The Butterfly Effect

My latest project has me staring into little jars and looking at small creatures.  I had live animals shipped to my office and they arrived today.  What am I doing, you ask???

I’m raising butterflies!!!!  They look kinda gross now, but soon they will be beautiful butterflies.  All the brown stuff in the container is food.

A co-worker of mine told me about something she did for her sister’s wedding.  They ordered all these caterpillars and put them in individual boxes.  She had to keep them in a dark room and give them a little shake every day.  They took all the boxes to the wedding and handed them out to the guests.  At the right moment, the guests were to all open their boxes.  They were not told what was in the box.  Imagine their surprise when all 200 guests opened their boxes at the same time and had a ton of butterflies flying around.  How cool is that!!!

Seeing as I am obsessed with butterflies, I thought I’d give it a try.  I think my obsession is for small, winged creatures.  I love angels, hummingbirds, Tinkerbell, and butterflies.  There’s just something about these small creatures that I love to look at.  Jeff pointed out that it’s probably also the colors because I don’t feel the same affection for flies.  Good point!

So my little caterpillars are in the process of spinning their cocoons.  They will stay in their cocoons for about 10 days, and then they will hatch into butterflies.  The company also sent me a little habitat to observe the butterflies in.  The butterflies will live for about 2-4 weeks.  At any point during their butterfly stage, I can release them into the wild.  If I do it soon enough, they will lay eggs on nearby plants and I’ll have even more butterflies to enjoy.  I’m so excited!!  I’ll post more pictures once they start to make their change.

More grog!!!

Last Sunday, I had the privilege of taking my two nieces and nephew to Medieval Times for the first time.  I have been many times, but none of them had been.  I couldn’t believe it!!!  Julianna had been saying that she wanted to go, so Jeff and I found a good deal and took the kids.

It was so much fun!!!

Here they are at the entrance:

The kids were pretty excited to get to wear crowns.

(Oh yeah, and I had to take them to the bar to booze them up before the show.  Don’t worry, Melissa, they are all virgin drinks!!!  We did get extra cherries for Jackson’s Shirley Temple.  I think that’s why he’s grinning!!!)

We purchased an upgrade to get better seats, and ended up getting the front row of the Red Knight’s section. 

(Medieval Times + ponytail = a crooked crown!)

I was trying to get the girls to cheer when our knight came by with flowers in hopes that they would get one.

Madisyn got one better!  Our knight got many flowers to throw to our section, which he threw to the rows behind us.  But he only got one “favor”.  The princess ties a ribbon to the end of his lance and he had to pick one lucky lady to receive it.  Madisyn was his pick!!  She was so excited!!

A photographer came over and took her picture, but because I’m too cheap (read: I had already spent WAY too much money), I tried to just take a picture of the photo.  She’s the Queen of Love and Beauty.

They also put our knight’s picture on the other side (who reminded me of Anthony’s friend, Dan Hammrick.  Funny!!)

When I showed her this picture with our knight, she promptly stuck out her tongue and made a face, which I took to mean that she thinks he was cute.  Hey, that’s what MY reaction would have been at that age!!! 

The kids had a blast!  I think we were the only ones who smuggled in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Jackson to eat.  During dinner, I looked over and saw a sight that was unique to our group:

With all the food and drink they give you there, Jackson was drinking a Capri Sun!  Go figure! 

But he loved it too!!  He kept asking when the fighting was going to start, and he was so into it.  Everytime they would do a battle, he would start telling us all what they were doing: “Look, he hit him with the sword!” “He threw his shield!”  It was really cute!!

Everyone had a great time, and since I’m the auntie who spoils, we were probably the only group leaving the castle who had to go thru a drive-thru for kids meals, since the younger two didn’t really eat anything.  It was ok though.  We had a blast!!