Metamorphosis

The butterflies have emerged! Today the last of the five painted lady butterflies in Hannah's butterfly "habitat" emerged from its chyrsallis.

First, we watched the caterpillars form their chrysallises.


When they were all formed, we could move the paper lid from the jar and pin it to the side of the mesh habitat.


We waited another week or so and out came the butterflies! The girls even got to watch one "hatch" right before their eyes yesterday.


So exciting! (Sorry the pictures aren't that great -- it's hard to get a good picture through the mesh fabric.) Hopefully we will release them into the great outdoors soon!

Writer's Workshop

Last week I was invited to Courtney's kindergarten class for their Writer's Workshop presentation. The kids have been working all year on writing and publishing their own stories. The parents were invited so the kids could show and read their stories to them.

Courtney had a folder full of stories! On some she had only done the covers but hadn't started writing the story yet. She is quite the little author and illustrator, just like her big sister.

She wanted me to take pictures of her holding all of her stories - here are just a few:

(I don't know if you can see it here, but it made me smile to see that she misspelled her name on two of the covers -- must have been in a hurry!)

And you can even hear her reading one of her stories to me. This one is called "The Runaway Milk."

Way to go, Courtney!

Fairy Tale Theater - Part 2

The second little play Hannah was in as part of her 2nd Grade's class production was "The Brementown Rappers".

Hannah had the part of the rooster, or "Da Roosta" as she is come to be known by.

She told me initially that she was so embarrassed that she had to wear the "chicken hat," but she seems to have accepted it as part of her costume.

Again, I tried to edit the video so it was only her parts (and not so long). This for the grandmas and grandpas that couldn't be there in person!

Fairy Tale Theater - Part 1

Last week I was able to visit Hannah's 2nd Grade class to see their class productions of some "mixed-up" fairy tales. I knew she had been practicing her parts for quite a while and she was excited to perform!

Her class did three little plays -- Hannah had parts in two of them. First, she was the narrator in "Slurping Beauty."

She did such a great job! I loved the expression she put into her voice -- and as you can see in the video clip when I had the camera on her, she used a lot of facial expressions too.

I tried to edit the video clip down so it is only her speaking parts and not quite so long -- that's why it might seem a little choppy in parts.

Here she is taking a box with the cast at the end. Bravo!

Piano Recital

Last Sunday afternoon the kids had a piano recital. Both McKay & Hannah did really well! McKay has really been fighting me about piano lessons lately -- he practically refused at one point to even go to the recital. But he did go and he did really well -- got a lot of compliments afterward. I'm not going to make him take lessons over the summer, but I hope he'll decide he wants to continue on his own. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed!)

Here is Hannah practicing at home before the recital:

Their recital was held at the other church building in Amarillo (not the one we go to for our meetings). Their teacher is in one of the other wards. Here they are with their teacher, Sister Funderburk:

Hannah went first. She decided at the last minute to play two songs: "Lone Star Waltz" and "Malaguena".

For McKay's song, he and his teacher decided that he would accompany the congregation in singing a hymn. He has said that one reason he wants to play the piano is so he can play at church (in Priesthood or on his mission, etc.) He likes to play hymns and Primary songs, so his teacher thought it would be good for him to play for a congregation. He picked the hymn "We Thank Thee, O God, For a Prophet" and his teacher led the music while we all sang two verses.

(And yes, since I'm the one holding the camera, that's me you can hear the loudest -- yikes.)

We're so proud of our little pianists! I hope they keep improving their talents.

Mother's Day Pictures

I realized it's been quite a while since we've had a whole family picture taken, so on Sunday, we took one! (And thanks to having our brother-in-law Brandon here, we didn't even have to get out the tripod!)

Here are a few more pics from Sunday with my girls in their new spring dresses. (I took them shopping for summer shoes and somehow they all ended up with a new dress too...)

Me and my crew on Mother's Day:

I had a nice Mother's Day if you don't count the mini-flood we had after church. We had a toilet get plugged up in the kid's bathroom -- this in itself is a fairly common occurence with kids, but unfortunately on this day the toilet decided to keep running instead of shutting off. Hannah discovered the mess some time later with an exclamation of "There's water all over the floor!" I thought someone had just spilled something, but when I went around the corner, she wasn't kidding. A nice layer of water coming out of the bathroom and into the family room. Got the edge of the carpet into the kid's bedroom and underneath a couple of bookcases. But we managed to get it cleaned up and don't seem to have too much lasting damage, thankfully.

One nice part of my Mother's Day was getting to hear two of my kids play in a piano recital. They did great -- hope to put up pictures and maybe a video clip soon!

Turtle Time

With the weather warming up, the girls have been so excited to discover the turtles again this year. We saw several turtles last summer in the yard and wondered if they'd show up again once it got warm enough. I wonder why we even have turtles around here -- don't they usually need some sort of water source?

Anyway, the girls just found their second turtle of the year and it instantly became their new pet. Of course, the turtle insantly hides in its shell the minute the girls pick it up.

They did discover that they could get the turtle to come out if they set it on top of the whirling air conditioner outside.

