It's A Girl!

As of Friday, we finally have another girl in the family.

This is Esperanza. Sometimes I call her Chica for short. Maybe she'll be a bilingual dog, since I talk to her in Spanish half the time. She's almost 4 months old, and weighs 4 pounds. I think she'll eventually be about 6 or 7 pounds, like her mama. Best of all, she's already house-trained.

My mom saw a flyer at the VA (where she works) stating "Pom Puppies for Sale, 10 weeks old, to a good home". She knew we've been looking for another dog (and having no luck with the WI Humane Society or the rescue groups), and took the number down. I phoned, drove out, and got a dog! :)

She is so much fun! She stays near me most of the time, but on the beach she went exploring a bit. She isn't too sure about big dogs, and hides between my legs when they come by, but I am going to do my best to get her used to them. She also gets carsick, so I am hoping she outgrows that.

Right now, Randall tolerates her, but he's slowly warming up. She gets a bit rambunctious and tries to jump on him sometimes, and he's having none of that. Today, though, they ran around together on the beach, so I hope they'll eventually be good friends.

Raising Butterflies

On July 17, we found a caterpillar on our milkweed. We decided to take it in and feed it. About 10 minutes later, Calvin found a second caterpillar, so we had two to take care of. We put them in half-gallon canning jars.

They ate, and ate, and ate (they poop a lot too!). We kept feeding them milkweed and cleaning out the jars. On July 21, one of the caterpillars started to form a chrysalis. They hang in this "J" shape for a while.

The next day, we had a chrysalis! We eventually moved them to an aquarium I got from a friend.

On Saturday afternoon (August 1), I took this picture. Isn't it cool? You can see the butterfly forming.

Overnight, the chrysalis turned black. I was told that this meant the butterflies would be emerging within a few hours. So we kept watch.

We missed seeing the first butterfly actually come out of the chrysalis, but saw it soon afterwards. The butterfly's body is so fat and the wings are so little!

A few minutes later, you can see that the wings are already 'growing'. We then decided to camp in front of the aquarium so that we wouldn't miss the birth of the second butterfly. :) About 30 minutes later, it emerged!


I know the video is a bit dark, shaky and blurry, but it's still cool to see.

After a few hours, it was time to let the butterflies go. We let them go in the back yard.

One of the butterflies took its time flying off, so Calvin got to hold it for a bit.

Beautiful!

We found another caterpillar down at the beach last night, so the cycle starts again!

June Adventures

Oh my, June has zipped by and we're almost halfway through July! Time to catch-up:

Caleb built some alternative energy models for the Human Ecology Fair at school. This is a hydroelectric generator. When they ran water down the chute, it generated enough electricity to make a buzzer go off.

We spent Father's Day at the Boerner Botanical Gardens. David's dad and wife came to visit also.

I took five boys with me on our annual camping trip....

....where they got to make ice cream, along with spending a day playing on the beach, general hiking around, and all around fun.

Caleb left for a week to camp with his Boy Scout troop.

I turned 39, and to celebrate....

....we went to pick strawberries....

....and peas....

....and made a lot of jam.

Happy Christmas

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas with good food, family, and friends.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We had a lovely day, though my brother and his family were not able to come due to sick kidlets. :( We had my mother, my friend Beth, her dad and his wife:
Our yummy meal consisted of turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole (I tried a new recipe which was delish), cranberry sauce, and dinner rolls (another new recipe I tried and was also a success).

After gorging ourselves, we took a game break before having dessert, and played a few games of Horse Race.

Then we had dessert: pumpkin pie, apple pie (still warm from the oven), banana cream pie and tiramisu (not pictured, sorry!). It was all soooo good!!!

Tomorrow I plan to spend most of the day sewing my dress for my HS reunion on Saturday. The pattern is traced off, but that's as far as I've gotten!

Halloween

Here in Milwaukee, trick-or-treat is always held on the Sunday before Halloween, in the afternoon. It's always been that way (I don't know why); I never trick-or-treated in the dark on Halloween as a child. Anyway, here are the boys:
Caleb was a biker. He was going to be the Joker, but I didn't get a costume done in time, and it actually turned out for the best, as we had to quickly leave town a few days later for a family funeral (having green hair at the funeral probably wouldn't have been the best thing. ^_^)

Calvin was Zorro, Connor was a ghost. He was going to be a doctor again like last year, but at the absolute last minute he wanted to be a ghost. It's a good thing I keep a bolt of muslin on hand at all times.

