Surprise Party!

I was successfully able to pull off a surprise birthday party for Analese today. I had the help of dear friends, who took her for a play date, and brought her home for the surprise. I have to say that she was truly surprised. She said she had no idea that it was going to happen. It was a fun time for all. The pool water was nice and warm and the weather was great. It will be a fun birthday week.

The Release!

My theory was that we should release the butterflies back onto the neighbors' milkweed flowers where they were crawling around and growing as little caterpillars. What actually happened is that the first butterfly (the one that hatched yesterday) took off in a blaze of glory above the treetops before I could even get a good photo.



That butterfly was READY TO FLY!

The second butterfly was a bit more hesitant, but it did allow for more photo opportunities. It even sat of Analese's hand before it joined it's sibling butterfly up in the top of the tallest pine tree. It was just amazing to watch these beautiful creatures take wing.

Birth of the Second Butterfly...

We were determined not to miss the big event today. We noticed that the chrysalis had become absolutely transparent. You could see the wing pattern through the chrysalis. It was hard to photograph, so it mostly looks dark in the photos.






These photos were taken about 20 minutes before the butterfly very quickly emerged. This next photo was taken right after the birth. The wings are all wet and crumpled.






It only took another half hour or so for the wings to straighten out.



We gave the butterfly a few hours to start flapping it's wings and moving around. Then we headed to the neighbors' house for the big release! That blog post will follow.

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All Kinds of Butterfly Excitement!

After taking the photo of the changing chrysali this morning, we went upstairs to do school. We headed down for lunch just 2.5 hours later, and lo and behold, this is what we found!




It happened very quickly, and without our notice. It is amazing to me how large the butterfly is, and how small the chrysalis case is. The butterfly was very still until we came back from dance class this afternoon, then it started flapping its beautiful wings and really wanting to fly. I put bouquets of gardenia flowers and lantana from our yard into the bottom of the habitat. I sprinkled sugar water over the bouquets. I have not seen the butterfly (Isabella, according to Analese) eat yet. Hopefully, the other one will be born tomorrow, so we can release them outside soon. I don't really like to keep caged butterflies. They really do want to be free to fly.













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Awaiting the Birth of Butterflies!

The chysalises (chysali?) are changing. Looking down through the clear top of the butterfly habitat, you can see that the chrysalis in the bottom of the photo has turned dark. The other chrysalis is almost two days behind that one. Any day now, I expect we will have a monarch butterfly!


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Wordless Wednesday...

Update to race results...

I was #347 out of 573 participants, not #334 out of 555 participants. I just had to make that known! I'm not sure why the result changed today. Maybe some slowpokes came across the finish line? And I was #51 out of 110 female participants in my age 30-39 group, not #52 out of 109 30-39 year old females. See, I did even better!