I saw the most amazing sunset tonight.

The kids and I were driving home from T-ball when I glanced to the west and did a double take. The sky was mostly dark blue in that threatening to storm way, but then there was this grand skinny streak of pink running up from the sun, splitting the dark blue sky in half. I've never seen anything like it ( Read more... )

Turns out, I don't blog near enough to keep up with those fast-changing caterpillars. What were eggs a little over 2 weeks ago are now chrysalises. I myself wouldn't believe the changes that could happen over only 2 weeks if I hadn't been keeping track of the dates ( Read more... )

This past Sunday, Owen and I were in the front yard when I spotted a monarch flitting around and laying its eggs on our milkweed. It was cool to watch its method. It would lay one on the underside of a leaf, then take off and fly around the yard a bit, then return to the same plant or one right next to it and lay another one. Almost like it was ( Read more... )

So, yesterday morning, this was my view...


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I have a nursery on my porch right now. A butterfly nursery. About 3-4 weeks ago, a neighbor gave us five black swallowtail eggs from her dill plants. We put them in a plastic container with air holes in the lid and checked them every day to see if they'd hatched ( Read more... )

Drove out to Delafield, about 40 minutes west of Milwaukee, this morning to meet casinoqueen for a little hike. The chosen spot was Lapham Peak in the Kettle Moraine Forest. We'd decided to do the 4-mile portion of the Ice Age Trail that cuts through the park -- seemed more interesting than one of the loop trails, which are designed mostly for cross-country ( Read more... )

Welcome to another edition of Random Things ( Read more... )

Since we returned from our weekend trip, Nora has been have trouble sleeping. It's surprising because, on our travels, she managed to take two naps over 2 days at different grandma's houses AND she actually fell asleep at the hotel without all of us having to go to sleep with her. So, this crying thing until 9:30 or 10 was unexpected. Then last ( Read more... )

So, I've been meaning to write about the kite festival we went to a couple weeks ago. "Festival" might be too strong of a word for this event, but "A bunch of people flying kites in the vicinity of a Caribou Coffee tent and a climbing wall" is both uninspiring and too long to fit on a poster ( Read more... )

We took advantage of the recent 3-day weekend to build a sandbox, our first. After spending over an hour wandering around Menards, we loaded up the van with two very long boards and 500 pounds of sand. (And, on a side note, it seriously should not be so difficult to buy boards! We ended up going out into the lumber yard ourselves -- pushing the ( Read more... )