Nighttime Fun

Daniel took this beautiful photo of God's magnificence last evening,

and tonight he treated the kids to a campfire and marshmellow roast. It has finally cooled down here in the northeast, the temperature for this fire was 56 degrees.
Thank-you Danny, everyone enjoyed the evening, especially Mark.

The Shrine of Blessed Marianne Cope

Yesterday, the Sodality of Our Lady of Good Counsel church spent the day together and went to the Shrine and Museum of Blessed Marianne Cope.

Blessed Marianne Cope was a local nun who went to Hawaii to help Blessed Father Damein take care of the lepers. She was beatified on May 14, 2005 by Pope Benedict.

It was a beautiful experience to pray for the intercession of Blessed Marianne in the presence of her remains.

The museum was an inspiration with many relics of both Father Damien and Mother Marianne. Above is the Father Damien's chausible and cane.

Feast of the Assumption

In honor of Our Blessed Mother for The Feast of the Assumption which we celebrate tomorrow, we made these beautiful shoebox triptychs. The idea is from the third craft of the week idea at the 4RealLearning Forum.

We got our shoeboxes ready last night. I also printed various pictures of Mary's Assumption, The Coronation of Mary and the Nativity from the internet and from books that we had.

This morning we went to the craft store and bought gold paint and embelishments.

Mark then made the gorgeous triptych above all by himself. He did a wonderful job. Our Blessed Mother must be very proud of the patient work he did.

Grace and Becky made this one. It came out lovely.

I want to thank Nicole at the 4RealLearning Forum for such a great idea.

Time To Fill the Freezer

Thanks to our friends the Maciags' we have been enjoying delicious sweet corn picked right off the stalk. Yesterday the kids picked five dozen ears and we went to work to put it into the freezer. Everyone helped to husk the corn and then

we boiled it in our handy dandy outdoor corn cooker (aka turkey fryer). It comes to a boil real quick and the house doesn't get hot.

Danny and I cut the corn off the cob. I used the electric knife and poor Dan had to use the good old steak knife. I am glad that he didn't cut himself.

Here some of it is, all ready for the freezer.

Aunt Mary's Birthday!!

Last weekend we celebrated the 50th birthday of Aunt Mary, my husband's sister and the most loving aunt my children could ever hope for.

She has brought joy and smiles into the lives of everyone she has ever met.

Becky made this cake. There is a reason for this type of cake....
Aunt Mary's favorite party hat is her clown hat.
There, of course, were games at this party. (real serious games) Pat was the captain of his team-the blue guys. Use you imagination as to why he was put in charge of these cousins.

The pretty little purple team was also full of cousins, and they look like they may be the team to beat.

Kimberly made up her own game of fishing in the empty swimming pool. I think that she had just as much fun as everyone on the organized teams.
After some games, Mary did manage to blow out aaaallllllll those candles,

and then on to more fun!

FUN!!

Blindfolded fun!

Watching a blindfolded cousin fun!!

Dan got tired of the fun and his foot hurt, but

Kim and Luke just kept going and going and going, although,

in black and white, Luke looks like he is slowing down. (but really he was not)

But parties do finally end, even wonderful parties like this one, and it is a pleasure to see beautiful sights on the ride home. I always enjoy seeing the windmills that dot the landscape along the route home.

This isn't a beautiful site, but I did enjoy playing with the camera.

A Busy Saturday

It is the weekend so we headed to a party today. We attended a family reunion this afternoon and saw a lot of family that we don't see often enough.
Before we headed out I made Matt, along with Mark, pose with the sunflower house. I want you to notice the morning glories blossoming so nicely among the sunflowers. I am very pleased about this because after I planted them, I read the seed packet. It stated to soak the seeds for 24 hours before planting. I left out this step, so I am pleasantly surprised at the great results in spite of my lack of direction reading.

I didn't take pictures at the reunion as many people were snapping away and I was watching a lot of children, but after the picnic at Grandma and Grandpa's house I took this cute picture of cousins enjoying a video game.

