Making Her Debut

Our monarch eclosed today. This video is about a minute long, but it covers about 20 minutes. I'm not sure how the quality of the video will be once I post it, but on my computer, I can actually see the wings get longer as she flutters them. We released her (it was a girl) this afternoon. As we did, we noticed another female monarch laying more eggs on our milkweed! After checking over our plants, we found 22 baby caterpillars and several eggs. We brought many of the caterpillars inside, hoping they will survive a little better in a controlled environment.

Another Winning Weekend

Danielle's team won first place in their tournament this weekend. It was a one day tournament, and they played 4 back to back games. She played really well and had some great plays at 2nd. We have one more weekend to go.

Sunshine Sparkles

 

(Click on the picture to view full screen.)

 

My Mother's Day Flowers

Danielle gave me a hanging basket of lantana for Mother's Day. It seems to love the wet summer we've had because it has grown like crazy. It's beautiful. The basket of petunias that Tyler gave me is not doing as well. My mom's petunias look pretty bad this summer, too, so I'm thinking they don't like all the rain. (The tomato plants don't either. :( ) The butterflies and hummingbirds like the lantana, too. I have a different color planted in the bed around the patio, but the hummingbirds seem to prefer this one.

Family Time

We enjoyed having dinner with Ron's brother and his family tonight. I don't think the cousins have seen each other in maybe 2 years? They enjoyed getting caught up...via text.

Seriously. They were texting each other.

A (partial) cousins picture. We missed the Florida 4.

It was very nice to get to spend a little time with them. The kids are all growing up so quickly.

A Week in Review

As captured via cellphone...

 

Danielle and I started on another Pinterest project, but we haven't finished it yet.
Will post more pictures if/when we do.

Danielle got 4" cut off her hair.



Another week of basketball camp.

Our caterpillar successfully made his chrysalis. I don't have any cell phone pics of that yet.

Danielle's team played in a semifinal game, which they won, and a championship game, which they lost. Danielle had to break in a new glove and struggled a little. She still did a great job.



We went to the waterpark today. We've gotten rained on every time we've gone. Today was no exception. We waited out the first thunderstorm in the car.

The girls took a little nap during the second "weather closure".

Yes, I do still have a son. He doesn't like it when I take his picture, and he likes it even less when I post it. Usually I try to respect that.

Today's Pic

Today's Pic

A Winning Weekend

Danielle's softball team played in a tournament this weekend. They played 3 pool play games yesterday and went on to play 3 bracket play games today. They made it all the way to the championship game, where they lost 6-1. Danielle played pretty well yesterday, but she was stellar today.  You know you're doing a great job fielding when the opposing team's coach tells you great job and high-fives you more than once as you run off the field! That makes a mom smile.

Her coach had just got done telling her that was the slowest she'd moved all day.

Today's Pic

More Softball

Stealing home on a fast ball. Safe again.

Putt Putt Fun

We enjoyed the sunshine today with a trip to play putt putt with Grandma C. While we were there, the kids raced the go-karts around a couple times and won some tickets in the arcade. Grandma was the putt putt winner, beating Tyler by one stroke. We had a really nice day out together.

Tyler's Trip

Here are some pictures and videos taken by Tyler and Grandpa on their trip to Grand Cayman. I would love to include some narration or highlights from Tyler, but it seems to be painful for him to hold a conversation that involves more than yes or no answers at this point in his reacclimation to reality.



A blowhole

I have no idea what setting Tyler used on his camera, but I thought this picture turned out kind of neat. I didn't touch it up at all.

Tyler's video of a turtle:

 

All the underwater pictures (except the selfie) are Grandpa's.