Painted Lady Butterflies

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

My mom has always taken the time to do special little things with the kids. Not too surprising, a few weeks ago, she ordered a butterfly habitat so that the boys could experience seeing the changes all the way from larvae to painted lady butterflies. She can explain all of the steps better than me because I wasn't there for each step, so here it is in her words...

"They came to us as butterfly larvae. We had two containers with five small caterpillars each. Within the containers was food for them. They started to change. In about 7 days they had changed into chrysalids. They climbed to the top of the cups and hang down head first. Within the chrysalid the old body parts of the caterpillar underwent a transformation to the beautiful parts that make up a butterfly. We opened the containers and taped the disks inside the butterfly habitat. Each step we had to be very careful because they are so delicate. About 7 days later is when they began to emerge as adults. The boys put sugar water on flowers before we put them into the habitat as food for the butterflies. Parker journaled the steps as we did them. 2 days after they emerged is when we released them into my rose garden. Nothing I've ever done with them has been more delightful to me - they soaked up the information and learned new words and so enjoyed the beauty and fascination of it all."

This was once the cocoons were formed and they had to move them from the cup, and tape them into the habitat.

This was on Sunday morning after we got the call that three of the butterflies had emerged. Gamma called us and we went by her house on the way to church to see.Parker was reading the instructions on how and what to feed the butterflies.Today before going to the pool, we went to Gamma's to let the butterflies go.The boys carried the habitat out in the backyard, unzipped it, and let the butterflies fly away. Even Emerson enjoyed it!These are some beautiful pictures of the butterflies as they flew around Gamma's rose bushes. They were so pretty. The boys say that they are going to keep watching, because they are sure that they will see some of them again.