Langley Family Journey: Summer Fun!

Stella recently received caterpillars from Gigi (Mikey's mom) and before long we had butterflies! Yes, normally I a buga-phob and I am the one that will stand on a chair if I see a spider or scream for Todd to come kill it but amazingly enough receiving a UPS package full of little caterpillars didn't freak me out!

So we come home from work one day and there is a UPS package at our front door filled with 2 containers of caterpillars. We weren't permitted to open the containers as they contained all of the food and nutrients that the caterpillars needed to form their chrysalis. We waited and waited and waited and waited and 2 weeks later once the caterpillars had morphed into their chrysalis they were now ready to be transported into the netting. We placed the sugar water at the bottom of the netting and everyday had to spray the chrysalis with room temperature water from a spray bottle. Then nearly 1 week later, we were able to see the butterfly emerge from the chrysalis.

Not only was this a fun project to do with Stella it was also very educational and she had so much fun doing it. Every morning before she left for school and every day when she got home from school she would check on their progress and report what she found.

Once the butterflies emerged, Stella began naming them all. I am not quite sure how she kept track of who was who because they all looked alike to me! We had 12 butterflies in all and they were very very pretty.

It was a warm Saturday morning and it was the day we were going to release our butterflies into the world. We took the netted butterfly house outside on to our back deck and we began to release them one by one back into nature. It was such a glorious "circle of life" moment and lots of fun at that! Todd unzipped the top of the butterfly house and one by one most of the butterflies began to fly out. We had to coax a few of them out but within a matter of minutes they were all out and free to fly off.