Just Pondering and Little Treasures

A post on one of my email groups got me thinking about all the things we do around Christmas. It also reminded me of things that I will miss.

My bassoon teacher passed away this summer and one of the things I looked forward to around Christmas was his Christmas letter. His letters were always so cute. He had pictures of his cats with cute quotes and included pictures of his grandchildren and told about his year. I'll miss that this year.

I was going through my recipes and found the recipes that I had copied with my grandma. They were some of my favorites of hers. She even wrote down some of them for me. One of my favorites was her peppernuts. She made them every year. My kids enjoyed them too. So, now I have a little treasure - my favorite recipes of hers - many written in her handwriting.

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Today is my Grandpa's 91st birthday. I took the girls in and we met Mom and Dad at G'pa's. We had pizza and Mom made a pecan pie for G'pa. We also had chocolate cake with cherries and some cookies. Oh, and ice cream. :) I think G'pa had a great time.

Fall Fun

The Chocolate Harvest was Plentiful

What was that again?

With all the flu going around we have been very diligent in washing our hands. If we can't get to a sink, we usually reach for the hand sanitizer.

Panda had a cute one though - she asked for the "hanitizer".

Her other cute one is - things that are sparkly are "smarkly".

Butterfly's Art Show

I realized that I never blogged Butterfly's Art Show. So, here it is:

Her bee

Her salamander

Butterfly with her art teacher

Backyard Babies

All of these babies were found in our back (and front) yard this spring and summer. The girls enjoyed seeing them.

Here's the baby hawk:

Baby blue jay:

One of the baby bunnies - it wandered out of the nest:

One of two baby robins which hatched from a nest in our front tree:

We were fortunate to get to watch the mom feed the baby:

Oops!

She must have stopped talking:

The Butterfly

Here's the pretty caterpillar that Ladybug found already attached to a tomato. This is how we suspended the tomato:

That evening the caterpillar changed:

Here's the skin - kind of neat - you can see the head and legs:

Getting closer. We could see the colors of the butterfly:

And finally - here's the beautiful butterfly:

Panda says...

Grandpa was laying next to Panda at bedtime. While talking non-stop Panda says:

"Grandpa, when I stop talking, I'll be asleep."

Panda news, etc.

I think I can safely say this now: Panda is potty trained! Woo hoo. Who knew I could be so excited about bathroom business? Yeah, my life is in the toilet...

In other news I have lost 5 pounds in two days. How you ask - well, that's a secret that I cannot tell right now. But, it has worked before - I'll let you know how it comes out this time - later. 30 more to go.

We did release the butterfly today. But, I couldn't catch a picture of it. She looked really happy to be flying away.

The Butterfly Emerged

I promised pictures, but I want to get pictures of us releasing it too and it was raining all day, so that did not happen. Besides the fact that I had a crappy day and now I've got one kid who threw up and another one with an upset stomach. So, I just don't feel like posting pictures. Yipee.

All you get for today is this lousy blog post! I'll try again tomorrow. Hoping for better weather so we can get a release done. She's a beautiful butterfly!

Butterfly watch

Last Friday, the 11th, Ladybug went outside to pick tomatoes. As she picked one she felt something brush against her finger and figured it was a spider or a bug. She looked under the tomato and found a monarch caterpillar attached to the tomato. She carefully carried it inside to show me. I didn't believe her at first - I figured it was a tomato worm! But, after looking it up on the internet, I found out that she was correct!

The caterpillar was already hanging in the j shape, so we wondered if we would have to opportunity to watch it transform into a butterfly. But, we had to figure out how to take care of it since it was attached to the tomato! First we decided to tie a string to the stem of the tomato and tied that to the top of one of Ladybug's large bug containers. Then I worried that the tomato might rot off the stem and crush the butterfly. We found a piece of material, cut a hole and fashioned a "net" for the tomato to rest on. We then carefully threaded the caterpillar through the hole and tied the material to the top of the bug container.

Then... I read online that when raising monarch caterpillars, once they are in the j shape you are not to touch them or move them. Great.

I had to work that night. Brian took the girls downstairs to work on cleaning the basement. They were only down there for about an hour, came up and found the caterpillar was in it's chrysalis!

It's looking like it will emerge in the morning. I've been taking pictures at each stage that I will post when we finally have our butterfly. This has been so neat to watch!

So bad

I am just not doing well in keeping up with this blog. (*really* - you say!)

We started our first day of school on Tuesday. So far, so good. Things are going fairly well. Ladybug is enjoying her next level of math. In fact, so well that she did 3 units in one day yesterday! It helps that one of my friends just started home schooling her son - he's on the same math book and they are having a competition.

Butterfly always likes her school work and is very good at entertaining Panda while I work with Ladybug. That's a huge help.

Panda is working on potty training (FINALLY). She's doing very well. This week she has only had about one accident per day. Over last weekend, we finally resorted to what I call "operation sun dress". That is what she was wearing. If we added anything to it - we had a mess. So, we left things that way for about 2 days and then tried adding the panties back in. Bingo. Worked like a charm. We also added a sticker chart and m&ms as incentive.

Lessons are in full swing. I have a very nice group of kids to work with. This weekend is another weekend class with childbirth education. KMEA will kick in to high gear before I know it - my email inbox for that account is starting to show it.

I hear chaos erupting upstairs - time to go back and reclaim order... wish me luck!

Why is it...

that people who call others close-minded won't listen to any view point other than their own?

Just wondering.