Circle of Life

A few weeks back Hobo brought over this jar.

He had found the culprit to his dying garden and made them a nice little home and brought them to us for the boys to see.  It was a family of huge caterpillars.
We left them by the front door and set them outside during the day to get fresh air, and before we knew it, they were cocooning! We had just started reading a new book called Farfallina and Marcel about a caterpillar who crawls up a tree to cocoon and when he emerges from the cocoon his friend does not recognize him because he had turned into a butterfly, so it was perfect timing to actually see it happen right before our eyes!  The boys were really excited about it, we checked on them often, Eli took them to school to show his class, but after a couple of weeks we kinda forgot about them.
I was a little worried they would all go to heaven before turning into butterflies since they were in a jar and in fact, a couple of them already had!
So a couple of weeks had past and our jar was on the floor by the front door.  Cash never. stops. moving. and is into everything he can get his chubby little hands on and the second he saw an opening, he made a B-line for the jar.  I heard the clink of glass on the floor and turned around to see something big and black flapping on Cash's arm.  My first thought was "holy s@*!t there is a bat in the house and its on my baby!!!!"  Because like I said, we kinda forgot about the butterflies and didnt think they would actually make it. I walked slowly over to him and thank goodness it was not a bat, but a beautiful butterfly!!!! I got the butterfly and the glass jar safely away from him before Cash was able to grab and smoosh him and found ANOTHER beautiful butterfly climbing out of the jar!
Their wings were still wet so they were not flying yet and let us play with them for a few minutes before we took them outside to dry their wings on a flower.

You can see why I thought it was a bat right? It was huge!

The boys are very much into measuring everything these days because we have been measuring things for our house lately and they just had to "measure" the butterflies.

We stayed outside until it was time for me to put Cash down for his nap because Eli and Owen really wanted to see them fly away.  They stayed put for over an hour and we were constantly checking on them.  The last time we went out there they were gone! They were so happy....until...Eli saw a butterfly wing flapping in the wind on the porch.  A bird snatched it right up!  Blaine tried to play it off but Eli was too smart and knew what had happened so we took the opportunity to explain a little bit about the circle of life.  Of course the first thing Owen told his teacher the next day was that a bird ate the butterfly and killed it.

The next day, again, we had already forgotten about the jar, was still sitting by the door and Owen went to look inside and found yet another beautiful butterfly!  We took him outside and he flew right out of the jar and into the sky...poor thing was probably cooped up in there all day, we thought only two made it into butterflies.
Here he is before he flew off.

It was really amazing to see these caterpillars cocoon and turn into butterflies!  I was just at excited as they were, OK, maybe a little more:)