Butterflies and Bragging

Every Spring I visit my neighbors butterfly garden. They spend hours (retired) making their garden a magical place. I even gave them the iron arch that Juan and I got married under, and it has a coral honeysuckle growing on it!

Well I figured it would be nice for the girls to have a butterfly garden on the side of the play house, so my neighbor sent me to the nursery with a shopping list. . . no butterflies came! Next I went online and bought some caterpillars. At the same time my girl friend Jessica went to the lake and got FREE monarch eggs off of milkweed and had a completely different experience!

When our painted lady caterpillars came in the mail they were cute little balls of lint that did nothing. Then the very next day. . .they doubled in size!!! Julianna went crazy over them! Every morning she would run downstairs to see the "aterpillars".

Soon after , they were DISGUSTING!!! The picture can't even capture the digustingness! They are in this tiny urine sample jar full of their own poop, they are spiky, and they fight!

Once they went into their chrysalis they could be moved into the butterfly house (much better).

See the red stuff on the paper? That is what sprays when they come out of the chrysalis. Apparently the lovely monarchs don't do this.

Finally we had butterflies (4 out of 5). We would release them soon after they were done opening up. Although I wanted them to stay in my new garden, they quickly flew away to my neighbors garden . . .sigh. They knew how repulsed by them I was during the caterpillar stage!

Now comes the bragging!

Annelise has some artistic talents! I wanted to document them since my memory is terrible and I really do love bragging about my kids!!!

It all started with the ED Emberly books from her graphic artist uncle and now has spun into a real passion.

Next is her 3D art. . .

About a month ago she begged for some cheap modeling clay from the checkout of hobby lobby. I wanted nothing to do with the mess so I tried to encourage her to stick with a different craft, but she insisted. I let her have it because it was $1.99!

WELL I was wrong! She will stay at the table for hours creating these really cool sculptures!

Above is a butterfly on a flower.

Below is a birds nest with a snail on the edge. I gave her a toothpick for poking the eyes.

This is a snail again (she likes snails, I guess)

A crab.

$1.99 worth of clay and about 2 hours of productive quiet time!

WELL WORTH IT!

Next time I will buy the clay that gets hard in the oven. This is modeling clay and never gets hard. This is why taking pictures is so important!