Butterfly!

Our kids were playing with their friends and they brought in a fat, green caterpillar. They wanted to keep it and see if it would turn into a butterfly. We got a jar ready and let them keep it. Things like this don't usually go well for me. The insect usually dies and then we have to go through a long explanation about why and what and all that. When it looked like it was making a cocoon the next morning, we were encouraged. When it was mostly black and looked really sad by the evening, I told them not to expect much. We decided not to throw it out yet, but to see what would happen over the next week or so.

One morning Sarah was getting ready for school and yelled. She scared me and I didn't know what she was talking about, but she said "It came out!!" Sure enough, this beautiful butterfly had emerged from its cocoon. We were all very happy it had survived and I'm glad I didn't have to explain why it died.

We let it go outside so it could be free and live a good life.

Here's what was left of the cocoon after it came out.

What Is Going On???

Hello folks,  this is Robert... For those of you who don't know... Laura is out of town for the week in Las Vegas... 

• I could say it was business  (its not), 
  
• I could say there was a great sale on breathable shoes at the forum in Caesars (there wasn't) 
  
• I could say that the aliens flipped a switch and caused her to goose step zombie style to the mother ship to become more familiar with the phrase  "How to serve man"  (for those of you who don't know my sense of humor... go here...) (but they didn't…I'm not saying some day they won't!)

I could say that my sister Kelli has had a rough couple of months and needed to take some time off and my wife went to join her... and while it is the truth... it is a lot more boring than you were hoping for...

Laura will be going in to work for a day or two, (not too much.. hey, this is supposed to be fun!) but is planning on doing shopping, hair done, movies, and staying up late in PJ's playing cards and eating Ben and Jerry's. 

So, I thought I would jot down a few things that are going on around here.  

Amazingly enough, we made it to church, on time, shirts ironed (I actually like to iron), faces clean and scriptures in hand.  It was a good sacrament meeting.  Sister Lamb gave an outstanding talk on keeping the commandments when we don't want to.  Then Sister Hawkins spoke.  Again, another wonderful talk asking us to be obedient, when it is hard.  Finally Jodi's husband spoke.  That is a rarity, because he is in the Bishopric.  That doesn't happen often. 

Jared and Sarah lazed all over me but were mostly quiet. 

The rest of the day was enjoyed by having a good lunch, tomato soup and an outrageous tuna salad (I love it with celery). 

Dishes were done, clothes folded, songs sung, Sarah and I read 38 pages of "Charlotte's Web" and in the evening we read scriptures... what a good day. 

Oh, and we went out and said hi to our pet spider.  She (he???) comes out every evening at sunset and begins to spin a web.  It is a large web between our house and our tree.  The circle is probably about 4 feet in diameter. 

I went out before bed last night (around midnight) and it was sitting in the middle happy as a ... spider in a web...and this morning (6:30 am) it was still in the middle.  At 8:00 Jared and I went out and the web had been removed.. and the spider was getting comfy for the rest of the day. 

Anyway... just a note. 

 Since my wife is away... somebody has to blog... I told Laura I would spell check... but punctuation and grammar might be too much for I to do. 

R

Miscellaneous

Sarah was spying on Riley. I'm not sure all of her reasons, but she was having fun. And I think she looked cute too. Don't you love the purple star visor combined with too big pajama shirt?

We have a swallow's nest in our front porch area again. Someone knocked the one that was there down and the birds rebuilt it again this spring. The kids say they can see five baby birds in there and we know one has died. Six babies in one nest seems awful crowded and very hot. Every time we go out in the front yard get about 10 birds circling around us. They have a very protective family. We also have a nest in one of our trees out back. I guess one of our trees is officially big enough for that now. One of the babies got out of the nest and was wandering around back there. It was fairly big, but unable to fly. Oreo (our dog) wanted to play with it. The baby bird's parents were making quite a bit of noise trying to get us to go away. Robert put the bird back in the nest, but later on, the bird was out again. There was another bird in the nest, maybe there was a bit of sibling rivalry going on?
Jared grabbed my camera the other day because he wanted to take pictures of the cool clouds outside. This one of the pictures he came back with. He thought it was cool because of the lighter clouds in front of the darker ones. I think he really just likes to play with my camera and came up with a reason to use it. He did use it for what he said he was going to though.

Crazy Spiders!

There are a lot of interesting creatures in Oklahoma. I posted last week about a huge spider we found. We've determined that it was a baby tarantula since it jumped and had rings on its legs. Now we had a new friend in our garage. Notice I said "had". Robert promptly took care of the problem after we had our fun. This black widow spider had trapped a huge bug. The bug was literally screaming and making a huge fuss about the whole thing. It was caught and there was nothing it could do except make a lot of noise and move a lot. That spider worked quickly and it was amazing to watch.


Those small white balls in the picture aren't egg sacks, thank goodness. Robert thought they might be, but they are just air soft gun pellets.


I feel like we're watching the Wild Kingdom in our yard every day with all the crazy critters we've seen this year!

Sarah's Turtle

We drive by a place near our home where there is a small pond and a dead tree that has fallen half way into the pond. During the warm months it is common to see turtles sunning themselves on the tree, ready to dive into the water at the first sign of danger. Everyone can see the turtles from the road. Everyone but Sarah, that is.

She has been quite upset at never seeing a turtle there. We have pulled over but there is a fence keeping us too far back to get a good view for her to see. The other day on the way to church, we found a turtle in the middle of the road. It is common for them to get on the road to enjoy its warmth, but it isn't the safest place for them. I pulled over, and picked it up. I gave it to Sarah to have (for the day) and play with.

This type of turtle can close itself up so it is totally sealed. You can't get to it at all. Really cool. Sarah named it "Torti". We had a great time, and at the end of the day, sent the turtle back home to.... uh.... find its mom.

Birds, Spiders, and Toads. Oh my!

Ok, so we live in a neighborhood, but we're out in the country. We've seen a lot of wildlife in our yard this year. Here are a few pictures that we've taken in just the last week alone.

There were two beautiful cardinals being very busy in our back yard. Here's what they were busy doing...

Isn't it a perfect little nest, with one perfect little egg? Wait a minute. Where's the tree? I thought most birds preferred trees for their nests. Apparently not, since this is the second nest we've found in this hanging basket this month. It's sad though. Both times the birds have built their nests, laid their eggs, and not returned. They were different kinds of birds each time. We have some swallows in our front yard using our porch to build a mud nest. They've done this before. We somehow manage to attract birds without trying. We don't feed them or anything. I guess we're just bird lovers at heart and they know it.

On to our next visitor. This spider was going into our garage and I'm really glad someone saw it before it made it further inside. Just look at this thing. It's a monster!

The kids marveled at it for hours. We determined that it wasn't an extremely dangerous spider, but it wasn't very nice either. Robert took the kids to the pond to let it go so it was far, far away. When he got it out of the jar, he said it jumped at him. Very scary! You have to look close to see the spider, but he's in there.

I think we may have an infestation here. We have toads all over our yard. We've left our doors open and found them in our living room and even in my bathroom. It's a little shocking to see one when you're really not expecting it. It's even worse to step on one when you're not expecting it....ewwww! Anyway, they're constantly everywhere in our yard. In fact, I didn't have pictures of any this morning when I decided to write this post and I just went out and found two immediately.

Besides the exciting creepy crawlies I've mentioned, we've also had fun things like a rather large snake, june bugs, fireflies, mosquitoes, mayflies, roly-polys, wasps, etc. Anyway, it's quite interesting to see all the animals and bugs who consider our yard and home their habitat. Where did I get off thinking it was my habitat?!?!