Abi is 15!

Well, our little Abbers isn't little anymore. 

I guess she hasn't been for several years. I'm not sure when she passed me in height, but she's got 3+ inches on me. She and Mel have been able to share clothes well before Melodie left to college. And now Abi is old enough to get her driving permit? What keeps happening with all these kids growing up so fast?? Everyone just stop. (Katharine, don't you dare...) It was a typical "getting older" kid birthday today - meaning I didn't put up any decorations. I did get out a new birthday banner I bought, but it was too short to reach our hooks and I couldn't find string or ribbon, so it's still in the kitchen waiting to be hung. We'll try to get it up before Sophi's bday in 3 days (and before little boys rip it apart). My mom came over with some crumbl cookies - 

Part of the birthday privileges around here are to light the candles. 

Now we get to sing!

"Happy happy birthday, Abi dear! Happy days will come to you all year! If we had one wish, then it would be - a happy happy birthday to you from me!" Make a wish!

My mom had decorated the cookies with one icing letter on each cookie to spell "Abi's B-day Sept 3rd"

Crumbl cookies are huge, and if you eat one whole cookie, you honestly will feel sick. So we cut them into fourths and 8th, depending on the cookies, and we all took a sampling, except for Peter, because there was a P (in the "SEP" for September), and Peter was waiting for it as he told us "P is for Peter!"

So I gave him a whole pumpkin cookie, he ate the P off of it, and then the rest of us nibbled on it. My mom stayed for a visit and Abi shared with her some details of her summer of fun (Ballroom tour to Disneyland, Summerfest, FSY, Nauvoo, etc) and then Corey took Abi and the kids over to his parents' house. Abi received more birthday cash there, and then Corey took her out to eat and they drove around downtown SLC on electric scooters. Fun, huh! I stayed home with K, Wes was on a date, so he stayed home too, as did Lily who was transcribing something. Corey took ASNODP. 

While they were gone, I saw a monarch flitting around in the back yard, I went out and it continued to fly around for 10 min. I found 11 eggs! Yay, and then I went out again later and found 7 more. Which is good, cause the 100+ eggs I found over last weekend have not hatched. A dozen or so have, but not very many, and I'm guessing a lot of these were unfertilized. I only learned that that is possible yesterday. I've learned a lot about monarchs in 2022! I spent a moment crunching numbers, and here are my monarch stats for today (me with two that emerged this morning):

• 3 emerged (2 female, 1 male)
• 1 J-hook to chrysalis
• 1 4th instar
• 3 3rd instar 
• 10 caterpillars in 1st or 2nd instar
• 4 that hatched this morning (I am watching them like a hawk!)
• 30 eggs (18 I found today, plus 12 that I'm still holding onto with hopes that they hatch)
• 5 eggs that were for sure goners
• and 92 that I've had for over a week that I'll be throwing out soon if nothing happens. 

I did find a little yellow larva thingy eating an egg again. That makes the 3rd time we've seen something like that! Those might have been killing the eggs, or the eggs just might not have been fertilized. But even without those 92, this has been an AMAZING monarch year. I hope Granite becomes a monarch sanctuary. Once the milkweek pods are ripe, I am going to be sowing those all over in our yard any any wild space that looks like a good spot!