This evening Laura got Kim to do something that we have been trying to get her to do for quite some time----WINK----on demand. Laura also took this wonderful photo of her showing off her new talent.

We ended the evening lying of a blanket in the backyard watching the Perseid Meteor shower. The peak is tomorrow night right before dawn when they expect 60 meteors an hour, but we did see three big meteors shoot across the sky with their tails blazing. We also saw many smaller streaks.
It was spectacular!!

Danny's Foot--Update

On Tuesday this week, Dan went to the doctor's office to get his stitches out. The Dr. Irene decided that it wasn't healed enough to have the stitches removed so they were left in until today.

Today they were removed, and Dan complained because he still can't step on his heel. Dr. Irene thought that he should have an x-ray to make sure all the glass was out. Well, the x-ray showed one more little piece that was left behind in his foot.
We are waiting to hear from the surgeon's office for an appointment. They will decide if they want to remove it now or give it a little more time to perhaps heal around the glass.

A Little Beauty

Mommy had to catch this katydid this morning while Mark and Grace ran for cover. It was on the siding of the house and just waiting for us to put him in our bug jar.

Look at those big eyes.
It is also the best insect to identify as insect's body parts. You could very clearly see the head, thorax and abdomen on the underside of this kaydid. We are going to draw and label the parts before we let him go.

A New Dress for Baby

I finished this very cute dress last night for this very cute baby.
I used McCall's pattern #M4757.

It came out nice but I wouldn't use this pattern again because it had quite a few unusual steps. It had bias tape under the arms, and the full self-lined yoke was put together in a way that was very confusing.(and I have done regular facings many times before) Also, the zipper just added more time to the whole project.

The Puzzle Museum

It was a perfect day (hot, humid and rainy) for Mark and Grace to put together all their puzzles and give us a tour of their "puzzle museum."
Grace led the tour, which didn't require much walking because we could only fit by standing at one end of the "museum."(also known as the hallway)
She described each puzzle and who put it together.

As you know, a few days ago, our Monarch butterfly hatched so we were without nature in the house, so when Laura found this type of caterpillar on our maple tree we made it a nice little habitat. Laura identified it as a American Dagger Moth caterpillar

The picture below is not the one she caught though. I planned on taking its picture today, but when we woke up it had already spun its cocoon.

This family seems to be very good at raising and hatching insects.

We will keep you posted when this little guy hatches.

Mark also caught another Monarch caterpillar today and Grace found another egg. We are going to take these over to Grandpa's house so that he and Grandma can watch the transformation.

A Monarch Lifecycle

On July 16th we found our Monarch caterpillar eggs, and we have been carefully taking care of our hatchling since then.

Our egg- found on the underside of a milkweed leaf.

Our hatchling was so tiny we had to be careful we didn't throw him away while we were putting fresh milkweed in his jar.

He ate and he ate and he ate. He grew and he grew and he grew. Every morning you could actually see that he had gotten bigger in the night.

On July 28th we noticed that our caterpillar had gotten into a "j", and was hanging from a milkweed stem.


That night we watched as he turned into a chrysalis. If you have never witnessed this, the caterpillar splits its skin and wiggles around and around for about a half an hour, until it becomes still and seems to harden.


This morning, 22 days after hatching from his egg we noticed that we could see through the chrysalis. We new that today was the day.


He hatched in the afternoon. It amazed everyone that such a big insect could come out of such a small space.


His empty chrysalis is still amazing.

He spent about an hour hanging upside down as his wings straightened out and began to dry.

He also practiced sending out his proboscis (his sucking mouth part), as if he were stretching it out also.

We know he is a boy because of these two dark spots on his underwings.

After about two hours of drying and stretching and trying his wings he was ready to go.

Gracie was going to take him outside, but to her, he seemed to be an attack monarch.

Mark had more success getting him outside. I would love to show a picture of him sitting on our sunflowers out in the backyard, but alas, he was very ready to head on his way, and flew beautifully away as soon as he was out the door.