Owen is 7!

We used to have the birthday letters in the window... I haven't gotten around to making new ones and the tradition has slightly died... I probably could resurrect it, but we might have a new tradition that works - the birthday bag optical illusion! Owen is jumping of the birthday bag! Surprise and hip hip hooray, it's your birthday! 

Owen has been counting down to his birthday ALL month (actually since my bday I think...) He's gotten really good at math as he subtracts to get the number of days left until HIS BIRTHDAY! And now it's finally here! Owen got a special treat being able to share his birthday with his cousins!

He really got to share it with his cousin Edmund, because today is Edmunds birthday too! He turned 8 today, Owen is 7. Opening gifts from his siblings and us - 

Edmund is waiting until they get back to Texas to open his presents. My mom said he really likes getting a b-day package in the mail, so even though she came over today and could have given it to him in person, he's waiting for the package. Cute. As for my kid, Owen really wanted a party... (what is it with kids and wanting to celebrate with friends? j/k, ha) but I did not have a party planned but Owen wanted one, so I texted our neighbors at the last minute to see if they could come, and it worked out great. One friend was on the way out to run an errand with his mom at just that moment, and she came and dropped them off instead, sweet. 

So there were enough friends over that it counts as one of his friend parties, yay for me, and O was happy to have them over, and if he's ok with a "party" like this, he can have one every year. We sang to Owen and Edmund - 

Blowing out the candles together~

I was pleased that no poor mothers had to worry about getting presents for him, and the kids all had fun eating cake and ice cream 

Peter and cousin Caleb - 

And then they went out to eat and play on the trampoline.

It's been fun having my little brother and his family here. They are staying in the basement, which we cleaned up a little bit on the carpeted side, to make room for Camilla and her kids last week and for Grant and his family this week. It's still plenty messy, but they are kind and gracious. I invited them to have sleepovers in the kids rooms if they wanted but they've stayed downstairs together, which is probably good, to keep some family time. Yesterday I watched all the kids while Grant and Steph went to a murder mystery dinner party. The theme was 1920s. Grant told me the theme and asked me if I had a black tie. 1920s? "We might... I know we have a zoot suit... do you want a zoot suit?" "You have a zoot suit?!?!" And I was glad that I hadn't cleaned up the basement too much, cause the zoot suits might have been on the chopping block! Hooray for me for holding on to all this junk! 

I thought they looked so awesome and I felt proud of myself that I was able to contribute to their fun! 

Butterfly update - I have so many baby caterpillars right now!! I moved all of them from their leaves and onto a fresh plant today - 

We hadn't had any butterflies emerge yet but I know this will be a record breaking year for us for monarchs! I'm excited!

Rafting Trip & Lots of Monarchs

Corey and kids are off for an adventure in Idaho. 

They woke up at 5:15 and loaded the last things into the trailer, like the ice water...

And final items - 

Then Wes helped make sure it was all tied down - 

And they were off. They left around 6:30. Corey texted at 9 saying that they were pulled over to the side of the road, cause the transmission was overheating, like it did last year when we went to Lake Tahoe. Doh! I checked in on them 30 minutes later and they were moving. They made it all the way to Idaho by keeping the hot air on full blast, and the windows down. So that must have been fun for them! But they made it. And if they have some very cold nights during this week, I'm sure they'll look back on their hot car drive with fond memories. They have been out of the range of cell service since 2:30, so I hope they are ok and we hope they all survive and that we'll be in touch with them again on Saturday. As for the rest of us... it was a sleep in morning again. E and Peter - 

Peter wakes up often with nightmares of scary monsters. 

He always wakes up atleast once during the night, and he's usually in a drunken rage. I appreciated Ethan being there and taking care of him last night. We are all loving Katharine - I brought up the super saucer today. She's holding her head up well, so it works ok with some blankets around to hold her in the center. 

She can barely touch the ground. 

It might provide a good place for her to be the focus of attention, but with the benefit of a 12 inch buffer between her and her adoring siblings.

