handsful

Thought I’d share a picture of my kiddos and I, on Sunday morning…Mother’s Day! We had just come home from church, and posed in front of the house (with the triplets standing on a ledge, in case you’re wondering why they’re so tall!). On the way to church, the kids surprised me with several “I love you because” notes from each of them. They were great! My Mother’s Day gift was a day of pampering at my hair salon…a massage and a facial! Can’t wait for that.

It occurred to me that this *should* be my last Mother’s Day without Lainey. I sure hope she’s posing with us in next years picture.

Remember the ladybug house we had, with 9 little ladybug larvae? About a week ago, they all obediently turned into little pupas. Then, one by one, they all crawled out of their pupa shells (we got to see a couple of them do this…it was so cute how they wiggled their little bottoms out!). We kept them in the ladybug house a couple of days, and they feasted on a few raisin halves. Yesterday morning, we let them go. After each one crawled out, we placed them on our yellow lantana plants, right outside our front door. Of course, I snapped tons of pictures! Here are a few…

Come on little girls, time to go! (see the 3 at the bottom?)

Marley introduces them to their new home

Hang on!!

The ladybug house instructions said that if we release them in the morning (which we did), our ladybugs should stay close to where they were released. So, we hope to see them again!

Since we arrived in St. Augustine too late last time to do any tours, we decided to go back for Part 2 last Thursday! We were able to tour inside the Castillo de San Marcos fort and the Lightner museum. I just love history, and being able to see and touch things from the past is such a privilege. To stand in front of a throne chair and know that some nobleman or king sat there…amazing. The kids especially loved learning about the cannons at the Fort and standing where the sentrys stood to keep watch over the St. Johns river.

The Lightner museum used to be the Alcazer hotel, built in 1887. It held the largest indoor pool of it’s time (so they say), which now holds a cafe at one end. The original pool floor is still there. Abbey counted the steps and compared them to a photo showing the pool…she wanted to know how deep the water was!

We’ve still got more to do in St. Augustine, so we’ll be back :) Here are a few more photos of our day…

Can you imagine standing in that little tower all day?

See?! It’s quite small inside!

A model of the fort…this is the shape of it from above. The middle section is an open courtyard, with rooms all around. The top is where the cannons are (obviously)

Guard room, complete with straw-filled mattresses. Comfy!

“Pool” at Lightner (see cafe tables at the end?)

Photo in the back of when it WAS a pool!

Thought I’d share a few pictures (gee, that’s something new, eh?) of our Sunday. We went to church, went out to lunch, and then took our boat out for some play time in the river. The kids love to kneeboard…well, everyone except Marley (she’s decided water sports aren’t her thing). Enjoy!

Captain Randy…cute, eh?

First “mate” (get it?)

Must be something funny in that water!

Hey, Mom!

sisters and…

brothers!

Our Eastern Tent Caterpillars (smuggled out of NC 3 weeks ago…) emerged from their cocoons today and we released them in the front yard. I wonder if they were confused, waking up in Florida? Aren’t they cute?!

Caterpillar wrangler (see it sitting on her hand)

Fuzzy little fellow

I mentioned that we had 6 new arrivals, right? The kids scooped up 6 tadpoles from our backyard pond and they’re now living on our patio table. You can see two of them in this picture. We’ll have tiny frogs soon…check back for pictures!

Being a homeschool family has it’s advantages. For instance, we’re taking a break from our chronological study of history to delve into China’s history, We want to learn as much as possible about Lainey’s homeland. The other day, the kids enjoyed copying Chinese characters out of the book “Long is a Dragon”. This is a great book, giving a nice history of Chinese writing, clear directions on how to write the characters (directions of strokes, etc.), and gives picture comparisons to the characters (i.e. “man” looks like a man walking).

Okay, so maybe it’s not a true “ladybug sighting” just yet. They’re still little larva, eating their food and drinking from a sponge! But, soon (the booklet doesn’t say how long this takes!) they’ll attach to the top of the dome and become pupas. Then, after 5 days, we’ll have ladybugs! We plan on keeping them for a couple of days…feeding them a raisin or two…and then we’ll release them into our backyard.

Besides our ladybug larva, we also have 2 Eastern Tent Caterpillars currently in cocoons in our butterfly tent and they should become moths in about a week. In the past, we’ve also raised butterflies, tadpoles and grasshoppers (TONS of baby grasshoppers, oh my!) The kids are animals lovers and seeing these transformations only confirms for us the amazing work of our Creator!

Lots of “blogable” things happened this weekend, so I thought I’d cram it all into one post :)

Saturday, we took the kids to St. Augustine, Florida for a quick visit. St. Augustine is about 45 minutes south of us, and is known as the oldest city in the nation (it was founded 42 years before the English colony at Jamestown, Va and 55 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock!). We took a carriage ride around town, with the driver filling us in on all the rich history of St. Augustine. We also saw the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the country. We got there too late to tour inside (we’ll do that next time), but just the outside was amazing to see. A couple more pictures…

sitting on the fort wall!

Posing with “Jack” the horse and his carriage

On to Sunday…Abbey had her first day of being a “Kidstuf dancer” at church. “Kidstuf” is our church’s youth service, where parents and kids attend together to hear a message, sing, and watch a play about the virtue of the month. She’s been excited about doing this for the last couple of years, and as a rising 6th grader, she’s finally old enough. She loved it!

After church, we got a surprise phone call from our friend, Sharon Pierce! She was driving up from Miami with her kids, Connor, Sydney, and Mia and had time to stop and visit with us. We did tons of catching up and our kids played great together. My boys would like to adopt Connor as their “honorary big brother”! Sharon and I have been friends since 8th grade and Sharon and Randy grew up in church together. Sharon is responsible for my marriage…she introduced Randy and I when we were in the 9th grade. :)

Sharon and Donna

Our 4 and her 3!

Abbey, Sydney, Marley, and Mia