Six Monarchs

We had six monarch butterflies come out today! Here I am with four of them - so fun...

In that pic above, the butterfly with it's wings open is a male. The males are identified by their thinner veins and by the little spots on the veins on those two bottom wings. That means it's a male. The females have thick black veins and no spots. I've given away a lot of butterflies this year, so here at our house we haven't had many eclose (emerge) on the same day, so this was a special treat. Corey took the boys to their soccer game today, and so I was home with the rest of the kids and we had fun in the backyard playing with these wonders of creation. Melodie and Wes went camping out at the salt flats last night with Ethan. Her BeReal - 

Mel decided to stay here when they came to drop off Wes, so it was fun to have her here and to share the butterflies with her. She was holding Katharine when K held a butterfly for the first time! 

Her little facial expressions in that video are so sweet! She looked like she was really in awe!

In this video, one of the butterflies flew right onto Katharine's face, but she held so still and did not freak out. I was so proud of her! (longer version of the video above here). It was so cute and the butterfly was ok too.

The kids were able to enjoy the butterflies for about an hour. Katharine protested a bit when her butterfly flew away... (longer video of that moment here. And below is a 7 min video of our fun. 

Natalie wanted earrings, but one of the butterflies wanted to be a bow, so decided it would start walking up to her head.

Playing with the butterflies was the highlight of my day. I hope our kids look back on their childhood and feel that it was a pretty magical time, cause it has been. Thank you, Lord, for the beauty of this world, for our lovely children, and for these magical moments of life that we get to share together with them!