Butterflies

As I mentioned in this post about Clara at four, she really loves animals but especially bugs.  Mama K had a fabulous birthday present for her this year.  Caterpillars!  We received in the mail a box that looked like this:

And inside was a canister of food and five teeny tiny caterpillars (that I was sure were already dead).  Over the next several weeks they ate their way to plump and climbed to the top of the jar and made chrysalides.  We transferred the chrysalides to a butterfly home and then a few weeks later, out they popped.  We released them in our driveway.

Clara, of course, loved this whole experience.  But I must say, the adults were pretty enthralled too.  It had been many many years since I'd watched the whole process up close like this and it's nothing short of miraculous.  The reminder of life during the Easter season was especially powerful.   We had such fun, I think we'll order more caterpillars again next year!

Lazy 5 Ranch

In the weeks before Clara becomes a big sister, I had high hopes of making sure we made a few extra special memories of fun outings with just her.  We got a few in and I'm glad we did because now that I'm six weeks out, I've been on and off some partial bed rest and probably don't have the energy or stamina to handle any more big day trips like this one.  Hopefully little sister will be a trooper and we can resume some fun like this later this summer while she rides along in a stroller or baby carrier.

On one of the first nice spring days in March we decided to finally go visit Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville.  We had made plans a few other times to go and had to cancel for weather.  It was great to finally see all these cool animals so up close.  We did the wagon ride through the ranch and got to feed lots of different animals straight from our hands and then walked through the small petting zoo area where we got to see even more. One of the highlights were the camels -- Clara has been wanting to see a camel since we started talking about the Christmas story. The NC Zoo doesn't have one and she got RSV and missed out on the live nativities.  At last, we saw real live camels (and I can truthfully report that they are rather disgusting) - even a baby one!  It was also really fun to be eye-to-eye with the giraffes.  Aren't they just amazing creatures?!

Here are some photos to remind us of such a fun day together!  And if you're local and haven't been to Mooresville yet to visit Lazy 5 Ranch, it's well worth your time!