Lollies for Little Man

Jacob loves lollipops, but like all little kids, he makes a horrible mess out of them. Since it is the end of the school year, the girls are bringing treats home all the time and so he's had more than his fair share of lollipops over the past week or so. This day was particularly funny as he kept "dipping" it in the grass and then trying to eat it. I'd go to take it away to wash it off and he'd dip it again. I finally gave up and decided that a little dirt never hurt anybody (I don't think). Then in that last picture, you can tell how much he really loves his sisters!

Oh me, oh my, its caterpillars and butterflies!

For Ashley's birthday, Grandma got her a butterfly garden. It was such a great gift for her. She's so interested in science (planets, bugs, animals, flowers-- you name it). In her classroom they had been studying the stages of life for butterflies and frogs. As a part of that unit, they had gotten tadpoles in the classroom. Ashley came home one day and asked if we could order a caterpillar kit. I didn't know what she was talking about at first, but then I found it online and since it was right before her birthday and everybody was asking what to get her, I told Grandma and Papa about it. So it arrived with little caterpillars in cups. They crawled around for about 7 days eating and growing, then one day they crawled up to the top of the cup and started spinning their cocoon. After the cocoon was complete, we moved them to the butterfly tent. In about 7 days, we woke up to little butterflies fluttering around. The girls were so excited! We watched them for a few days and then let them go. These pictures show the kids releasing them in the backyard.

Narrow escape...

Well, if you've missed me-- I haven't updated the blog in a while because I had a computer crash. They always say its not a matter of if your hard drive will crash, but when. I was pretty lucky as I did get some warning and was able to get most of my stuff off of the computer. The crash forced me to make some decisions that I had been hoping to put off for a while... I finally made the switch from PC to MAC... well sorta :) I purchased a Dell pc and a MacBook pro. The biggest thing that this taught me was that while it is important to have data backed up... keeping a listing of all the applications and GETTING THEM ON DISK rather than downloading them is important. That's been my biggest nightmare and I'm still not fully back online with photoshop. Its been a costly process BUT I know that I am coming out stronger and more knowledgeable. Now as a result of the crash, I ended up corrupting an external drive-- so I still need to recover that data.I had focused so much attention on backing up what was on my internal hard drive that I missed backing up the external. That's mostly my personal files (which you can't put a price tag on)-- luckily I have most of these in other locations, but I still want that what's on there! Anyway, I'm slowly digging my way out and will be back to posting soon!