Time for a Haircut

Princess needed a haircut. Here's the before:
It was very long, but not quite long enough for Locks of Love, so I cut it at home tonight. Princess sat pretty still while watching a Curious George video. Here's the after. She said she really likes it, we'll see how it looks in the morning. :)

Metamorphosis...Finally! **updated!

It's been a busy day. Our basement was leaking last night--it seeped in quite a bit. That gets a big ARRGH! :) Hubby estimated we've had a foot of rain. Not sure how accurate that is. We're hoping our polliwogs didn't get overflowed out of the fishpond! But, our pool in the back is full of tadpoles, as well, so there will be more to watch hopefully. The pool is as full as it's ever been. Anyway, Hubby thinks the basement leaked because the gutters were plugged with maple helicopters. ARRGH. We're drying things out.




In better news, one of our cocoons saw some action today! We thought maybe they were dead--they've been cocooned in a jar since September. We didn't get to see our Luna Moth emerging, but I looked out this afternoon and saw some big green wings in our jar, so of course we all ran out to see. It has crawled a stick out of the jar and seems to be letting its wings dry and such.


The moth came out of the brown, webby looking thing toward the bottom of the jar. In the pic below, you can kind of see the hole it came out of, below and between its wings. We're going to have a closer look at that cocoon once the moth is out of the way!

Princess drew me a butterfly picture afterward. :)
**I searched online and found out that Luna Moths don't have mouths! They don't eat--only live for a week to mate, then die. Very interesting. Ours was hanging out outside the screened-in porch for a couple days, then was gone.

Screening Movies

So, ideally, I'd have time to pre-watch any movie I want to show my kids to make sure it's not scary, lewd, or has rats saying 'shut up and eat your garbage' in it. But I don't have time. I've come across some resources to help me out--one is a website called Screen It that goes into great detail about any questionable content in a movie. It does give away some plot points--but I think it'd be worth it to me to know ahead of time that scary cats chase Stuart Little in his movie! :) Plugged In (from Focus on the Family) is another good website for checking out content of movies, TV and music. And here's a link to the blog where I found Screen It, there are many other sites listed by this mom!

There! Finally some things I've been wanting to post for a week or more!

Happy Memorial Day, and thank you to those who have sacrificed for my freedoms. Despite it's problems, I am glad to live in America.

Raining on my Parade

Well, it is pouring outside. And has stormed at some point each of the last four days, I think. I'm enjoying the break from watering my plants, anyway. :)

But I'm more talking about the damper on my blogging--should I put any personal info into a blog? my kids names? our location? pictures of my kids faces? Some bloggers are ultra paranoid--but I'm not sure about what? But, of course, it makes me paranoid that there's something to be paranoid about lurking out there. I could make my blog by invite only--but that would make people have to log in and I hate for them to have to take that extra step. It's supposed to be fun--not steeped in privacy paranoia!

Anybody have any thoughts on this?? Enlighten me!

By the Sea

No, we haven't had a sea side vacation, but something (maybe the story of Jonah and the big fish?) has inspired quite a fascination in Speedy for books about the ocean.

Ducky by Eve Bunting is interesting--a story of a crate of bathtub toys that got spilled in the ocean and drifted--scientists charted where the toys came ashore. It's even based on a true event in 1992! Speedy's favorite page, of course, is the one where a shark is coming up to bite a mouthful of the toys. :)
Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae has been a favorite of Speedy's for a couple months now. Each time we read, the kids pick which fish they are that day. Speedy is usually a shark or jellyfish; Princess is an angelfish or dolphin.

I think 'Finding Nemo' added to the sea-frenzy--as we read, the kids often relate to what happened to Nemo & his dad, like when he jumped on the tops of the jellyfish.

In case you were wondering, I just can't decide how paranoid to be about all this web stuff, so for now, I'm not using the kiddo's real names. Hope it's not too confusing. :)

Bee-youtiful

While at my parents' for Mother's Day, the kids got a bee lesson. Here they're looking at bees collecting pollen on the dandelions.
Close up. :)
Here's where the busy bees are flying back to their swarm inside the wall of a barn.
Here's one of the busy bees returning with golden pollen sacs full.
I think that having watched 'Bee Movie' this winter helped the kids know what they were seeing a little bit more. :)

More random

I only have random things to write anymore, it seems. :) Sorry for the lack of posts--I guess it's the weather--I just don't stay inside or in front of the computer that much anymore I guess. We're sure enjoying our screened porch out back. Here are the girls coloring together (or sucking on colored pencils together, not sure which.) :)

And Princess & Speedy painting on the porch this afternoon. Speedy & his cousin also had haircuts on the porch this week, and we ate supper out there a couple times. I'm glad my hubby is so easy to please--little things like eating on the porch really make his day. (Which I'm sure helps make up for the lousy new Mexican Rice recipe I tried.)

Here's my 'cheese!er' I was trying to get a pic of her putting necklaces on herself, and as usual she came running toward me. Pretty cute, anyway.
If you don't regularly look at my other blog, or get our weekly emails, you may enjoy this post from today.