Butterflies and Vegas

For Skylee's birthday her Nana gave her this cool butterfly habitat. You send out for your caterpillars- they are super tiny when they come (we were sent five but only two became Cocoons or Chrysallis). For about a week you watch the caterpillars eat and spin silk and get bigger. The two who became butterflies prob quadrupled in size before they crawled to the top and made their own little cocoons. It was a pretty cool process to watch. Then we transferred the cocoons into the butterfly habitat and waited about a week for them to come out as butterflies. I wasn't sure how long they would survive so after the first one hatched we let it go that night. It was really neat cuz the first one (named Lucy by Skylee) was super docile and allowed the kids and Jeff to hold it before we put it on a bush. it stayed there the whole night and when I went to check on it in the morning (praying it hadn't died) it flew away. A few days later the second one hatched (Penny). This one was pretty anxious to escape captivity and go into the wild so as soon as we opened the habitat she was outta there. It was super fun for the kids and pretty educational. They guaranteed three of the five would become butterfly so I wrote in and they are sending  us a voucher for some more free butterflies so we get to do it all over again.  

 Jeff letting Lucy out of the habitat for the first time.

 Skylee handing her over to Jaston

 Skylee thought this was the coolest thing ever.

 (Excuse the crazy hair-do's)

Love the look on his face

This one too

This is Skylee showing Grandma and Grandpa on Facetime her butterfly

Our second butterfly we used FaceTime with Nana and Papa. 

This boy wears his emotions on his face. He was disappointed when Penny flew away so quickly- he didn't even get to hold her :(

Onto our next set of pics. My Mom and Dad were flying to Alaska to surprise Kelsi for her birthday so we decided we would drive down to meet them for dinner. It was a lot of fun... regardless of the fact we tried to find this dang bistro for forever... nevertheless we ended up at a Grimaldi's which is Jeff's fav pizzeria anyway. Yum!

On the way to the car Jaston fell and was bleeding and Grandpa saved the day with a band-aid in his wallet. Brilliant right? I guess my Grandpa Johnson passed that tradition down and always had a band-aid in his pocket. Like father-like son. But my dad said the band-aid was usually for my grandpa cuz he was always cutting himself. I miss Grandpa, he was one great man!

Jaston wanted Grandma all night long until the band-aid episode then he was all Grandpa's.

Love this pic of Skylee. She thought she was hilarious when Grandpa wanted a high five she kicked his hand instead. Yes, this was probably the twentieth time... still hilarious apparently. :)

Here's my Mom and Dad surprising Kelsi. Emil has been working for months trying to get this all set up for my parents to go be with Kelsi on her birthday in Ketchikan. Fun huh? I may or may not be a little jealous ;)