VBS

This was the first year that Katherine was able to attend VBS. We chose to go to the one at the church where she attends school. She was familiar with the facility and knew a lot of kids. She had a lot of fun. They studied the Fruit of the Spirit during the week with a farm theme. The first day they were to wear country western or farm clothing. I forgot to take a picture. On Tuesday and Friday they were to wear their VBS shirt. She has the smallest one (youth small, size 8-10). It swallowed her. With 3 classrooms filled with 4 and 5 year olds I don't know why they did not get some smaller shirts.Wednesday was crazy hair day. Katherine really got into this and chose to wear her craziest dress with 3 ponytails, each one with a different colored flower, which amazingly matched her dress. The center ponytail had a braid. Of course, Caroline also wanted to participate in crazy hair day. She was quite the site when I dropped her off at the nursery during my Bible study.

Thursday was pajama day. I was surprised that Katherine chose to wear her Nemo nightgown and not her princess or Fancy Nancy one but she was very excited to wear her pajamas to VBS.
It was a very fun week and I hope that seeds were sown for Katherine.

Sleepover

I am still so far behind on blogging. I have not finished posting about when Will and Sophia came to visit. One night we went to the Arboretum for their "Garden of Music". There were several musicians scattered about the garden for a members only after hours event. It was very nice.
We packed a picnic and listened to a guitar player during dinner.
The girls had a lot of fun dragging around the wagon and running around the lawn.

23 months

This month has flown by. It seems that we have been busy but not doing many big events so there are not many exciting pictures. Oh well. Here are a few things you are doing.

You love Hooligan and all dogs. You are much more into animals than Katherine ever was. The other night Daddy was rubbing Hooligan's belly and you were jealous. You laid down beside Hooligan to have your belly rubbed too.
You are certainly a climber! You are fearless when it comes to playgrounds. You love to climb over the furniture. Lately you have tried to climb into your crib and today you tried to climb out. I think we will be moving you into a toddler bed soon.
You love the water and have had a lot of fun this summer at the pool and spray ground. You are pretty fearless if you are wearing your floaties. You will jump off the side and have even gone down a waterslide by yourself and off the diving board!

You are beginning to have an opinion on what you wear and have put together some fun outfits.

You are being disciplined a lot lately. Some of the more common offenses are throwing food from the table, playing with Hooligan's water and food and hitting mommy when you are frustrated. You do not like discipline but you know that there are consequences. I have even heard you put your baby in time out for hitting.
You have recently enjoyed singing. Daddy and I had just talked about how for some reason you would not let us sing to you. Finally you are and I will even hear you trying to sing songs while in the car. Your favorites are "Jesus Loves Me", "ABC's", "Twinkle Twinkle", and "Itsy Bitsy Spider".

You are talking up a storm. There have been some days that it seems you are adding a new word to your vocabulary every hour. You are also stringing words together to form sentences. It is wonderful that you are able to communicate and be understood more.
At night we always read books and then pray. You cannot get enough books. I think you would read forever. You don't like it when it is time to read the Bible though because you know that we turn out the light next. We ask you who you want to pray for and it is always fun to see who comes to mind. You are starting to really remember names and which people are together in families. If I tell Katherine that her friend Grace is coming over, you immediately mention Violet. Same with Emma and Julia.
You are getting better at doing crafts. You don't eat play-doh as much and the markers mark on paper more than legs. It has been fun to incorporate more crafts into our summer.

You and your sister are fighting more which is not fun. I think you have learned that you have a choice as to if you follow her lead or not. She has also learned how to push some of your hot buttons and she often provokes you on purpose.

From egg to butterfly

For the past few years I have watched as friends blogged about their experience of going to a field to get milkweed with a teeny tiny egg on it to raise until that egg is eventually a monarch butterfly. I have never gotten my act together to do this activity until this year. I started off rough by collecting the wrong variety of milkweed, thinking I had an abundance of eggs and actually having nothing. So, once I figure that out I was set.

Here we have photos of our teeny tiny egg and a teeny tiny caterpillar. I actually though we had lost the caterpillar at first because they are so tiny. For a few days I could not find him anywhere but I could see holes in leaves meaning he had been eating.

May 12 May 18

Finally our caterpillar (named Princess Butterfly) was large enough to easily see. Every morning at breakfast we would put her on the table to watch as we ate.

May 22

May 22

May 22

She started to eat more and more. We would return to the field to get more fresh milkweed.

May 25 May 27

Finally Princess Butterfly hung in a "J" shape so we knew she would be forming her chrysalis soon. Sure enough, the next morning we woke up to find a beautiful green chrysalis with gold sparkles. The girls loved the sparkles.

May 29 June 2

About 10 days later the chrysalis was clear, allowing us to see the monarch wings inside. I think for me this was the coolest part of the process. This meant that she would be emerging from the chrysalis soon. Of course we had a full day planned and we did not want to miss it so we took the butterfly habitat with us.

June 8

I stopped by our school to quickly run something in and when I returned Princess Butterfly was gone! She had emerged from the chrysalis in the 2 minutes I was out of the car and she fell to the floor! I just knew I had killed our butterfly. I carefully was able to get her back to her stick so that her wings could dry out. They are very fragile at this stage so we ended up leaving her at the school under the director's care. She had been following our butterfly journey on Facebook.

We spent a little time at school watching the butterfly. You can see that her wings are a bit wrinkled and wet at first. When we got back from our busy day she was doing much better. We took her home to show daddy and to watch for the next day.

Katherine enjoyed holding her once she was dry and doing well.

Finally it was time to release Princess Butterfly. We waited for daddy to get home. We took her to the front yard. Each of us held her for a little bit.

After about 15 minutes of having opportunity to fly away, Princess Butterfly still was right there. I feared that she was injured or not dry yet so we put her back in our butterfly cage to let go the next day.

The next morning we took her back to the field where we first found her egg on the milkweed. We put her on a flower and said goodbye.

This was a great learning experience for our girls and we look forward to doing it again next year. It is amazing to see how one animal can be in 4 such distinct stages in their life cycle. God is amazing.