Lorelle life photos

 

Dirty fingernails and all, I love this picture.

Catherine and Banner in matching dresses

Because fish belong in water, Mom. Duh.

Butterfly serendipity

Vincent at his butterfly class.

As Hannibal Smith from the A-Team always said, I love it when a plan comes together. I love it even more when I didn't have a real plan, yet something ties together so nicely that it looks like I did!

Eastern swallowtail caterpillar

Such was the case this week. I found a big old caterpillar munching on my parsley (the one thing in the garden that actually grows), and from past experience I knew that soon he would invite all his friends over for a Parsley Party and I would be left with just the stems. So I scooped him and the parsley leaves up, put them in a jar, and hunkered down to watch. I mean, if he was going to eat my food, the least he could do was chrysalize for a great science project. So the kids and I read lots of books about caterpillars and butterflies, researched our own caterpillar (an eastern swallowtail), did fingerprint caterpillars, drew the caterpillar, talked about symmetry, and looked at butterfly videos online.

Luckily our caterpillar did his part. After four days he suddenly stopped eating and pooping, crawled up on a stem, and overnight turned into a dark brown chrysalis. Success!

The next morning I noticed on the calendar that I had signed Vincent up for some nature class and totally forgot about it (yeah, I'm organized). Off we went to our favorite park, only to discover that the class was about... butterflies! Let me tell you my maternal pride when Vincent informed the teacher that "our eatern wallowwail butterwy just went fru metamowowsis." Be still my heart. They even went off like little safari enthusiasts and caught a tiger swallowtail with their nets.

Then, today we went out to the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. One of the best things there (besides the train) is the Butterfly House, which is home to all sorts of gorgeous butterflies just fluttering about the exotic trees. Turns out we were right on time for the live butterfly release (success again!) so the kids got to see first-hand all sorts of butterflies entering the "wild."

Ah. I love it when a plan comes together! 

Celebrating six years

Hardly seems like it's been six years... Catherine started her sixth year with a birthday breakfast at IHOP, forever rechristened HipHop by Vincent. And while I thought for sure she'd go with the sky-high platter of pancakes, our classy little girl opted for the fresh berry crepes (obviously the steady diet of Food Network has rubbed off on her). Since they did not have root beer pancakes (Roger inquired to make sure) Vincent settled for smiley-face pancakes, and Dominic just snatched food from everybody else's plate.Fast forward to present-opening that evening. Catherine loved all the art stuff and pretend stuff, including the medieval princess gown (now we HAVE to go to a Renaissance Festival). Thanks to you Ohio folks for all the great stuff! I'm putting some pics up from that celebration as well.