Bath time!

Lily is so cute in the tub, I had to snap a few pictures!!

Family Picnic!

We had a fun family picnic at a park a few weeks ago. We brought the Bumbo for Lily to sit in and set up a nice spread of hamburgers, hot dogs, etc.

Lily was such a cutie, we couldn’t help but snap a few photos of her, chowing down!


Avery, enjoying a Kringle for dessert!

She has such an appetite now – she ate a hamburger and a hot dog. Now every time we eat a meal and she says she’s full, Merrick reminds her of that one time she ate a hamburger and a hot dog and so she’s supposed to have that kind of appetite all the time!
I promise Camryn came too but she was happily playing at that playground in the background during photo time!

Retzer Nature Center

We’ve been talking about spring and nature lately for Preschool so for our field trip last month we attended a nature hike at Retzer Nature Center in Waukesha. It was during nap time so I took three of the kids + Lily by myself. They did great. It was quite a long walk but they gave the kids “treasure bags” and they picked up flowers, bark, rocks, pine cones, etc. along the way, which made it fun for them.
We went down to a pond and they scooped out a frog, a crawdad, and a few other fun things for the kids to check out.

It was really fun and the kids had a good time, even though we walked probably half a mile. The low point for me was when I realized Lily had dropped her toy out of the stroller and I had to run back 50 feet or so to go get it, then run back to the group before one of the 3 four year olds I was in charge of ran off. But it all worked out, despite me being pretty tired after that! Glad we went.

Biker Chicks

My girls love to ride bikes! Camryn has recently mastered riding a big girl 12” bike and when she started fighting over the bike with Avery I knew it was time to get Avery a bigger 16” bike.
They spend a lot of time outside riding bikes in our backyard, now that the weather has been nicer.

Luckily we haven’t had any major crashes.

Lily has loved watching her sisters and getting to play outside herself now and then! She can’t wait to learn to ride a bike herself!

We really want to teach Avery how to ride her bike without training wheels but it’s been slow going so far. We eventually put the training wheels back on for a little while so she could at least ride her bike around until she learns. This is how Merrick feels about teaching Avery to ride her bike:

Haha, he’ll be so happy I posted that picture! :)

The Very Hungry Caterpillars…

 

For Easter, we got the girls a Butterfly Garden kit. I found it here. 

Then we went online and paid $5 shipping to have a little container of caterpillars sent to our house in the mail.

They were teeny little things, about 1/4” long and super skinny. We were all surprised because most of the caterpillars we’ve seen have been kind of fat and long. But then they started eating and growing…

And the book by Eric Carle The Hungry Caterpillar, started to click. In about 7 days they had grown to about 1 1/2 inches long and much fatter!

Then they climbed to the top of the container and hung down like that one above is and built their cocoons. When all 5 of them were done getting all snuggly tight in their cocoons we opened up the container and carefully removed the little paper top that they were hanging from. Then we placed it into the butterfly habitat.

About a week we waited while it seemed like nothing was happening but one morning we came downstairs to find that there was a butterfly!

The next day (my birthday!), the other 4 hatched. Camryn and I were lucky enough to witness two of them actually coming out of their cocoons, pumping up their crumply wings into nice smooth, flat wings. It was magical!

There’s one on the right that is just coming out and his wings aren’t stretched out yet.

We kept them in there for a few days and squirted sugar water on some flowers for them to suck on. We also put a few oranges in there too. After a couple days we decided to let them free, though, because it didn’t seem like they were eating very much.

We took them out back and brought them out of the habitat. It took a couple minutes for most of them to fly away but there was one that was a little timid and he stayed on the ground waiting for about 15 minutes. It was fun to watch.

The booklet said they would probably stay around our area for a few days but we never saw them flying around. Oh well. It was a super fun experience for our family. I highly recommend it!

Me and my girls having fun watching our butterflies take flight: