Baby, Biking, & Monarchs

It was a busy Saturday. We woke up, took Abi to the bus for GMS, then the kids left with Corey to clean the church. Lily had a GMS chamber audition this afternoon, and this evening. The girls played dolls with Katharine again. Natalie changing her outfit - 

Lily dressing her up as little red riding hood - 

They styled her hair and put a little curl on top of her heard that was so adorable!

She's just the prettiest thing. She's almost three months old! Yay! 3-6 months is my favorite time of babyhood! 

We'll have to take lots of pictures of you as we soak up your cuteness, you pretty thing!

Corey took the kids to the Corner Canyon cycle park. I've never been over to these little loop tracks. The kids liked it and had a lot of fun!

It is so cute to hear Daniel's little squeals of joy - 

While they were gone, I stayed home with K and W was doing homework. Then his YMAD friend Wilson came over, and I was feeding K in my room and watched them from my bedroom window as they moved the trampoline over next to the shed, and then proceed to jump off of the roof of the shed. 

I'm glad they didn't break any legs or kill themselves. Then they played street hockey. After they were back, I showed the girls how Katharine had been laughing hard at me when I put her up on our dresser and I was below - and I looked up at her and put my head back, and as I put it back up I'd tell her that she was "sooooo BIG!" and she thought that was really funny....

...until we tried to get it on video, of course

SHE IS STINKING ADORABLE!

Side note - I read about this in July and here's a follow up story with more details... if you want some scary real life drama to read, search Josh Sabey on facebook for his August 21 post titled "Good Intentions" where he describes his kids being taken from him and his wife by the state of Massachusetts. He has a video too. It is terrifying and I have been thinking a lot about it, It would truly be such a nightmare! And their youngest was 3 months old at the time, and that's the same as Katharine, so I just can't imagine ANYONE being able to come to my home and take away my children. Horrifying.

And for our butterfly update - Maria's gone. She was mostly dead yesterday morning, and I thought Jerry had beat her up trying to mate or something, but then yesterday I put them together and "Maria" seemed to be aggressive going toward him, so maybe "Maria" is a male? I don't know, but I decided to separate them last night. I kept Jerry inside on the flower, and he stayed there all night like a good boy. This morning - looking regal from his lookout post - 

Can you see his silhouette there? So cute! After seeing that Jerry was all good, I went to check on Maria outside on the table, safely contained in her mesh cage, and I lifted it up and she looked dead again. I checked it she was just mostly dead like yesterday, but she was even more mostly dead struggling to move, so I decided to humanely euthanize her in the freezer. I put her in a baggie in the freezer and the kids found her and I confessed that yet, I put her out of her misery. Might not have been the right choice, but that's what I decided to do. Soon we will have a ceremony and bury her. I'm sorry little butterfly. I'm sorry you got stuck in your chrysalis. :( I am wondering why they get stuck, if there is something that might cause it? When Maria was with two other butterflies as chrysalides, the stick fell over in the kitchen and hit the counter top - I wonder if that did something to it and Maria's chrysalis took the most hit and that messed it up? The other two turned out fine, so maybe that didn't cause the problem but maybe it did if hers was hit worse. Anyway, so now we're back to just Jerry again. Well, Jerry plus 23 chrysalides, 6 that j-hooked and went to chrysalis, we gave 3 to our nieces, I have 4  caterpillars, 2 caterpillars that hatched, and then yesterday I found 41 eggs, and thought surely there couldn't be more... so I go just to check for one minute... and found 8, oh my goodness. 

I get a small container and go searching for more and found a total of 47 eggs today. Forty Seven! So I have 87 eggs!!! It is CRAZY! I had to change the way I keep the eggs to accommodate so many.

I thought things have been crazy up until now when I had like 20 big caterpillars, but if I have like 40 or 50?!?!? This is going to get so nuts!! I shall not dwell on the craziness, I shall go take a deep breath and enjoy the flowers with our cute little wingless butterfly. I went to put Jerry out for some sunshine and flower time - 

I hope he doesn't mind only having humans for company. And tonight when I put him to bed - Goodnight Jerry! See you tomorrow!