Butterfly Highway

Last week while I was in my backyard, I noticed a ton of butterflies. They would come up and over our fence, fly straight toward our house and then up and over the rooftop. One after another, it was like an endless parade. Well a week later this massive amount of butterflies continues and seems to be the talk of the town. We've never had anything like this before.
An article in our local paper identified them as Painted Lady Butterflies which are pretty common around here. I've had my camera ready hoping to get a picture, but according to the article,
"The butterflies do not stop to feed or mate until they have burned up their reserves, carried over from the caterpillar stage. They fly in a straight line from southeast to northwest, like "bats out of Hell," and go over obstacles rather than trying to go around them, according to Davis researchers."
Also, "The mass of butterflies, which can be spotted at a rate of one every 10 seconds or more, typically migrate north in waves from desert areas along the U.S.-Mexico border."
There's your butterfly lesson of the day. And fyi, fishing nets are not good for catching butterflies.

I Want To Be Like You...

This just made me laugh last night. And now I have that song from the Jungle Book stuck in my head. (BTW, Garrett may be less than 100 pounds, but don't mess with him, he's got some muscles on those skinny arms.)

12 on the 12th

 
This really snuck up on me this month. Here's a peek at our day on March 12th.
1. The daffodils are in full bloom.
2. Last picture of the day. It's 9:45 p.m. Morgan just got home from gymnastics and is famished some nights. A little snack before bed.
3 Spent the afternoon at the park, beautiful day. Jack spent a lot of time in the swing.
4. First picture~Garrett (and Chris and Jack) out in our garage getting some before school practice time in.
5. Morgan had a minimum day so she came to the park and was the official baby pusher until her friend showed up and then she was "outta here".
6. My little cutie pie.
7. I took a similar picture in December, at the time Garrett was a half inch shorter than me. Today I'm a half inch shorter than him!
8. Giving Jack the Abuteral. He really fights this and it needs to be done 3 times a day.
9. Morgan arriving home from school, Jack had just woken up and was thrilled to see her.
10. A view from my house of the green, green hill that surround us. Unfortunately these indicate allergy season has arrived, but this is my most favorite time of the year. Perfect weather, beautiful surroundings.
11. A forced haircut the other day and I think Garrett is so handsome. He was doing homework really late tonight.
12. Vroom, vroom~such a boy. He doesn't spend a lot of time with his toys, but he does like cars.

The Story Behind the Pictures

I had Jack's 18 month pictures taken yesterday. You know, there's a lot of prep work into getting these pictures. First you have to find the right outfit-good colors, an outfit not too similar to previous photos (which for a boy is tough). And then it's all about timing. You can't have a sick kid. And it's a must that the nap gets timed right and then try and coordinate this with a favorite photographer's schedule and phew~I'm exhausted even before I arrive. This time, I decided to use the prop above. I was sure that getting Jack to sit for more that 2 seconds would be impossible and this might do the trick. Well Jack certainly surprised me, what a ham!

A final note, that sucker could not be pried from his hand. We had to wait about 20 minutes for our pictures to be printed and I was faced with a dilemma. Take the sucker and contribute to the biggest tantrum our mall has ever witnessed or let him continue licking it while receiving evil glares from other moms for being such an indulgent mom. Tough choice, but I went with option C...

Monkey See....

Either we have a little Tiger Woods on our hands or Jack wants to be just like his big brother. He wants to be outside every chance he gets and spends most of his time doing this. He even has a preference for a golf club now. On beautiful days like this, it's kind of nice just being a spectator soaking up some sun.

The Gift of Memories

Last month this blog was brought to my attention. She is an Australian scrapbooker feeling a bit overwhelmed by the fires that ravaged her country. 139 families lost their homes. 139 families lost all their belongings including their photographs. Anyway she organized a wonderful project calling fellow scrapbookers to contribute pre-made scrapbook pages so these families can build new memories. I really wanted to be a part of this project and passed the information along to a few friends. We ended up sending them 28 pages, these are a few that I remembered to take pictures of.