Sunday, August 16, 2015

Lesson Learned


Remember this caterpillar?



Eight days later he had grown to this size.
Pretty amazing when you think about it.
It made a chrysalis the next day.



Did you know that a tobacco worm will eat a monarch chrysalis?
Me either.
Made me mad too.
If I had any idea it would do that I would have never
put him in the butterfly cage with the chrysalis.
This worm is similar to the tomato worm.
The only difference is the color of the spike.
If it's black, it's a tomato worm.
If it's red, it's a tobacco worm.
They both turn into a sphynx month, which are really cool...
until their pupa eat your monarch chrysalis.
We took the tobacco worm back outside.
Lesson learned.

Sunday, August 09, 2015

Checkpoint Bible Camp 2015


The entire family went to Checkpoint Bible Camp last week.
The weather was perfect.
It didn't rain a single drop.
It was a great week with many memories.



We were visited several times by some A10 Thunderbolt planes (aka Warthogs).
They were fairly low and very loud.



This is a picture of the non-motorized vehicle parking outside of the dining hall.
At one point there was a tricycle too.
I didn't have my camera with me at the time.



We took several leisure walks and enjoyed God's beauty.



It was our dear friend's first time at camp.
We visited with her often and got to know her better.




Trudy and I happened to stop by when Nolan's group was in the archery building.



Since we were there, they invited us to shoot too.
Like we were going to say 'no'!
It was my first time in a long time shooting a bow.




Some of the awesome kitchen staff I worked with.
Such a great group of people that volunteer their time for the week.
The gentleman in the hat was our hero.
He washed all the pots & pans.
He's also the camp photographer.




These are some amazing folks.
They washed all the trays, cups, silverware, etc. for each meal.
When they were finished with that, they tackled the restrooms!
Yes, that's Dwayne trying to hide from my camera.


I got a picture anyway!



One of the many fun games on the activity field.
That's Connor rounding home...
it was a strange game of kickball.



Canoeing!
Every camper needs to experience a canoe.
Dwayne and I have known each other for 25 years and had never done this.
I'm an experienced paddler who has even had kayak lessons.
 Dwayne doesn't like water.
I never asked if he wanted to try canoeing.
I was totally and completely surprised when Dwayne
asked the staff in charge of the canoes if we could go canoeing.
We did and it was so much fun.
Dwayne almost dumped me into the water while I was trying to get out!



This is a catapult that Connor made at camp.
They got to shoot marshmallows at their counselors.



If I counted right, we had 17 people representing our church at
camp as either campers, counselors or other staff.
This is one of our teens.
So proud of our group of young people that were counselors or CIT's (counselors in training).
They did a super job.



Every year that I've gone to camp there's been a junior camp Olympics.
This is made up of 8 events set up in the activity field.
Each station has a task to be completed in 2 minutes.
Mass chaos happens in those 2 minutes.
The kids love every minute of it!
Usually the kitchen staff is coerced asked to do a station.
Truthfully, it's a lot of fun and I would never turn them down.



Dwayne and I did this station last year too.
They have 2 minutes to build a cup tower as tall as they can.
They have to keep it on the board.
It sounds easy but the cups are flimsy and fall easily.
When the time is up, we measure how tall it is.
We had a range from 7 inches to 50 inches.



Believe it or not, this is the group that reached 50 inches.

~

We had so much fun at camp this year, just like last year.
The only down side was that Dwayne caught a cold by Thursday.
We confined him to our tent.
The boys ended up sick by the end of camp too.

Can't wait for camp next year.
Although we may stock up on vitamin C!

Saturday, August 01, 2015

More


Yes, this is another monarch pupa.
When I pick milkweed leaves I always check for unwanted critters.
However, earlier this week I sent Nolan to get leaves for the caterpillars.
The leaves didn't get checked until they were brought inside.
We accidentally brought in a leaf that had a monarch egg on it.
This egg was smaller than a pin head.
So we decided to put that leaf in a separate container to see what would happen.
It hatched.
The pupa was so tiny I didn't even try to get pictures.
It was about 1/16th of an inch in length.
I'm still not sure how we managed to see it.
After we found it we put it in the bigger container.
That was several days ago.
We wondered if it was still alive.
Would you believe we found it this morning?
So, now we're feeding another caterpillar.

~

And on another completely unrelated note...
Connor has added to his food pallet yet again.
This week he got to try: Papa John's pizza, more of Grandma Knapp's cooking,
pop tarts, Arby's roast beef, and a chocolate milkshake!