Every year, in our ever expanding family, Grandma and Grandpa A give cash to moms and dads to purchase presents on their behalf to give to all the grandkids. There are just too many grandkids for them to be able to shop for and get anything meaningful, without going losing their minds. And since they are both still in the working world, time is a HUGE issue. So, I had a lot of fun with the money this year, I tried to come up with some creative gifts, so that my kids would have the coolest presents at the big Christmas Party. IT WORKED - and Grandma and Grandpa A were very pleased with the gifts "THEY" gave our children. Here is one of those gifts, given with much love to Thing 2.
The Butterfly Pavillion!
The package included a butterfly tent, as seen in the above photo, a little feeder tube and some instructions. You have to send away for the rest once the weather warms up. Since we didn't have warm weather until mid-June, we had to wait a LONG time before ordering the caterpillars. Here is Thing 2 on the day her package arrived. We have the tent ready to go and she is so excited. The caterpillars arrived in these cups and we had to wait a few days for them to work their way to the top to start the transition process.
Once they have attached to the paper at the top of the cup, they begin to form their chrysalis. That is when we removed them from the cup and attached them to the inside of the Butterfly Pavillion - then we just watched and waited!
As soon as the butterflies exited their cocoons, they would need to eat. So, we gathered some flowers, placed them in the pavillion and sprinkled them with sugar water. We started off with nine butterflies, named: Champion, Trickster, Tricky, Deady (this one never really showed any signs of life - pretty creative, eh?), okay, that's as many as I can remember.
They were Painted Lady Butterflies - small and cute. Thing 2 would shut the door to her room and let the butterflies go all over the place. One unfortunate event took place during said open flying time. When we madeover this bedroom recently, Bert took the cover off the return air vent so that we could clean it up and paint it again. It hadn't been replaced, so I am sure you can imagine what happened. That butterfly was never to be seen again (although I haven't changed the filter yet, perhaps there will be a poor little butterfly corpse waiting for me when I do). Hmmmm... something to look forward to ???
But, as you can see, even though the life span was fairly short, Thing 2 had a great experience - watching over and caring for them from beginning to end. She certainly enjoyed playing with them as you can see. She is our little entomologist, probably the cutest one out there!
Thanks Grandma and Grandpa A
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