And for the caterpillar update... today I had 24 eggs hatch. TWENTY FOUR!!!! Most of the eggs were black tipped this morning - that is their little face and lets you know they are about ready to eat their way out of the egg - 

24! This is a record for us! It is going to be a crazy mess when they are all in the fifth instar, but it will be magical when they emerge! Especially if we have a lot merging at once, that will be so fun. We had 7 emerge at once in 2017, so with 24 chances this time, I bet we'll have atleast a dozen! It will be amazing! I hope we're not gone... doh, we might be. We're taking a road trip to Nauvoo... let me see, no, it looks like we'll be here when they emerge but we'll be gone when they are big and eating. Hmm, I might arrange for help for that, or I guess I could risk it and put them out on the milkweed in the yard. Hm. We'll see. but it's pretty exciting. I didn't know we'd have such success and things would be so abundant this year, but I feel like I can't stop now. If eggs are left on the leaves, the spiders or bugs get them and eat them. The predators think they are little bonbons or something. I just took my monarch stats, and we have 50 monarchs in various stages. FIFTY!! This, my friends, is a new record, wow. I found 11 more eggs today and one that was just hatched, so that's 12, and today I had 23 come out of their eggs of the ones I've found, so with the one I found, that is 24 new baby caterpillars, and we have 5 chrysalis, 2 caterpillars right now (one died, just shriveled up) and a total of 18 eggs. One of our big 6 got stuck yesterday when he was changing into the chrysalis. After he was stuck like this for 10 minutes, I decided we needed to end his pain.

Had this happen before in 2019 (last pic)  I took this guy and buried/killed it under a rock. It was sad. Natalie was pretty worked up and was bawling, Owen was crying too. They are tender hearted kids. Having pets helps us give our kids lessons about life and death. 

Monarchs!

We have exciting news! After two years of not finding any monarch eggs, we are happy to report that on July 5th we found some! We found 6 for sure, and 3 others that were maybe eggs. We set them up in the kids bathrooms so we could watch - Here's what it looked like a week ago - 

On Saturday they all hatched! There were 6 that came out, but one of them died after he came out... he ate enough for him to be visible, and then he just didn't move or eat and slowly shrived up and disappeared. But we've got 5 thriving caterpillars right now. They are so amazing. On Sunday they were about the size of a fingernail clipping - 

And today they are all as big as a grain of rice. Mel's fingers holding a dry grain of rice for reference. 

I'm guessing they'll be as big as an orzo pasta by tomorrow night. 

It's pretty fun to watch. I moved them from the bathroom to the kitchen, and I also moved them off of their individual leaves and they are all on one plant together and they seem to be getting along with each other. So our monarch history - in 2018 we had two (I'm excited for Daniel to be able to maybe share his butterfly friends at the bus stop like Natalie did that year!) and we had two in 2019, then didn't have any in 2020 or 2021, so this is very exciting to already have 5 caterpillars, and in July! I never even used to find any until the end of July or August, so this is very promising. A few tips and tricks to finding monarch eggs - 

1) Locate milkweed plants (use google if you don't know what they look like. I can spot them in a yard or on the side of the road when I drive by. In Sandy on 13th East at about 12000 South, you can see milkweed on the east side of the road there. 

2) Look on the underneath side of the top few leaves of the plant for eggs. Monarchs lay on the underneath side of the leaves, and also usually lay on the smaller sized more tender leaves near the top of the milkweed (not the tiny leaves at the very top, although sometimes they lay there too, but usually not on big tough leaves more at the bottom of the plant)

3) If you find an egg, just tear off the leaf from the stem. 

4) Carefully collect the leaves on a plate or in your hands

5) Rinse off the end of the leaf where you tore it to rinse off the milkweek which might have already dried up. You want to make sure the leaf can get water.

