Butterflies!

Last week we finished up working on the Letter B and Butterflies. The children and I had a wonderful time with this week. It was a lot of fun. We also had some butterflies of our own. We received caterpillars a few weeks ago and got a chance to see them grow and turn into beautiful painted Lady Butterflies. It's so amazing...the creativity that God has put into his creation. Butterflies are one of my favorite things. So it was a blessing to actually see the change happen. We missed the first butterfly emerging but were privileged to see the second one. The children were so excited to see their butterflies and we released them this past Saturday. But not before the children got to hold them on their fingers. :-)

Did some one say Maple Syrup?

I apologize...I am so far behind on updating both blogs. I have been feeling poorly the past week and I am trying to get caught up. Anyway, about the middle of March our family went to Malabar Farm for the Maple Syrup Festival. We don't have a ton of pictures, but it was a fun day. We rode on a horse drawn wagon to the sugar camp and got to see how the Native Americans made maple syrup and also how the pioneers/early settlers made it as well.

The first demonstration was how the Native Americans made it. They didn't have metal pots so they put the sap into a hollowed out log and took hot rocks out of the fire and put them into the sap to bring it to a boil. So their syrup had a lot of grit in it.

Next up was the early settlers. They would actually boil it past the syrup stage all they way down to sugar. And then if they needed syrup they would just add a little water to the sugar. We actually got to taste some of the sugar and it was very yummy! :-)

Little E was happy to be out of the carrier/backpack and be able to run around for a while.

Oh yes...I also can not forget to mention that the children got to try cotton candy for the first time. Not only was it cotton candy....it was maple syrup cotton candy! Big T loved it!

So...as I said...not many pictures, but the children sure had a good time. Hopefully next year it won't be as cold. :-)