The Butterfly Farm

Last week I organized a field trip to Wild Connections Butterfly Farm. It was a great trip! The weather was gorgeous and close to 40 of our bestest friends showed up! Who says homeschoolers aren't socialized???

The kids got to explore the farm, do a scavenger hunt, chase lizards, eat a picnic, go on a hike and of course, explore the butterfly house.

And although caterpillars are neat and butterflies are cool, they don't hold a candle to little snakes fighting over a fish! (By all means, click on the pic to get a better look!)

The scenery was gorgeous so how could I resist taking beautiful photos of the kids?!? Seriously, wildflowers galore, brightly painted fences and gates, it was just adorable!

Cheese!

Flower girl!

Light of my life!

She is my sunshine, my only sunshine!

City kids gettin' all country!

Busy, busy, busy!

As if life in the Woodall house is ever mellow, the last couple of months have been downright insane! There have been baby showers, wedding showers, birthday parties, weddings, camping, garage sales, the rearranging of vegetable beds, sawing down of trees, the endless quest for some sort of organization and cleanliness, school for Ian and Ainsley, not to mention getting the folks ready for the big move to Round Rock! It really has just been crazy around here!

Luckily, all weddings and showers are done! No more! And if any of my friends or relatives decide to get married or pregnant in 2009, they will just have to organize their showers without me! I am pooped, tapped out, done, finito! I am nearly done with the more back-breaking labor in the yard. I will finish sawing down the ligustrums out back and get all of the brush to the curb for the "Large Brush Removal" which will happen on June 8th! THANK GOODNESS! Then all I have to do is love, cultivate, fertilize, keep a diligent eye on my crop for infestions and wait for harvest! I think I will be graced with tomatoes soon. My green beans, peppers and eggplant aren't looking as promising as I'd like, but the black-eye peas and okra are doing well and the basil is OUT OF CONTROL! But really, can you ever have too much basil? I think not.

Although school has been time consuming, it has been fun! We have had a great time with history, more specifically ancient civilizations. From previous posts you will know that Ian adored Egypt and was most impressed with the King Tut exhibit in Dallas. Then we touched on the Babylonians and Assyrians, but now we are venturing into the realm of the Greeks and he couldn't be more excited! How could he not be? The Greeks are cool! They have just about the best mythology of any culture and he is all over the Minotaur and the Cyclops and Medusa! Over the weekend we plan to make shields and swords and I will get out the old sheets and we will be Greek warriors! Life is good! Maybe I'll even make dolmades and spanakopita with baklava for dessert! Haha! Who am I kidding? How about we pack up the kids and take them out for Greek?!? I suck at making baklava!

Now about the folks... all of their hard work is about to come to fruition! The business is in the hands of the new owners, the old house is packed up and ready to go and they closed on the new house yesterday, on their wedding anniversary! They will spend the next couple of days here, getting appliances delivered and utilities set up, then it's off for one last trip to Clovis. The movers will arrive on the 1st and Bob's your uncle! We are looking forward to having them here. The kids are ecstatic that they won't have to wait for months in between visits, they will likely see Papa and Nana every week now! I will be so grateful for the help too. It's been a long 7 years raising children with little to no help. It's not easy to find reliable and affordable care during the day if I need to deal with doctors or business. And honestly, it will be nice just to pack up for a visit or have Linda along at park days or field trips! I think they will enjoy being closer as well. Round Rock is a little busier than Clovis and traffic sucks, but they will be close to us and Daren's family and for the first time in many, many years, they will get to spend time with their sons! I know they always enjoyed my visits with the kids, but they really only saw Brady once in the summer and at Christmas time. Now they can all actually get to know each other again!

And as much as I'd like to say that things are calming down in the Woodall household for the summer, things are only beginning. There is work on the house to be done, school to continue, trips to NM and Las Vegas, camping with kids, settling parents, and field trips to organize, because I am crazy and sloth is definitely NOT one of my sins!

Planting our summer garden

Well, it's that time of the year again! Time to plant vegetables then spend the next 4-6 months pulling my hair out over the heat, the lack of water and the damn aphids! But all that aside, it really is a great thing to share with my kidlets. They were such big helpers with the whole thing this year. Ian even helped me haul dirt from the front drive to the beds in back, shoveling and raking in between loads. He was such a huge help. After I finally got the beds prepped it was time to plant and this is where Ainsley wanted to join in. Unfortunately, helping meant pulling my transplants out and laying them in other spots in the bed! Eventually I was able to convince her that the plants needed to be IN the ground and she could help me pat down the soil and water the beds. Things went a bit more smoothly after that. ;) Both Ian and Ainsley seemed to feel a strong sense of accomplishment afterwards as well as VERY dirty paws!