6) I will mark the leaf with an arrow pointing to where the egg is (see pic 1 in this post)

7) Get a small bowl with water and rest the leaf stem in the water (see pic 1)

8) I usually will hold the leaf in place with a small or large clothes pin (see pic 1)

And yeah, that's how I get started! And then you just watch. The egg will turn dark when it's about to hatch, and then they come out and they'll eat that leaf for a few days. Then you can carefully move them onto a larger plant. With the 5 we have, I'll have to give them each their own plant once they are bigger and eating a lot. It will be fun! I hope we get 20+ caterpillars like we did in 2017!! 

A Covenant Land

Happy 4th of July! Our community had a breakfast and parade today. The 8 am breakfast time was helping in us getting kids to bed last night. At 8 this morning, MALSNOD were all ready to go and they rode their bikes over. Soph and Natalie dressed as opposite twins, tights and shirts donated by me. They decorated their bikes on Saturday night over at Sophi's friends house. 

Mel brought along some paints, and she and Lily offered free face painting. CJEP headed over around 9, after Corey got back from a bike ride. And then Katharine and I walked over last after she was finished having breakfast at home. Standing in line for our breakfast - 

Peter enjoying his pancakes and eggs - 

I went to check out the face painting station. 

They do pretty good work! 

Owen and Daniel are airbenders! With Owen's friend Zander.

I walked from home with Katharine in the baby wrap and I carried 4 chairs for us to sit on during the parade. I would have only brought 2, but I knew Corey would offer his chair to a kid if they asked, so I had to bring a few extras. It worked out great - Joseph, Ethan, Corey and I were able to sit and watch. Sophi and Natalie rode their bikes in the parade, and Abi watched the little boys gather candy.

I barely was able to catch a pic of Sophi and Natalie in the parade - 

Wes helped Abi keep an eye on Peter. After the parade, we stayed and visited for a bit.

Owen shared an insight he had: "There are two days we get candy: July, and Halloween."

Then it was time for the carnival. The little kids wanted to go. We asked who of the older kids could help. Eth, you want to go to the parade? "That does not sound fun to me... I guess I'm getting old..." Abi took Owen and Daniel to the carnival, JE&W headed home with two chairs, S&N were already at the carnival (that's where the parade ended), and I walked home with P&K. Corey went to the parade to watch kids. 

Mel and Lily took their painting booth to the carnival and continued their work throughout the afternoon. 

Corey and Joseph went to pick them up a little bit later and invited Davi over and we cooked some ribs that Corey got for lunch, making the 4th complete with a bbq, even though I cooked them in the oven. 

And the kids ate candy, watched Avatar the Last Airbender, and were basically lazy all day. Corey and Joseph, Mel, Ethan, and Davi, went on a bike ride in Corner Canyon (in the 90+ degree heat of the day!) 

Then tonight all left here at 8:30 to go watch the fireworks at Holladay Park. Joseph bought some ice cream drumsticks to share and they had fun and I got to stay home with this sweet face

A few thoughts on freedom- Yesterday we watched Amazing Grace. That is a great movie and an amazing story. William Wilberforce is a man I want to learn more about. I pray that there are great men like him and George Washington in the world today, because we surely need them as much as the slaves needed Wilberforce and as much as the United States needed Washington. And after we watched it, I read a little bit of Timothy Ballard's book "The Pilgrim Hypothesis" (pages 186-190) to the kids. 

"Jefferson's ability to persuade the Frenchman [to sell the Louisiana Territory] would largely come down to the happenings in Hispaniola. If Napoleon, by some miracle, could be stopped there, perhaps he would lose motivation for North America. After all, of the two lands, the only wealth generating one at that time was the island. For the French dictator, the only immediate an obvious benefit of the American territory (mostly just wilderness) was its potential role as a means to support and protect his commercial enterprises at Hispaniola.

"Few today recognize what was at stake during this tense time in the Caribbean. Would the sacred lands of the Gardner of Eden, even Adam-ondi-Ahman, and the New Jerusalem, where so much was to happen soon concerning the restoration, end up in hands of a foreign dictator? Or would Thomas Jefferson prevail and bringing those lands into the protective arms of the United States, the nation that Savior spoke of as the place where latter-day Americans "should be established... and set up as free people by the power of the Father... that covenant of the Father may be fulfilled which he hath covenant ed with his people, O house of Israel" (3 Nephi 21:4)? 

