So usually I have caterpillars to babysit during Park City. But this year... nothing. Last year wasn't as great as 2017, but this year, to not have anything left me more than a little concerned. No eggs, no caterpillars, nothing but a lot of empty milkweed in the back yard.
That would be so sad if monarchs become extinct! So for date night, I asked Corey if we could go see a 3D movie at Thanksgiving Point "Flight of the Butterflies" so I could get my monarch fix and maybe some hope for their species. I liked it and I think Corey did too! Peter slept through it.
It was funny, Corey and I met there for the movie. He came straight from work. And at first he went to the Megaplex theaters. Then he came over to the dinosaur museum were this film was. "There are more people over there..." he teased. Yeah, this theater isn't showing the new Hollywood flicks. I had bought out tickets and we went over to go into the empty theater. "You can sit anywhere you'd like" the lady said as she opened the door for us. But there was one other couple sitting in the middle of the top row. "Not anywhere..." Corey joked. Yes, not those two seats that those two other people are sitting in, but we have plenty of options. The movie was great. I am amazed that they are able to film something so small as the caterpillar coming out of it's egg. There was so much detail! I learned somethings that I did not now before. Monarchs can travel 50 miles a day. And they can be like a mile up in the sky when they fly!! But they don't flutter that far, they glide in the air. Like they are blown where they need to go - that's how they migrate! They said that the monarchs migrate during the day and rest at night. So I decided to check the milkweed the next morning again, and I found two eggs on Saturday morning!! Yay! The eggs turned black today and one of them came out tonight, the other one will probably be out before midnight.
I'm so happy we have two!! I will pray for their little lives! And you can bet I'm against abortion. A little human baby is smaller than these caterpillars, and his or her life is even more valuable. I honestly don't understand how any lover of nature or earth could support abortion. Protect these helpless creations, let them all live. I hope these little guys make it. If they do, we'll match our 2018 butterfly total. Also, at church on Sunday we had a lesson on repentance. I had monarchs on the brain. She shared how in President Nelson's recent General Conference talk, he spoke of being and doing better. He spoke of how we do that through repentance. He shared that repentance comes from the Greek work "metanoao". The prefix "meta" means change, like in Metamorphosis "change form". Change - we can change like a butterfly I thought - by feasting and feasting (not on milkweed, but on the word of God) and that will help us GROW (like the caterpillars grow!) and soon we'll have a mighty change of heart, just like the caterpillars have a mighty change and become new creatures. We like them can become new creatures that can reach new heights that their former little caterpillar selves could have never have imagined nor done on their own. We have to change. We do it through the miracles Christ give us as he blessed us with growth and he will help us become new creatures that are like him. I'm going to keep pondering on that and trying to understand repentance better and how I am supposed to do it daily. Grow little catterpillars, grow! I will grow too, time to go feast on the word.
Mel came back to the valley with me last night. She's been here with me most of the day. We came down last night cause she had a flute lesson today. Joseph came home too - he left this morning for a trip with his Voodoo Orchestra to the Telluride Jazz Festival in Colorado. It's nice having Mel here. She appreciates the caterpillars and joins me in having high hopes of a great monarch harvest this year (knock on wood...) We're butterfly farmers! They make a lot of frass to clean up, and that bothers my ultra-hygiene conscious boys to have caterpillar poop close by in the bathroom where they brush their teeth. So I've moved big group of them to the laundry room, but I did move them back to the bathroom temporarily while they are gone and cause I'm doing laundry, and I can't have them on the washer or dryer with how much it vibrates. I'll get them out of here in a bit..
Although it is much easier to find them and count them with the mirror behind helping me see where they were all hiding. I love it when they are big enough to hold too, they are really cute little bugs.
I've got a few downstairs in the kitchen. This one went wandering and made his j-hook by the kitchen sink.
Last year, if my memory serves me right, we had like 2 or 3 make it, despite having almost 30 eggs. Ok... just looked back at my blog, and this is why I blog, cause apparently my memory does in fact not serve me well. According to a mid August post last year, I documented that we had 4 make it through the life cycle to fly away as monarchs, but it was almost 5... that last butterfly loss was hard for me and almost made me vow not to get involved again. But the months pass by and my resolve grows weaker. Then summer comes and I get excited when I see the milkweed growing in our yard, and I look for and find eggs, just to see... and then before I know it I'm clipping leaves and bringing them in and we start watching the miracle take place.