The Tiniest Bar in Texas

Daddy recently had a gig playing at the Tiniest Bar in Texas. It was a cute little place and they were very nice about letting me bring the kids. Since the entire place was filled with our friends, Ian and Ainsley made their rounds, especially Ainsley. That little girl can wrap a crowd of people around her finger in mere minutes! And they LOVE watching Daddy, Uncle Paul and Aunt Chelle rock the house!

Hot day, cool treat!

After a terribly hot afternoon at the park, we ended up at Kawaii's Shaved Ice in Round Rock. I hadn't intended on going for a treat but after a series of wrong turns, we ended up right next to it and I couldn't resist! Ian chose lemon and Ainsley and I shared a pineapple/coconut number that was out of this world! Sometimes you have to take time to stop and eat the ice! However, I kept hearing Frank Zappa's song in my head, "Nanook, no, no! Don't you eat that yellow snow!"

Makin' the big bucks!

Ian has recently been bugging about getting an allowance. He wants to be able to buy Bionicles, as if he doesn't have 1000 already! Anyway, I admire his drive and wanted to work something out. Brady and I both agreed that whatever the chore was, it was something that would help the family as a whole, but mostly help me out. A long list of chores was put out there, but only one really stuck... poop scoopin'! At first Ian thought this was a pretty crappy idea, pardon the pun, but when I told him I would buy him a shovel and rake that were his size AND I pay him $5 a week he had a change of heart. We determined that in order to get this service from an outside source, it would cost $8-12 a week, so I figured half of what a service would cost was fair as he isn't having to drive to my home twice a week. He has been at it for a little over a month now and has bought 2 new Bionicles. I have been really proud that he actually saves his money. He tucks it away until he has enough to buy what he really wants instead of spending his $5 weekly on junk. I think this is a big step for my big boy and I'm very impressed with his work ethic and his money saving skills! In a year or so, I will allow him to do other chores to earn extra money, then we will talk about putting a certain amount into savings each week. But for now, it's his to do as he pleases and we're proud of him!

Cocoons, butterflies and moths... Oh My!

In our science co-op we have been gearing up to study the life cycle and morphology of butterflies and moths. To get this started we sent off for cocoons.

We had two spicebush swallowtail butterfly cocoons, a luna moth cocoon and a polyphemus moth cocoon. The butterflies emerged first and they were gorgeous! We took the first one out and spent about an hour observing it, photographing it and handling it. Ian was completely enamored by it!

I tried to get Ainsley to hold it, but she wasn't about too! Much to our great sadness, that little girl in NOT a fan of bugs, even sweet, pretty ones!

After both of the butterflies emerged, we were graced with the emergence of a most beautiful luna moth! What an amazingly stunning animal! It was very mellow and it allowed us to handle it without a problem. Yet again, Ian was mesmerized, Ainsley was wary!

Here is a nice close-up of it's face. This by far is the cutest insect on the planet! Seriously.

And thank goodness for small miracles, our camping trip with the homeschool group got rained out. Had we been camping we would have missed our polyphemus emergence. As it was, we did miss the actual emergence, but found her almost immediately after. Her wings were still damp and floppy! Yet again, what a gorgeous and awe-inspiring creature! It turns out we had a female which meant that she would not fly away. She sat in her open enclosure in our maple tree nightly and emitted pheromones to attract males to her. They have a 7-10 day life span in which to accomplish mating and egg laying. Luckily for me, two of the other families had males that I brought home to my girl. There are now eggs all over the enclosure. Not sure if they are fertilized or not, I guess we wait and see.
Here's a close-up of "Polly".

Happy boy with his Polly Girl!

Now as I mentioned, we borrowed some males. Here is a photo of the male we kept for two days then released. Stunning gentleman, is he not?

This was such a wonderful experience for us and we feel so fortunate that we got to witness such an amazing transformation. Maybe next time we'll take the life cycle all the way from egg to moth! In fact, if any of these eggs are fertilized, we may be starting that sooner than I expected! Hello... welcome to the Woodall Moth Farm!