Raising Monarchs ~ Chrysalis is Formed

We noticed today that the caterpillar had formed the 'J' formation and was only a matter of time for the Chrysalis.  So a few hours later we were happy to see everything was right on schedule!

I took this though the netting so its hard to see but if you click on it you will see the caterpillar in J formation.

The chrysalis :)  The gold flecks on it are never shown as nice as they are in real life!

Newest Critter!

The children and I volunteer at the local cat shelter each week...  As you can imagine (if you are an animal lover like us) it is very challenging going in there and not taking them all home!  We have been talking for some time about getting a friend for our Siamese cat Oreo.  So last night we went and found the perfect crazy addition...  He's affectionate and a little nuts, fits in perfectly.

His name is Sweetie!

He found the boy's math book wonderfully fun!

Nom, nom, nom...

Little Miss can't escape his clutches either...

Her new baby...

A rest after all that chewing!

Gymanstics!

Little Miss has finished gymnastics this week!  She had an amazing time and would like to sign up for next Fall!  Here are some pictures of the last class, they are grainy as I was up in the balcony seating with a not so happy zoooom :)

Pose before she got her certificate!

Wonderland!

We went to Wonderland this week!!  It was the HOTTTEST day EVER!!!  We seriously melted but the kiddos all had a blast :)  The waterpark was open so we played there in the afternoon and the kids did rides in the morning.  Fun Fun!!

Brand new disgustingly high ride!  That was their cart going up!

Yellow Belt!

The boy received his Yellow Belt in BJJ this week!  He was very proud as he understands how much time and hard work it is in achieving belts.  Jiujitsu is much slower than martial arts as it pertains to movement up the belt system.  It took a school year and classes 2x a week to get here, he felt great.

The boy with Coach Sean from Musashi Martial Arts!

Timbbbbeeeerrrr!

We spent an afternoon at the beach with a few friends and we noticed some weather moving in.  So we started packing up the cars.  Well these crazy winds came right off the water and seriously blew down a tree.  We happened to be parked in front of it, thankfully the wind was blowing the other way!

Raising Monarchs ~ A Moment of Ewwww! and Gah!

So if you've been following our Raising Monarch you'll know we found a leaf with about 16 eggs on it.  The eggs were identical to Monarch eggs so we had hoped these little ones were just that.  Well as we kept on watching we noticed the eggs got what looked like 4 red dots on top, which didn't seem right but we kept on checking on them.  Well the other night we looked and they were BLACK.  I thought perhaps they had just rotted or something.  So I put the kids to bed and looked at the eggs one more time, well they were MOVING!  Ewww and Gah!  It turns out we had hatched some type of beetle or ladybug looking thing!  So we transferred them outdoors.  Watching them pulse out of their eggs was blah for me LOL  Click the pictures for a closer look.

Back to our actual Monarch caterpillar, it's huge!  We moved it into the butterfly house with a stick for climbing and it's doing really well!  We should have a chrysalis soon :)