"Ooh! Look! A little baby! He's so cute!!"
I'm perfecting the process. I should probably get some mesh cages though. We had 3 run away from the milkweed before they made their silkpads. Two of them have been located and one is still MIA.
Owen likes to see the bugs. "A bug!" Little cute bugs. We have had some of them die. This one just slowly dried up, not sure what was wrong, but it looked like he wasn't able to completely molt out of his skin or something?
I also found lots of larva that I first thought were tachinid flies that eat monarchs, but after further research I think they are milkweed leaf miner bugs, cause we have lots of leaves that look infected and I found lots of larva in the water around the leaves. So yay, the caterpillars have been safe from parasites, phew.
So, as of now, we have 13 that made it to chrysalis! One turned black on day 2 and I think it's dead but we're leaving it on there for a bit longer.
Today 4 more turned into chrysalis, and we've still got 10 more in their last instar - 3 in j-hook right now and 2 are making their silk pads. Then we have 10 small caterpillars in the bathroom and I found 5 more eggs this morning! One hatched this afternoon. I think this has been a great year for our monarchs! I've found all of these as eggs in our yard except for two which our neighbor (and resident monarch expert!) Lisa gave me when they were going out of town. We are excited to see them come out. They are little miracles.
So that's the bug update. We're heading back up to Park City in a few, going to pick up Mel after her lesson is over at 4:45 and head straight up.
Today we went to Thanksgiving Point to go to the Dinosaur Museum, but instead we did it all! We went to the Museum of Curiosity, then we went to the farm, and then we went to the Dinosaur Museum! And then we went out for ice cream. It was fun, and I'm glad to have a helper like Abi along. I didn't do a great job this summer of doing daily activities like I had planned, so I'm gonna try to shove in a few more things before the summer is over. Today's outing was brought upon me by my trying to think of something to distract Owen with so that he would willingly let Corey leave for work.
"Owen, do you want to go to the Dinosaur Musuem?" "Oh yeah! Bye Dad!" So then Corey could leave, and then we had to leave too. First I made the kids clean up a little bit, and then we were on our way. At the Curiosity Museum they were able to pet a snake.
Natalie thought that was freaky
Then they ran around doing whatever, but Owen didn't like it, he wanted to go to the dinosaur museum.
He was happy and distracted a little bit by a video game that was projected from the ceiling...
But he still wanted to leave. That was my first time going to that museum. I guess it's geared more toward the older kids. They liked it, but the toddlers weren't happy, so we left. We decided to try and see if Owen would be happy if we went to the farm. He'd never been there before. They liked seeing the animals and petting the bunny
Owen still wanted to go to the dinosaur museum. But then we went to the pony ride... Daniel got on and I walked around with him while Abi held Peter.
After seeing that, Owen said yes, he would like to ride the horsey.
And then he did! Our timid little Owen rode the pony! Good job Owen!! Then everyone went on a ride again. Natalie -
Sophi - her horse started to go to the bathroom...
And then she didn't like her horse much, haha. Oh give the poor horse a break.
Owen riding a pony again.
After riding the ponies and seeing the other captive animals, we went over to the dinosaur museum. I've taken enough pictures of that before, so no pics of that this time. As we were leaving though, I took some pictures of a Monarch butterfly display, so cool... Everything you want to know about monarchs...
"Eastern North American monarchs spend the summer months in southern Canada and the northern US but cannon survive the cold winters. Each autumn they migrate south. Westen North American monarchs journey to costal California while those from eastern North America migrate to mountains in central Mexico." I won't type any more of the display, you can find it all online I'm sure.
But I do want to see the "Flight of the Butterflies" documentary they have showing there. But I don't want to pay $6 bucks for each kid. Maybe I'll turn it into a date night. Friday at 6:30, I'm putting it on my calendar. Then we took some Pride Rock Lion King pictures outside.
Peter is Simba, Sophi and Lily were the animals
That's a cute little lion cub! We love Peter
They finally agreed to go and accept my nice cream bribe, which I put up there early to try and wrap this outing up...
Not that I don't love spending time with my kiddos! but 3 attractions was enough for me to be done and ready to head home.