As I mentioned above, we had to go to Iowa for a funeral. They do trick-or-treat there at night, usually on Halloween (it was on the 30th this year, and they call it Beggar's Night instead). My FIL dressed up as a clown, Caleb decided to go as a pirate this time, and Connor decided to skip the whole thing and stay home to play with trains. One of the traditions in Iowa is that you have to tell a joke to get your candy. Calvin told everyone that he doesn't do jokes, he does tricks. So he'd go into the person's yard and do a running roundoff into a backhandspring. In a cape. It looked pretty darn cool. People were pretty impressed, and would give him extra candy. He scored big on the candy in Iowa!

I used Butterick 5656 for Calvin's Zorro cape, adding 10" to the length, and using the collar piece from the tunic. To finish off the collar, I stitched it on as if I were making a dress shirt collar stand. It's sewn all around the neck and front edges, leaving the top open.

I then trimmed and clipped the collar. After pressing it, I turned under the open edge on the top.

To finish it off and close the opening, I edgestitched all around. A finished collar, with all edges enclosed!

Randall

I'd like you to meet Randall:
We adopted him yesterday from the Humane Society; he's a Pomeranian and tiny (4.25 pounds!). He was one of the dogs from the Haven Puppy Mill, and is 1.5 years old. Apparently he was used as a stud. He's not used to people, though he's been exploring the house, and isn't scared of us, just a bit shy. He adores other dogs, however, so once he settles in, we'll probably start looking for a second dog.

I never thought we'd get a foo-foo dog, but this is why we ended up with one. David wanted a lap dog that can sit on him while he plays his video games, and Randall certainly fits the bill. Calvin enjoyed letting Randall snooze on his lap while he watched some TV last night, and he's sitting on my lap right now as I type. OMG, I'm probably going to end up with a little carrier and he can come with us to gymnastics practice (Calvin's coach brings his little dog to the gym every day -- they can play!).

Apple Season

We went to pick apples today, at a local farm. We had a great time, and only got rained on a little bit.
The trees were laden with fruit. Caleb's friend James came with us (he's the one jumping to get an apple).

The boys said all the apples were good, though the Spartan ones were a favorite. We picked Red Delicious, Jonathans, Spartans, and Cortlands. We also got some of my favorite pears, Starks.

I wore my Notre Dame De Grace sweater, since I thought it was a bit chilly (though Caleb insisted on wearing his shorts). I love the sweater, though I think I could have made it a size smaller yet. Even though I took 2.5" off the sleeve length, I could've taken another inch. Connor had a blast running through the orchard.

A day picking apples means apple pie for dessert in the evening. Yummy! I plan to make applesauce in the crock pot tomorrow.

Baptism

My nephew, Spencer, was baptized on Sunday. He wore the same gown I made 2 years ago for his big brother, Pablo.
Spencer got dressed when we got to the church, a nice little walk from the house.

Tim (Julie's brother) and I were the Godparents again.

Afterwards, we walked back to the house and had a little cookout. It was an absolutely perfect day.

Sonja

Our dog Sonja died a little over an hour ago, with me by her side telling her it was ok to go, and that I'd see her on the other side. She had been acting lethargic and not eating since Saturday. I took her in to the animal emergency clinic and they said that she was probably in renal failure. They wanted to keep her overnight and do more diagnostic testing, but I opted to bring her back home, keep her comfortable, and let her be with her family.
She would have been 10 in early November. Sonja was a great dog, loved chasing tennis balls, and loved her boys (though I was her favorite. ^_^). I am going to miss her very much.

(and for those of you that know us -- I cannot believe that my scrawny, pathetic looking 18 year old cat that looks like she has been at death's door for the past few years has outlived this dog!)

A Birthday Surprise

Connor's birthday surprise was A Day Out With Thomas! My brother told me about it in March or April, and when I realized that one of the days was Connor's 4th birthday, well, you know I had to get tickets. All Connor knew was that we were doing something very special on his birthday.

Needless to say, when we arrived and he saw what his surprise was, he was THRILLED.

My brother and his family met us there, and Connor was so excited and wouldn't stop talking about all the different trains.

There was a LEGO Thomas to play on.

Thomas himself gave rides to everyone with a ticket.

You bet we had ours!

There were also other trains and engines to look at; we got to play in some sleeper cars, and see trains from long ago.

We even got to play on train tracks!

Tomorrow we'll have a little bit of cake, and on Monday, 3 friends are coming over for Connor's first "kid" birthday party. Wow, turning 4 is pretty cool!

Ren Faire

We went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire on Sunday. Calvin dressed up in one of the jester outfits, and we all had a lovely time.