Cause To Celebrate...

Today was the big day that George decided to come out of his chrysalis! Last night when we went to bed he had turned black and we could see the orange and white and the pattern of the wings. It was so neat to see. (Go down a few posts to see previous pictures of George)

We were all so excited when we got up this morning and found George like this....
He was just pulling his feet out of the chrysalis and was still very wet.
We went to church and RUSHED home to let George out of his jar.
I LOVE the look of awe in Owen's eyes.

As you can see Megan thought it was "Ewwww".


Kristyn held him on her finger and carried him outside to the garden to put him on a flower.

Always the drama queen, Kristyn was very sad to see him fly away. :)

So long, George, it was a pleasure having you! :)

A little bit of this and that....

We had a reunion last weekend in TN and had a grand time. Here are some pictures.

Payton!

Owen and Zack :)
Owen and Grandpa
Some of the kids enjoying the pool.
Kaylee and Owen
Two-peas-in-a-pod, Karissa and Kristyn
Now we're back home and Kristyn and Daddy's back to school and this little man's feeling quite lonely. He was playing in the garden when I took this picture.
Yesterday was the first day I braided Megan's hair. I thought they were cute!
As an update on George, he is still "sleeping" as Owen says. He is turning a duller green and you can see the pattern of the wings through the cocoon. Wednesday will be 2 weeks, so hopefully he will decide to come out then. :)

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!!! Thanks for stopping by.

Nieces.....

Keith and I have the best nieces in the whole world!! We have 10 to be exact (we don't have any nephews, yet). We were privileged to be with 4 of them last weekend and Misty asked me to take some pictures of her girls. They are all so sweet! I was trying to pick out my favorite of them, but it was hard to decide, so I put 2 of each of them.

Thank you, Misty, for letting me take their pictures!

Kaylee

Karissa

Kathryn

Kara

Thanks for enjoying my nieces with me. :)

Introducing George...

Last Saturday we went tromping through field and forest, in search of a Monarch caterpillar. When we started out, Keith and I thought it would be a piece of cake. Find a milkweed plant, snatch up a caterpillar and be on our way.....WRONG!! You can find a milkweed plant, but that doesn't mean there will be a caterpillar on it. We had finally given up after 3 hours and decided to go home and on our drive home we saw some milkweed along the side of the road. In answer to Kristyn's prayers, there was not one but 3 caterpillars on the plant. She was beyond excited!

We shared 2 with our pastor's family who had been searching for one and kept one for ourselves which the kids quickly named "George" (Kristyn calls him Brother George).

We had to go get him 2 milkweed leaves every day for him to eat. The most interesting thing is, you can actually HEAR him chomping on the leaf! What a sound!
I don't need to tell you that the kids have enjoyed watching George very much.
Tuesday about 6pm, or so, George decided to hang up-side-down. He made a little sticky place and then just flipped over. He would wiggle all around and I was afraid he would drop off the glass, but he didn't. We have a magazine that had an article about monarchs and it said they would hang like this for about 24 hours before forming the chrysalis.
So yesterday, we watched and watch and George wiggled and wiggled, but nothing ever happened. Well, I went into the other room and when I walked back by George a few minutes later, this is what I saw. The article said when they change from caterpillar to chrysalis, it will only last about 60 seconds. WOW!! I was amazed. He had shed his skin and pushed all of his legs off and they were laying in the bottom of the jar. The outer layer was just starting to wrap up to the top of the chrysalis, so we got to watch that part.
Kristyn thought he looked funny because even wrapped tight in that chrysalis, he was still wiggling all around.
By the time we went to bed last night, he was all wrapped up "snug as a bug in a rug".
This is what he looked like this morning. There are tiny gold dots and they absolutely shine. I have never seen anything like it before! Beautiful!!

So this is how George will be for 2 weeks and then he will pop out into a butterfly. Stay tuned to hear and see the rest of the story.

Have a fun and safe weekend!!!

Picnic Time....

We went on a picnic last Saturday and had a great time. I thought I'd share some pictures.


Megan really was happy, even though she doesn't look like it in this picture. :)
Our fierce leader!
I bought this handy-dandy wrap off of craigslist and Jeren likes it very much.



Throwing bread crumbs to the fish.

Kristyn found a new friend. She was very disappointed when Uncle Michael told her it was too small to leave it's mommy. She said, "But he'll miss me." :)
I thought I'd add a few pictures of Jeren. He's growing so fast and is changing all the time. He loves to smile, unfortunately he wouldn't for the camera, but I still think he's darling! :)


Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a great weekend!