It was a quick dish of cashew ice cream from Aubergine and then a big slice of pizza at SLAB Pizza
I went over to order the pizza while they waited for the nice cream, then I came back and helped my crew move over to the pizza place, which was a bit less crowded.
And then we were done, hooray for a successful kind of end of summer outing. Time to gear up for the school year, less than 2 weeks it's back to reality.
I've recommitted myself to writing to Joseph. We've kinda slacked off with writing him now that we talk to him via video every week. But he asked for letters, so I wrote a good one last week, and did another good one today. Go me. Of course we'll still "parent" Joseph for the rest of his and our lives, but our parenting job of guiding and preparing him is done. He's out on his own and he seems to be a fuctioning adult, so maybe we did a good job. Here's my letter to him today:
Hi Joseph!
It's been a good weekend. I've studied the Book of Mormon a lot this week - I started over with 1 Nephi at the beginning of the month but got on a nice tangent after reading 1 Nephi 17:3 with the "And thus we see" phrase. I looked up each time that phrase is used and what we are being taught - cause that phrase to me means they are emphasizing and pointing out "This is the point I'm trying to teach you..." and it's usually Mormon pointing out something to us in the latter days, and once when they are teaching the Nephites - Alma teaching Zeezrom (Alma 12:22). Here is a picture of the list I made. I used my smart phone to search for the phrase, so I think that is all of them.
I made a chain in my scriptures, numbering each verse and then listing each reference before and after. I also loved Helaman 12 - like I could have highlighted that whole chapter as a point of the story - I nicknamed it Mormon's Rant, cause he kinda just goes off!
What else... we cleaned the chapel on Saturday morning. Natalie worked a little bit but then she wanted to teach us a lesson so she wrote on the white board and said "CLEAN THE CHURCH" (CLI THE CRSHR) while we worked. She is so cute, I'm going to miss her being gone all day next week when first grade starts.
For date night Dad came with me to see a 3d Movie about monarchs at Thanksgiving Point. We haven't had any butterflies yet this year, but I finally did find two eggs on Sunday morning. They haven't hatched yet, I hope they're not duds... Monarchs don't flutter when they migrate, they glide! they can be a mile up in the air floating basically in the air currents, pretty amazing. And at church we talked about Pres Nelson's talk about repentance - from the greek work metanoao - and I thought of metamorphosis - and she shared Elder Christofferson's daily bread talk, and I thought of how a caterpillar just feasts and feasts and eats and grows (like we feast on the word and that helps us grow) until we have a mighty change, like butterflies into chrysalis, and after that we learn to let the wind/Lord take us where he wants us to go.
Monarchs are so amazing. I learned stuff I didn't know, Pretty amazing creatures. Peter slept through it.
Dad and MHALSNO are on their way back from Bear Lake. I went up there yesterday with EDP, W was at Telluride. It was fun though!! I think we should do it again next year.
The beach was basically as close to the tents as the beach was to the Stouts house in Costa Rica. Beautiful blue lake, it was shallow so there wasn't a fear of kids drowning...
Plenty of shade for the adults to sit and watch but not get cooked (Dad still got pretty red, I need to help him remember to always put on sunblock, his poor balding head just get burnt everytime, even in the shade.
It was what Park city should be but can't be because of the tv and too many different places to split off. We were all together, Mark cooked the meals for them, everyone was there, Dad, Gma and Gpa Wride, and SNO stayed in the worldmark room, the rest of the kids camped on the shore.
Ethan and I drove back to pick up Wes and for the Crescent End of Year party at 7. When we left Logan the car light said low pressure, and when we pulled in the drive way it was all the way flat!!!
I don't know if it was like that the whole time or just got flat near the end, but I feel very blessed and protected that we didn't get stuck on the side of the road with a flat or with a blow out. Maybe we ruined the car rim, I don't know, but yeah, I felt so thankful that we arrived home safely.
