Monkey hair

Natalie has crazy hair. It grows at a snail's pace just like mine so we just barely got to the point where I can put it in two little hair twisties. I love the way it looks on her but I guess it bugs her because she's always pulling them out. And that creates the monkey hair. Her hair is very moldable and I can make it stand straight out. I love messing with it. Plus, Natalie likes to do this shrieking that sounds very much like a monkey and she climbs everything so the hair just fits. She's also a ham whenever I get the camera out, pulling all sorts of faces for me.



Natalie is also loud and will not be ignored. Maybe because she is so small she is more determined not to go unnoticed. We have to be careful to make sure Tanner gets attention too because his two sisters demand it and he's more of the strong, silent type.

Gymnastics

I recently started Sydney back up in gymnastics. We did a parent-toddler class when she was two. Tanner and Natalie love to do somersaults, usually with my help. Lately they have been attempting to them on their own too. So here are a couple little clips of our workout routine tonight. I don't think I'll ever be brave enough to do a parent-toddler class with twins so this is gonna have to do until they get older!

Traveler IQ

Yes...many of you Facebook friends have seen this, but how is your world traveler IQ? Try this. If you're on Facebook, it will compare our scores. I'm pitiful once it comes to Africa. Post a comment to this blog entry with your score.

Click here to play

Pet butterflies

For Christmas we decided to give Sydney one of those gifts-that-keep-on-giving things - a butterfly garden. This kit from insectlore.com comes with a butterfly mesh "cage" and you mail order the caterpillars and watch them grow and perform their magical transformation. It's been quite educational and Sydney's really enjoyed it.

Here is how teeny weeny the little caterpillars arrived. I actually wondered if they forgot to put them in the cup because I couldn't really see them at first. The caterpillars lived in this cup for about 2 weeks and grew to be almost 2 inches long each. Sydney and I checked on their progress every day and she once said "my caterpillars should be so proud of themselves! They are getting so big!" I should have taken a picture at this stage, but it was pretty disgusting. Caterpillar poop was everywhere.

Finally the caterpillars made their last trek to the top of their cup and made their chrysalises. I then had to carefully remove the lid and the paper they were attached to and safety pin it to the side of the butterfly garden cage. This was very scary for me since the butterflies didn't seem to be attached too well to the lid. Two of them had already fallen off and we had to put them on a napkin at the bottom of the cage.

The butterflies remained in their chrysalises for 10 days and we had just about given up hope that they were ever going to come out. The instructions said it would take 7-10 days so ours were late bloomers. But when I checked on them today their was an empty shell of a chrysalis and a beautiful painted lady butterfly. I so wanted to see one of them actually emerge from their chrysalis, but 4 out of the 5 have come out and I've missed them all. They must do it very quickly. I left them for about 10 minutes this afternoon and a new one was out when I got back.

This one posed for me quite nicely. They haven't moved around much today or opened their wings to show off their colors, so I was happy to get this picture.

So far this is the only one who has discovered food. We put fresh flowers on the bottom of the cage and squirted sugar water onto them.

The sad thing about this all is that we ordered them in the winter and won't likely be able to release them before their lifetime is up. It's still too cold outside. Pretty sad existence for the butterflies I think, and I have five more things to remember to feed around here. So if we do this again I will be sure to wait until it's warm enough to set them free outside, but it's still been a pretty fun experience.

Game night

We love game nights. And we love that the Weavers moved back to Utah! Last night we got two babysitters for all the kids and went to dinner. Then came back to our place for games. I lost pretty miserably, but I expected it. It was still fun! We played Tikal which is a bit slow and maybe a good thing for us girls who tend to get a little chatty.

I thought this picture was funny because I opened a box of cheez-its for one of the kids and they all flocked over immediately. Josh thinks it looks like a pretty good advertisement for cheez-its.

Snow Fun

So I just barely took pictures off my camera and found these. I took them over a month ago but they're still cute! This was before the kids got the nasty cold we've been fighting the last week and a half. The weather was somewhat warm this day but the snow was not fresh. Pretty crunchy actually. So they played mostly on the swingset.