"Who knew that while the African prince and former slave Toussaint Louverture stood his his ground on a Caribbean island, waiting for one of the most powerful forces on the planet to attack them, so much weighed in the balance? We know history and Henry Adams (grandson and great-grand-son to two American presidents) understood very well the situation: "Before Bonaparte could reach Louisiana, he was obliged to crush the power of Toussaint," he wrote. "If he and his blacks should still come easy to their fate, the wave of French empire would roll onto Louisiana and sweep far of the Mississippi; if Saint Domingo should resist, and succeeding resistance... America would be left to pursue her democratic destiny in peace." 

"Jefferson come in the meantime, refuse to comply with the French trade embargo placed upon Toussaint and rejected any idea prohibit in American merchants from supplying the Indian revolution. Beyond that, all America could do was pray. 

"Toussaint knew he could never expect to win a front-on confrontation with the powerful French, so instead, he led his armies into the thick, forested mountains of the island, where the French would have to come to them and confront the terrifying prospect of guerilla warfare. The French found little success. And then, as could be expected in a conflict over promised lands, Mother Nature took over. And she took over in the form of Yellow Fever - Toussaint's most powerful ally. Nearly half of the first wave of French soldiers immediately died from the disease. 

"But even with those odds, the French were eventually able to capture Toussaint and send him to rot and die in a prison in France, which opened the way for other Haitian leaders who, unfortunately, in the name of revolution, committed horrible and unnecessary atrocities against innocent colonial civilians. Nevertheless, in the end, Toussaint's martyrdom only raised the morale of  his freedom-fighting countrymen, who now dug in harder against the French. His people would forever remember the words he spoke as the French carried him away in chains: "In overthrowing me," he yelled, "you have cut down in Sant Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty; it will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep." 

"His words proved prophetic as the French continued losing ground on the island. Desperate, the French command issued genocidal orders: all men and women, including teenagers (everyone twelve years old and older), must be murdered. They even brought three hundred starving bloodhounds and let them loose on the island to help with the mass murder. But the islanders could not be subdued. They would pay any price to remain free from slavery. 

"After more than forty thousand French soldiers perished, and the former slaves continued to fight back, gaining more and more ground against the invaders, the French finally quit and went home. Needless to say, their great plans to move on to North America were foiled. 

"On January 1, 1804, the island freedom fighters officially established their new independent nation, which they named Haiti, a word from the island's indigenous language, which means "land of the high mountains." Haiti became the first and only nation in history to be formed and led by former slaves after they successfully revolted against their masters, one of the very first nations on the planet to officially abolish slaver, and the second in the Western Hemisphere (after the United States) to achieve independence from the monarchs and dictators of the Old World. The Haitian revolution inspired abolitionist movements in other parts of the world..."

So I just remember, when I first read this book, feeling very grateful for these people in Haiti who fought for their freedom. They contributed in creating the free country I live in. I never knew this story before, but now that I do, I need to remember and be so thankful that they gave their lives for the freedom I enjoy. They played a part and are responsible, along with the Founding Fathers and patriots of the US Revolution, for creating the wonderful United States of America. It is a covenant land, and the covenant, with it's blessings and curses, remains upon it. I pray we will be righteous and serve Jesus Christ, that he may bless us! 