I went to the orthodontist today, I have 8 more weeks then I'm done! Yay. While i waited I read a LDS LIving magazine story of a couple who escaped North Korea. He left first, he found the Catholic church, prayed for his wife to be able to come, he helped her escape. He wanted her to come to mass with her, but she didnt' like it. But he'd beg her to come and make deals like that he would clean the house if she came or other things. Then she let in LDS missionaries and really liked what they taught about eternal life, cause she knew she wanted to be iwth her family back in North Korea but that she would also never see them again on earth. So she loved it and loved going to the LDS church, but he felt loyal to his new catholic faith and friends, so then she made a deal with him: Come to church wtih me, and if you don't feel anything, I wont' ever bring it up again and we'll be catholic. He went and felt it as soon as he walked in the chapel. He said he saw the word "GOD" written above everyone's heads. So yeah, Jesus won that one!! They came to Utah as refugees and are living in Provo and going to Utah Valley and were sealed in the Provo City Center temple. I just love the church. I love the scriptures. We are so so blessed to have them, how did we get so lucky? What can we do to ever thank him enough? I hope one of you kids goes on a mission to Korea. I feel like Alma, but I also know what God has called me to do. My mission is motherhood!! And I love it and feel blessed to lose my life in serving you kids and your dad. I like this quote I heard from Elder Maxwell (as we drove to Bear Lake yesterday - October 2000 "The Tugs and Pulls of the World") "Let us likewise honor the special place of the family. As James Q. Wilson wrote: “We learn to cope with the people of this world because we learn to cope with the members of our family. Those who flee the family flee the world; bereft of the [family’s] affection, tutelage, and challenges, they are unprepared for the [world’s] tests, judgments, and demands” (The Moral Sense [1993], 163). How ironical that some go “into a far country” (Luke 15:13), leaving the nourishing family garden—in which there may be some weeds—and go into a desert with its tumbling sagebrush." I feel so lucky to be able to help all of you guys prepare for life! You are all learning so much and are going to do great things. Love you Joseph! So proud of the man you are becoming!!!
xoxo
love you
Mom
I think Joseph would say that we are good parents. Acutally he did say that in a email he sent me on mother's day -
Well mothers day here is on friday, and there it is Sunday, and since we call every week we aren't going to be calling on Sunday.
Soooo I thought I'd wish you happy mother's day today!!
I didn't realize how great of a mom you were until I got out teaching families that live in broken homes. People that, for one reason or another, live in familiy circumstances that are just really hard. We're trying to help them with the Gospel, but it has also made so grateful for the gospel centered home I grew up in. Haha that's kind of weird to say "the home I grew up in" as if I finished growing up because it doesn't feel like I have even though I kind of have. I think if I'm lucky I'll be able to live at the house for a few months until school states at the Y before I'll be completely on my own. Or I'll be on my own the same day I get home. We'll see what happens I guess. But I really do appreciate all you guys have done to bring us up in a home where you and dad taught us what we should and shouldn't do and helped us learn so that we can choose for ourselves. Being a parent, I am starting to darme cuenta, is probably a lot harder than I used to think it was. And the fact that you do it with so many kids! As Iveth said in her whatsapp message you are incredible mom. People don't believe me that I have 11 siblings until I show them the photo. Then they count, ask if daniel and owen are twins, and ask where the 12th one is and I explain that he was just barely born so I haven't even met him yet. They are really super amazed and I am also super amazed. I don't know how you do it but you do. Kind of like the printing of the Book of Mormon.
So keep teaching the rest of the kids and using come follow me and helping them develop Christlike attributes and read the Book of Mormon every day and they'll all turn out great!
Thanks for all you've done and continue to do for me!! Remember that your number one fan in preaching the Gospel in the Promised Land!
LOVE YOU MOM!!
________________
So I hope and do believe that all of our kids will eventually remember us that way. But we've found a new youtube channel that I think accurately shows our relationship with most of our children right now, which is we are the bad guys that are too strict, too mean, and too demanding. The channel is called Odd1sOut or Odd 1s Out, (I'm not sure if it has spaces in it or not). So I first came across these last Thursday (8/8/19) when Corey sent me video titled "My Mom's Cruel and Unusual Punishments". Corey and I have a lot in common with this video. One reason being that Corey spent much time as a child on the inside of circular clothing racks. Another way we relate is cause of how we also sometimes use the strategy of taking bites of their treats to get them to behave,
So I think this mom is basically me, or atleast how I feel like I want to act "No sugar!"
including her semi-permanent scowl, ha. No time to mess around with so many kids. I feel like I always need to get down to business and be efficient.
I love at 5:24 where his mom kicks the cell phone from his hand. "NO wasting time on youtube!! Go Practice!"
