Butterflies

Maria and I both remembered raising monarch butterflies as children. Lubbock, apparently, isn't home to monarchs or any other pretty butterflies. We had to go mail order. After placing the chrysalis' in the enclosure they came out pretty quickly. The girls couldn't have been more excited. Before church we let them release the butterflies and I was able to capture a few nice shots.

You know you are tired when....

Poor little thing fell asleep in a pretty awkward position. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon, and of course she really doesn't need a nap anymore. We didn't let her sleep too long because she would have been up all night.

Happy 5th

Anya's birthday was great. She had the Mad Scientist come and do a presentation, which she loved and then everybody headed out to the pool for an hour. The only problem was that the ever present West Texas wind made it impossible to light the candles. In the end we just imagined that they were lit and sang, and Anya blew them out anyway.

The girls did two rounds of swim lessons this summer and it was worth all the effort Maria put into getting the girls up and to the pool early for an entire month. Anya loved it and by the end was swimming freestyle and backstroke and diving to down 7 to 8 feet to retrieve stuff off the bottom of the pool and Nadia was jumping off the diving board and swimming to the side of the pool by herself.

The things kids say

I should have posted this the day it happened, but this is my first post on Maria's blog, better late than never.

On Veterans' Day we had stopped at United Market Street, the local supermarket, and when Maria and the girls left they stopped by a couple of Korean War era veterans who were selling little silk flowers to raise money for the American Legion.

When they got in the van Anya preceded to excitedly tell me about her little silk flower "Daddy, we got these flowers from the veterinarians!"

I only wish I could remember everything funny comment the girls had made, it is a shame that I haven't written more of them down.