Growing critters in class!

The caterpillars are growing fast. I expect that they'll cocoon before Friday.
This isn't very clear, but this is a praying mantis egg. Large isn't it? Many praying mantis will hatch from this egg and they will be similar to mosquito's in appearance at first. I will let them go after they hatch for several reasons: 1) they eat a lot of little bugs ~ which I do not have and am not going to try and get. 2) they have fierce appetites - making for bad roommates for my silkworms and butterfly's. 3) the instructions that came with them recommend release after hatching.

I have no new pictures of the silkworms as they haven't hatched yet. I think by Friday, so I will have to make a new bouquet of mulberry leaves. It must be mulberry leaves or they will be unable to spin silk, that would be sad.
The trees have numerous clusters of ladybug eggs. I am going to try and get some clear pictures, but don't know. They are bright orange which means the ladybug larva are ready to hatch.

Alex came over tonight to show me the skin from his boa, she shed today, about 6 feet long. He will let me borrow it and take it to school to show the kids. I will need to find something to put it in so they don't destroy it. It is intact in one long piece. Amazing.

Random stuff.

I thought this was a nice photo of the conservatory in Golden Gate Park. The flowers were lovely. It was disappointing that it is closed on Mondays, the day we were there. It has been years since I have been in GG Park. We used to go to S.F. on a regular basis when I was growing up. Even though I rarely visit S.F. my memories are pleasant. Again in GG Park, turtles on a log!
I received my order of caterpillars the day before Easter. They were about 3/8 inch long. They have more then doubled in size. You can see one on the side of the container, there are 5. The gunk in the bottom is the culture they eat. They should be cocooning in 1-2 more weeks.
I forgot the pic. of the praying mantis egg, so I'll take that on Monday.
The silkworm eggs arrived on Thursday so I took them in Friday. The little dots on the paper, next to the leaves are silkworm eggs, there are approximately 25 eggs). They should be hatching sometime next week. The are about 1/4 inch long when they hatch, and look like a small mark a pencil would make. I don't expect them to hatch over the weekend but just in case I made a bouquet of leaves, which they would smell upon hatching and wiggle over to.

Fridays coming!

Tomorrow's Friday. We are "Growing Vegetable soup" (it's a children's book) in class tomorrow. The children are bringing in chopped vegetables and we are going to make soup for snack. They get so excited when we cook in class.

The caterpiller's arrived, yeah! I will take pictures tomorrow, they grow so fast. They sent me a praying mantis egg instead of the silkworms, that is a strange looking thing. I contacted the company and the silkworm eggs came today. I will take a camera and take some pictures to post, as I am having problems downloading what I want.

Live Well Wednesdays

It has been an interesting week. My daughter was home for spring break, and we took her back on Monday. I did some creative cooking and some old recepie cooking ~ but through it all I think I did well. I have lost my cravings for late night snacks and that is a biggie for me. If I do have a snack I am more aware of what it is. I take it one day at a time and evaluate all I do.
Have a good day, I gotta get ready for work now.
God bless

Happy Easter! ♥

Luke 24:7

7' The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' "

He is risen!

Hope you had a Happy Easter!

Good Friday

Psalm 64:10
10 Let the righteous rejoice in the LORD
and take refuge in him;
let all the upright in heart praise him!



in my devotions this morning:

Why did Christ die?

I Corinthians 15:3,4
3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,


I just finished reading a book by Liz Higgs, Bad Girls of the Bible. Well worth the time. It covered 10 women (with and without names) who have been bad at one time or another.. I can relate to more then one . To think that Christ died for our sins. That still amazes me and can bring tears to my eyes.

Have a Happy Good Friday!

Kelseyville

Elizabeth and her dad. _HI!_________________________________________________________

You can see how high the lake is. This picture is taken from the dock where boats are launched, off the walkway at Lakeport Park This is the new bridge across the creek in Kelseyville. You can see how much they widened the creek area, or cleared the bushes, but the creek is moving nicely. Now the bridge is open all year.

While on the bridge, looking down we saw some nice Hitch spawning. In the photo above they are in the water ~ looking directly down from the bridge.
Here is Dan doing yard maintenance in the backyard. He added quite a bit to the burn pile, which we can no longer burn, because we don't have an acre of land.
Another picture at Lakeport Park. As we walked the mud hens followed (and 2 ducks). Hoping for a handout I'm sure. So while they were still hanging out Elizabeth got in some pictures. Eventually they figured out that we weren't throwing they anything to eat so they left.

And went where a little girl was throwing them scraps.

Live Well Wednesdays

We went to Kelseyville over the weekend to do some cleaning and checking over our property. I took food with us because I really had no desire to go shopping. I did anyway, but didn't get much. When I weighed this morning I was thrilled to see I was down another pound. There are 52 weeks in a year and if I were to lose a pound a week, that would be 52 pounds is a year and that would put me 4 pounds shy of my goal. Look at a pound of butter, that's good visualization, and look at it as coming off your body, that is healthy. I am going to pull out some of my WW cookbooks and do some menu planning. There is a Bible study called Weigh Down, I think I will do some reading also, and put this more into a Bible study, that helps me a lot.

