Friday, July 30, 2010

Vote Vote Vote

I am way behind on the photo contest and need more votes! If you haven't done so already, please go here: http://blog.karenbagley.com/?p=311 and make a comment to vote for my photo!

If you've already voted have your family vote as well. Even young kids can cast a vote (Feel free to do the typing for them!).

Thanks for all of your help. And while you're there look at my Sister in laws awesome photography!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Photo Contest Finals

Thanks to all of your votes - my photo of Aubrey made it into the Finals of Karen's photo contest!

That means I need your votes again. Please go to Karen's blog again and make a comment.

Thanks for your help!


Saturday, July 24, 2010

Our Pet Ladybugs

For my birthday, in October, Jeff got me a ladybug land. It has a coupon to send for Ladybug Larva and you get to watch the whole life cycle. We had to wait for the weather to warm up, or we wouldn't have been able to send them off into our yard. (If you keep them in the ladybug land their life cycle is only 2-3 weeks, but if you let them go after a week, their life cycle is a year. But you can't let them go in cold weather. It seemed cruel to shorten their life by that much. Plus it's fun to get to take them out of the land and watch them fly away.)

Anyway, after our Yosemite trip, I sent away for the larva. Almost everyday after we sent the coupon, Aubrey asked to check and see if the ladybugs came in the mail. So, she was super thrilled when they came a couple of weeks ago.

They come in a little tube with food, and you just dump them into the ladybug land.



Both girls were super excited to get to see bugs crawling all around.



This is what the larva look like.


Then 8 days later, we saw them attach themselves to the dome and some to the bottom of the land and start to curl up.


Then the next day this little yellow puffy thing came out. I thought it was the ladybugs and was confused because the pamphlet said they would be in the pupa stage for 5 days. When they started to turn black and hard, I thought we had done something wrong and killed them. But, I looked online and found out that the yellow blob becomes the pupa and all was well.


Exactly 5 days later we checked our ladybug land and saw a few ladybugs crawling around. They were still yellow, but had their spots so I knew they had emerged just a few hours before.

Then I looked closer and saw that one was emerging right then! This is the ladybug coming out of the pupa. It's all soft and yellow.


The girls were so thrilled to see the ladybugs crawling around!




Brooke is so fascinated with bugs right now - it was such good timing to do this.






In this picture you see on the far right a pupa that a ladybug has not emerged yet from. In the middle is one of our ladybugs that emerged while we were sleeping. The yellow one had just emerged from the pupa to the far left. You can see that the spots are starting to appear on the yellow ladybug.




We kept our ladybugs in the land for about a week. Aubrey loved giving them water every other day. She also was soooo excited for the day that the ladybugs would crawl all over her!


Then this Friday morning we took them out to the garden to let them out. Aubrey was so excited to get to play with them!




A few times Brooke saw the ladybugs and got excited as well.


"Hey, what's that on my shirt?"


Here's Aubrey trying to put the ladybug on Brooke.


Patiently waiting for daddy to get another ladybug out.










It was seriously so fun to watch the whole process. It was also so exciting to see both my little girls so intrigued by the ladybugs. Thanks Jeff for the fun birthday gift!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Love the Curls

When Aubrey was Brooke's age, she had the perfect little curls around her neck and her hair looked absolutely adorable pretty much always. I LOVE Brooke's blonde hair and think that her hair will actually be much easier to style when she's Aubrey's age - but for now I am really missing the girly curls.

So I decided to get some smaller rollers and see if her hair was actually long enough to put in rollers. I first tried them last Saturday. She looked absolutely adorable with them in!





But I didn't put enough rollers on top and she ended up with a Mohawk type look. Thus the no after picture.

So Sunday, I added a few more on top to see if that would do the trick. Could she be any cuter with curlers and a hair net?!


I thought her hair turned out soooo cute. Here she is with her cute curls.






Aubrey of course wanted pictures of herself in the curlers - but this is the lovely face she gave me!


Here's her after shot.


She still has naturally curly hair, but it's not even. There's parts that are straight and parts that are curly. So if she's going to wear her hair down for church, I usually have to curl it.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Fun in the Sun

My awesome SIL is doing a photo contest on her photography blog. The theme is "Fun in the Sun", so I took my camera out back while the girls played yesterday afternoon.

This first photo is the one I entered. So if you like it go over to Karen's blog and write a comment. That's how the votes are being tabulated. (BTW Parent's and in laws - you do not need any sort of log in to comment. You just put in your name and your comment. Easy as pie!)





I love the moments when my girls play happily together.





I LOVE Brooke's backyard crawl. It totally cracks me up. She doesn't want her knees to touch the grass or the concrete.











I had to zoom out to show what Aubrey was actually doing. She had sat her chair by the sprinkler and brought over the umbrella so she could guard herself from too much water. That kid just cracks me up.











Aubrey was winding up the swing and then it was twirling Brooke in a circle.



I love how you can see Brooke's hair flying in this pic.






Oh how a 3 year old can find joy in the simplest things.






My little peeping Tom.


I LOVE having a backyard. It's so nice to spend some downtime backyard with my little sweethearts.