The new dimension to finding turtles this year is that we now have a dog. And that dog seems to be pretty intent on claiming turtles for her own (although I don't know how much she could actually hurt it...) So in order to try to keep the dog away from the turtle, the girls either lock up the dog in the fenced dog yard area, or they lock themselves in there with the turtle.

When I went out yesterday to see what they were up to, I discovered that they had set up quite the little habitat for their new turtle friend. The put the turtle in the wagon (to keep it from escaping) and added all sorts of things -- flowers, grass, rocks, dirt and especially some plastic turtle friends. One of these things is not like the others...

Today the dog did manage to get her jaws around the turtle and carried it off. I still don't know if the turtle survived the encounter. But fortunately, the girls had a new "pet" to entertain them for a while:

This little horned toad also managed to escape into the bushes before too long. I'm sure they will be searching for it (or other new friends) at the earliest opportunity! As long as they stay away from the snakes...

Butterfly Beginnings

For her birthday last January, Hannah received a butterfly "kit" -- a little habitat for hatching butterflies and a coupon to send off for some real-live caterpillars. Or "calapitters" as they're often called around here. We decided it was too cold to hatch butterflies in January (is "hatch" the right word? hmmm...) so we put it aside and almost forgot about it!

I came across the habitat cage the other day so we hurried and sent off for the caterpillars. They arrived in the mail on Monday and the girls were SO excited, to say the least!

The caterpillars are safe and snug in their jar of special caterpillar food and growing bigger every day! Here is the difference from Monday to Friday:

As soon as they form their cocoons on the lid of the jar, we can move them to the habitat and watch them transform. We can't wait!

Backyard Campers

Last weekend was the Father-Son campout. It was done on a stake level and held at one of the Boy Scout camps about 2 hours from here. (One of McKay's reasons for never being disappointed in having another sister was that he wouldn't have to share Dad on Father-Son campouts.)

McKay and Brian left Friday afternoon and the girls and I had a girl movie night (they picked "Sleeping Beauty"). The boys got rained on overnight and our older, smaller tent they took leaked so they got pretty wet. But they seemed to enjoy it nonetheless and didn't see too terribly miserable when they got home.

The wet tent got set outside to dry out and later on Saturday, McKay pulled Hannah outside to help him set it up again. They the two of them begged and pleaded and begged some more to be allowed to sleep outside in the tent. I was worried it might rain again or get too chilly, but we finally gave in to the begging.

Courtney begged too, but unfortunatley there was only enough room for two in this tent. So to help appease her, I suggested that she and Hayley could switch bunkbeds and sleep in Hannah and McKay's beds. They seemed satisfied with that compromise (whew!).

The two campers were so excited to go out to bed. They both were very well prepared with MP3 players, books, flashlights, etc.

I have no idea how late they stayed up, but we didn't hear from them during the night and they came in before 7:00am the next morning. I guess that's one advantage to camping in the backyard -- easy access to the comforts of home!

Sing, Sing

It's that time of year when we make multiple trips to the school to hear various musical performances. In the past couple of weeks, we've been to see Hannah in the 1st/2nd grade program and then to see Courtney sing with the Kindergarten at one of the weekly "Fab Friday" assemblies. (McKay's 3rd/4th grade program was back in November.)

The programs are cute and short and thankfully very low-stress for parents (no fancy costumes or lines to memorize).

Here is Hannah singing in her program:

And Courtney (in bright blue) singing "Guacamole!" with the kindergarten:

I have to add a little P.S. that I got a big kick out of watching Courtney and wished I had brought my video camera as well as the regular camera. She was certainly getting into the actions and swinging those hips!

Another Story by Hannah

Hmmm... it's been too long since I last posted, but there hasn't been an awful lot of excitement going on around here, so I thought I'd share another of Hannah's stories.

Here is Miss Hannah herself a couple of weeks ago, when she decided to make herself a "house" underneath the piano. (Notice she brought everything she could possibly need!)

She wrote this story quite a while ago and didn't finish it initially. When I asked her if she wanted to finish it, she said she would, but did the ending in a hurry.

So, without further ado, I present:

Ruby Rabbit Has Problems

by Hannah, age 8

She even made a back jacket page for it:

Ruby has problems. How will she solve them?

Once there was a kind rabbit named Ruby. Every day she went along her business. Mopping floors, helping neighbors, and taking care of herself.

Everything was fine, until! One day Ruby couldn't find her mop, wasn't taking care of herself so Ruby was very tired one day and didn't want to help her neighbors! All day she was very lazy. Ruby Rabbit has problems! Her neighbors would say.

One day bumble bee tried to help, by making her a new broom. But accidentally she spilled honey on it . Daisy Deer tried to help by offering Ruby a treadmill. But she used it too much and it ran out of power.

But Daisy Deer got Ruby some batteries and bumble bee mailed a broom. And Ruby got back on track.

The end

Even though her ending is a bit abrupt, I love the great message in her story! Take care of others and yourself too. (And what a problem to use a treadmill TOO much!)

In addition to writing stories, Hannah is also turning into quite the little artist these days. She is very good at looking at a picture in a book and trying to replicate it. She's also learned recently how to draw horses. Here are some pictures she recently brought home from school.

I can't wait to discover what other talents this girl has to share with us!