We got home yesterday instead of today because Elizabeth has homework to finish. She is home for spring break ~ really it is Easter vacation. I will post pictures of the lake later. The water level is high, looks really good. I think I will go check out some blogging buddies post right now.

Frolicking fun ♥

The kids have been waiting all week for today. They colored eggs on Wed. & Thurs. for the hunt today. They made their bunny bags ~ I could go on ~ they were ready! I have sign ups and the parents bring in food for the party (like a pot luck). Look at this gorgeous fruit platter one of my moms put together.
Look at that apple, she made it look like a swan. Isn't it georgeous! After all is said and done the children ate all the fruit.
Their food was set up while they were outside hunting the eggs. Even though we have 2 tables and enough seatting outside, it was windy and chilly today. After they ate we had them put on their jackets and go outside to play until they went home.
I had the children put the eggs in bowls, as they found them ` so their baskets made out of lunch bags wouldn't tear and while they were eating we could put them (evenly) into their bags.
I like this display. I had my aid do it. The blue pictures are their "Clouds in the Sky" and stories...... it looks like an (airplane)....but it wasn't.........it was just a cloud in the sky.
Handprint flowers and if you look at the bottom left, bubble prints.

And now my cloths are packed, I am going to pack the ice chest with food and I will be ready to go away for a few days. Dan is ready also. However, the others aren't.

Waiting

I read this during my devotions, it makes sense. Sometimes it is hard to wait upon the Lord. There are lessons to be learned, Jacob learned the hard way.

Genesis 29:16-28 Genesis 30:25-33

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (Isa. 40:31).

Jacob had to work for 14 years for Laban after marrying Leah and then Rachel, yet God still blessed him ~ but it was a hard lesson.

Life moves on

I had a fairly even week with all that has gone on. With the review over last week ~ there was 'Open House' yesterday, another school visit for an award today, and I will have a parent meeting tomorrow. With all the visits over it is a sigh of relief. Then the biggie, spring break next week, yeah for that~ really it is Easter vacation. We are looking forward to a "Spring Party" (I want to say Easter for why are we celebrating? Except for Jesus victory over death for us! And I can't think of a better way to say it~God is good!) We are working on assessments and will have parent conferences in April, but that I can handle with ease.

______________________________
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Gal. 2:20

Nice today

The weather has been nice this last week, near and/or above 70 outside. Great days for outside time at school ~ and home. I lay on the grass today playing with Kittyboy for a little while. I watched the doves in the trees and took pics of some flowers. I still hope we get some more rain as we are not at our yearly average, still below.
My body will take about a week to get used to the time change. I like that it is lighter outside in the evenings but need time to 'sleep' on it in the mornings. The time change is always harder on little kids. I remember changing clocks on Sat. morning so I could (hopefully) ease the kids into a decent nap and or bed time. They were still a little perplexed for about a week. My oldest was the worst, she didn't do the time change very well when she was little ~ it took about 2 weeks for her to adjust. Next week is Easter vacation so I won't have to set my alarm. We are going up to Kelseyville for a few days to do some cleaning and mowing.

Now that the review is over we call all breath a little easier. Tues./tomorrow is open house so I will be busy all day. Wed. there is a team coming to the school for the 'Distinguised School' review. Yet somehow, I still feel relief as the review was the most stressful, however, my room is really looking good and I am ready for open house!

It's Over! ♥

Yeah! The review was yesterday, it is over today, we got top marks!

Almost over

The review is tomorrow. I am almost ready, just a couple more things to complete. After Thursday I will be able to breath so much easier and just relax.

All is well.

San Diego

We left Friday and got stuck in the L.A. traffic. So instead of a 5 1/2 hour drive it was more like an 8 hour drive. I highly do not recommend that. We got to San Diego around 10:00 (we did stop and eat on the way) and found our hotel. We stayed in a hotel with the word view in it's name.


This was our view,.......... probably when the hotel was first built there was a view of the harbor, as it is just a few short blocks away, but not visible from the hotel even if you were on the roof. We went for a walk in the morning down to the harbor and that was nice. If you have taken a cruise and left from San Diego that is where you'd be.

We were close to the airport. I did go to sleep using ear plugs.

Keith was a groomsman. Looks spiffy in his tux. The wedding was nice and so was the reception. We enjoyed ourselves. Oh and Ryan went along and saw his brother ~ who is stationed in the Coast Guard down there.

I think it is rude when someone says they will be at the reception then at the last minute decide to go out, especially when you are ordering what dinner you want. Ryan was able to stay and eat the forgotten dinner, at least one of them. That was nice.

We left around 8:15 ~ sad to say we didn't get to stay for the cutting of the cake.
We got home Sunday around 2:00 A.M.

It was nasty/windy over the grapevine! Keith was about an hour behind us so I called to warn him of the wind. There was tumbleweeds, blowing dust and even rocks/gravel blowing across the road.