 minutes for at least 2 hours after he ate them.