Book of Mormon, Ether 2:12

Ride, Audition, & Butterfly

I enjoyed my last bike ride this morning! The forecast said it was going to rain at 8, so I left early to be sure to get it in - woke up at 5:15 am, left at 5:30, and was at Corner Canyon before the Coyote Trail head gate opened. I left from the Coyote Trail Head and went up to BST to Ann's to Peakview to Ghost Falls. I think we're going to have this little girl's middle name be Ann, after Ann's trail, and after my mom if she's born on Tuesday (my mom's birthday). A view of the temple from Ann's - 

I did the quick Rush Trail from Canyon Hollow twice, cause it's so fun. It was a great ride. It never did rain, so I was in a hurry for nothing, but I'm glad it helped me get out quickly and start the day off in the mountains. I was back home before Corey and Abi left for her GMS audition. Corey said he heard that she did great in the audition, although he could tell she was lost and in over her head for the theory exam. The other people were writing down answers and Abi was at a loss just staring at the questions. 

They went out to Ihop after to celebrate all the hard work she had done preparing. 

After he got home, Corey took the little boys out to the Kangaroo Zoo again (Pleasant Grove this time) and they had fun. Corey is such a good dad to all of our children, big and little. And for me, today I've just been trying to getting stuff done before the baby comes next week! Abi found a butterfly in the back yard today, so that was fun.

She shared it with Daniel. 

It wasn't trying to fly at all and looked like it was struggling for some reason. We eventually left it in a tree, letting nature take it's course. We talked about monarchs, and I have hope that we'll find some eggs this year. We haven't had any caterpillars or butterflies the past 2 years. The last ones we had were two in 2019 and then another one that year. An article I read in January said that the numbers have increased in 2021, so I'm going to look more diligently this year. Numbers are still really low, but we're going to exercise faith. Our milkweed looks really good, so yeah, hopefully we'll have some monarch beauties this fall.

Biosphere Outing

I took Daniel and Peter to Thanksgiving Point today. We got there right when it opened, and they first went to play in the treehouse area. They were the only ones there and were a little worried that there were no other kids. 

Next we went to the Butterfly biosphere. Daniel was sad for a while when no butterflies landed on him. Soon one of the workers had one that she shared with us. It's wings were misshaped and I asked her about it, since we have experience with that, and she said yeah, he can't fly and this guys probably not going to live long. But it gave joy to a little 5 year old boy, so thank you butterfly!

I had a big blue one that kept flying and landing on my blue shirt, and a lady helped me get it off and Daniel was able to hold that one too. 

They didn't have any monarchs in their butterfly sanctuary or in their chrysalis hatching area. I hope the monarchs are ok! I miss the good ol' days when I found lots of eggs. We didn't have any this year. :(

It was discovered yesterday at Wesley's early morning practice that his skates are too big. Corey took him by Scheel's last night to try and find a pair that fit. They found out he was size 7, but instead of paying $250 for new skates, I'm glad that they waited while I looked in our bin of skates. We had a size 7. So I went and got those sharpened today for Wes so that he would be ready for practice after school. I also got him a sharpening punch card, aka I bought 10 sharpenings in bulk but at a discounted price, so next time Wes needs them sharpened it will be free on the punch card. They said it's good to get them sharpened after every 10 times on the ice. Good to know. They also do boot stretching at this little hockey shop, so that might be a good idea to get done for Wesley's skates too, but not today. Maybe after he gets a job to start helping pay for all this stuff.

I picked up Abi early from school again for her flute lesson today, and then I went and got Wes's skates sharpened, and then I snuck off to get in one more bike ride before the fall rains come, which should be starting tomorrow. I forgot my helmet but decided to go anyway. Sorry to the biking police if that is dangerous. I'd rather ride without a helmet than go back home to get it and not have time to come back. Started at Coyote Trailhead at 2:33, At Ann's east at 2:48, Peakview at 3:11, Ghost falls at 3:15, down then back up, second time down at 3:34. I really love Ghost falls, although it smelled really bad this time cause it started to rain and the dead leaves were stinky. I thought of how lovely Armstrong smelled of pine after the rains there. Well, I'm glad it was stinky, cause now I'm not sad about not being able to bike anymore. Ann's was nice. Pretty pink trees.

The rain started to pick up on my second time down, so I hurried back to the car and did not do the rush loop twice. I got back to take Wes to hockey and Abi to her game. Another Tuesday in the books.