I also liked the humor of parenting in the Clothes video, and part of the Wrong Numbers reminded me what it's like sometime as I try to point out the obvious to my teens. I'm also pretty frugal/cheap and make them pay for most of their "wants" at Walmart or Kid to Kid. I'll buy needs or treat them to shopping at the DI though, aren't I generous!
So those were my favorite parts, try to spot them if you give it a watch.
Some of our other favorites from his channel so far: Ethan, who worked as Subway for 2 days and who also knows the life of a fast food employee, enjoyed the Subway videos - Subway 1, Subway 2, Subway 3. And then today I had a flashback to my own childhood as we watched his commentary on the Dark Crystal, I remember all those freaky puppets!! My children had never heard of the Dark Crystal, and now their interest is piqued!
Oh the 80s and the entertainment we grew up with! I wonder if my mother saw that with us? If she did, what did she think of it? I don't recall having nightmares from the Dark Crystal, but I do remember being terrified of Gremlins. I never saw it, I just saw the commercial for it, and I also remember seeing a book about the movie around my house, that I looked at with curiosity and fear. Ok, so anyway, I think I had great parents. And I think and hope we're doing a good job parenting and preparing our kids for what it out there in the world waiting for them!
The kids have missed seeing the monarchs emerge this year. We've only had late season butterflies and so the kids have been in school. Luckily it was parent teacher conferences this week, so that means today is a teacher work day, so the kiddos are out of school today, and today one of the monarchs emerged! And we're gonna be lucky again tomorrow, which is when the other one will emerge (judging by the timing of when they turned into chrysalis') So, hooray! They were able to see the butterfly today! So pretty.
It made a nice addition the vase of flowers on the kitchen table.
Sophi, who had been the most tearful to have not held the caterpillars, was the first to hold the butterfly.
And then we put it on the kitchen table for kids to watch.
Eventually we took it outside. This pretty butterfly is a boy!!
(Can you see the dark spots on the two bottom wings?) We put it out on the tree in the backyard before noon, and it was there through out the afternoon when we checked on it. I let a few neighbor kids hold it as I was out checking on it and they were passing through the yard. And as we switched it fingers between kids on our front porch, it flew away and into the tree farm. I didn't have shoes on so I didn't follow it, and so it was soon out of sight and probably impossible to find. So with that we bid this young fellow adieu. I did just check the weather, and today it was fine, but the forecast tomorrow and into the next week don't look good for butterflies...
I have just been doing more butterfly research and google tells me via butterfly fun facts that they can't fly if it's below 60 - and the high temperatures next week are lower than that. And if they are wet in freezing temperatures they will die. We're getting down to freezing on Monday... I hope that little guy makes it! I might put out a request on facebook tomorrow (like I did in 2017) to see if anyone can take our last butterfly down to south to warmer weather.
Tonight Corey and I went on a date to the Church Museum. It was raining, so Corey parked the car. While I waited, I looked around the gift shop where I saw some beautiful cards, which I have since learned are called Quilling Cards. Holy amazing, wow-wow-wow-wow. They were just on white paper - but then there was small paper scrolls shaped into beautiful pictures and images - I loved the colors, love the detail, love love love them! I started to pick out ones I wanted - they had a monarch butterfly ~
Gotta have that one, and I wanted the violin too, and the other violin... cause I couldn't decide which one I liked more. And they had a pretty piano card too, and an Eagle (for Skyline, so that's part of our family history, or could be for the USA). As I've looked online they have more that they didn't have at the store - a saxophone and trumpet, cool! Looks like we got most of our musical instruments covered. Sorry Mel, no flute. Anyway, at the museum I soon had a pile of 10. I put most of them back, but did get a few that I hope to put on the walls soon! I still hardly have anything decorating the walls here. it was nice to be there and to get a little more inspired and to see a little more of the art from the International Art Competition. This time I was most impressed by the piece "What is a Seed but Sunlight Sent into the Future" Looking at that one up close, I still could not tell that they were photographs of seeds, but I loved the idea, the title, and the work that went into recreating the Palmyra night sky in March 1820. I have a goal to someday make something to enter, I hope it's something with symbolism and meaning behind it. After Corey and I looked around we sat in a pioneer exhibit to see info about how people traveled to Utah/Zion. Our yoga baby used the opportunity at the museum to get in more downward dog practice.
Peek a boo Peter!!! You are the cutest!
It was a nice date, I think I'd like for us to go there more often and bring the kids too.
