butterflies

My friend used to be a teacher and she told me how you can order caterpillars on the internet and watch them eat and get fat, make cocoons, hatch out as butterflies and release them outside. Sometimes I feel ambitious about doing fun and educational things with my kids (and then 5 mins later, I think what in the world have I done to myself). Anyway, the butterfly experience turned out to be pretty low maintenance and a lot of fun for the kids. It was crazy how every day the caterpillars looked WAY fatter. It was very exciting when we found the first one in a cocoon and even more exciting when we discovered the first butterfly was out. We even caught the last one coming out of the cocoon, Isabel thought the poor butterfly looked pretty gross. We just released our 5 butterflies in our backyard and it was fun to watch them fly out one at a time. One of them started to fly out, but then went down to the roses to eat more, and then flew out. The very last one did not fly out. He was on a paper towel and so I picked it up and put him outside the pavillion and he still didn't fly away. I decided to try to pick him up so I put my finger out and he climbed on. I passed him to Isabel and as she put him on a flower he finally flew away. It was really cool. Here are some photos...