The Very Hungry Caterpillars

We have been raising some very hungry caterpillars into monarch butterflies for the last few weeks. Great Aunt Carol and I caught the caterpillars and we have them hatching in a mesh caterpillar environment. The girls enjoyed watching them at the caterpillar stage - they only eat milkweed so we had fun harvesting the leaves and feeding our friends.

We are now at the cocoon stage - we have two caterpillars of the four that have successfully made it into cocoons. We did have three, but Abby got really excited about the first one and ran, with the cage, to show me. That cocoon fell down and oozed a lot, so I'm not sure it will make it into a fully developed butterfly. But the two that are cocooning are changing - you can see the patterns in their wings through the cocoons. It has been a fun process to watch. And... we even had a little caterpillar hatch from an egg in the last few days. We took it out of the environment in our house and released it in a patch of milkweed in town, since we had used up all our picked milkweed and the other caterpillars had already cocooned. Now... the wait for butterflies is on :-)

No Shot Monday

This is the first Monday in a four weeks that the girls haven't needed to have a rabies shot. I don't even know what I am going to do with all the free time I am going to have today because I am not waiting in a waiting room and then spending the afternoon comforting two little girls and discussing in great detail Abby's bat obsessions. I'm hoping that after next Monday's shot (the last one) that we will be able to finally get over the bat/rabies talking that has been a daily occurrence around here.

The girls and I got to spend a day with my parents and littlest sisters on Mackinac Island on Friday and we had a great day. We got to explore the local shops, rode bikes all the way around the island, enjoyed the pool and saw the inside of the Grand Hotel where my family was staying, and got to ride the ferry boats twice. The girls really enjoyed time with Grandma Mary, Grandpa Scott, Hannah, and Emily the most. It had been 14 years since I rode a bike and I will probably not be on one again for about another 14 years - my knees were not appreciating my efforts on Saturday.

The Osgood Annual Camping Trip

We spent last weekend at the Blind Sucker Flooding with Great Grandma Jennie & Grandpa Steve Osgood, Grandma Mary & Grandpa Scott, Melissa, Jack, Emma, Hannah, and Emily (and some other cousins and aunts and uncles too - too many to list). The girls had a really good time playing outside and being spoiled rotten by all the relatives. And Grandpa Scott found us an old pop-up camper that our car can pull, so Abby spent the weekend reveling in her camper, which could have been the Taj Mahal with as wonderful as she thought it was. Steve and I weren't as impressed (don't get me wrong, we both like it a lot), but with a little work it should be lots of fun for the next few years. We had some minor mishaps like forgetting to put the back jacks down so that it flipped up when everyone was checking out the back bunk (neither Steve nor I were in the camper for that trick. The top also dropped once without being triggered. It didn't fall all the way down and with some supports it's now totally safe. And then there was the incident where the tire fell off on the dirt road on our way home. Luckily we were only 4 miles from the campground and no one had left to go fishing yet so we were able to get some help putting the tire back on and getting home.

Both girls got to catch a fish - they were very small, but the girls still had fun. And we had lots and lots of blueberry pancakes and smores. Yummy!