in a sea of sippy cup orders!!   Not that this is a bad thing.  But if you have placed an order and just happen to read this blog please understand that I am working as fast as I can to get a proof to you.   

O.K.  Just wanted to put that out to everyone.  :) 

Thanks Amy!!

This weekend  I got to help out a friend that did some photography for this cool horse show.     It was so much fun spending the weekend watching and talking to horse people.     I am a "horse people want-a-be"    

I used to ride.   Dressage and hunter jumper.    I never got to be in the horse business as much as I wanted.  As a kid I would have loved to have been in a ton of horse shows and traveled all over the country with my horse and gone to different shows.    I have a 1st cousin that did all of that.  I just got to hear about it from her.   

I did show a little and I rode from the time I was 8 until I was 15.  At 15 I had a terrible horse accident.    I fell off  a horse at a horse show and broke my arm VERY bad.    Like two surgeries and in a cast for over  a year bad.     My parents told me my horse back riding days were over.  I wasn't able to really ride again until I moved to Massachusetts and found a great trainer that I got to work with in exchange for cleaning stalls on the weekends.     But I still have a dream of getting back into the riding world again and maybe one day showing.   I was hoping that Camille would be as horse crazy as I was as a kid... but no.  She likes horses but is not obsessed with them like I was at her age.     Maybe one day I will find a picture of my room as a child and scan it.   I had horses everywhere!

But this weekend I was at a Carriage Classic.    And it is so much fun to watch these beautiful horses pull a carriage.    Here are a few pictures that I took: 

This morning I got to tag and release my first butterfly.   It came out of the chrysalis last night so I put it outside this morning.   

Each tag that I have has a different number on it.    I record all the numbers that I put on each butterfly and send  all the data to Monarch Watch.  They go to Mexico and find the tag or butterfly and see if it made it all the way to it's migration place and where it started.   It is all pretty cool.   

I had another butterfly come out of it's chrysalis and had something wrong with it.    The wings would not unwrinkle.  So it could not fly.    So sad when this happens and last year in only happened once very late in the season.   

Poor little guy.  It can't even walk.   The wings get in the way of it's legs.    So I made a decision,  some of you that know me might be surprised, but I decided to teach the kids a lesson on the fit and the fittest in nature.    If this butterfly had been born in the wild it would have been eaten or just fell off the plant and died.    So the kids and I took the butterfly outside to our pet garden spider  and dropped it in the web.

Now Griffin thought that this was the coolest thing since instant oatmeal.   Camille and I felt bad for the butterfly but knew that the spider was pretty happy to be having  a nice big meal.   

This is life in nature.   

Everybody has to eat...  Now that poor butterfly had a purpose. 

So I had a pretty exciting weekend.    We did get a lot of orders over the weekend so tomorrow I will be doing a lot of proofs and printing of orders.     Back to the real world..    

I am back to tell about the two cool things that happened yesterday.   

1st thing that happen was the couch and chair that I got was delivered.     Those of you that have seen what I had in there before know that this is huge deal!!!!    Ahhh the joy of matching... 

And the joy of comfort.   

2nd cool thing..    Camille had a guinea pig named Spot, but we had to give it away.    The people we gave him to have taken such great care of him.  But they are going to move soon so they ask if we wanted him back.    Well how could I turn that down?   So Spot came back to us!   Camille is quite happy about this. 

Not only is Camille and Griffin happy about this but Sadie , our dog is also happy.   Sadie was friends with Spot before he moved.  Now she has her old friend back.    

Sadie licks Spot.  Spot bites Sadie's hair.    It has to be LOVE!

Speaking of  best dog in the world Sadie....  Found out today that her thyroid is not working.   She has been feeling low,  not wanting to exercise,  gaining weight... (humm  it sounds like all my problems...) And has some itchy skin.   So the good Vet tested her thyroid and bingo!  that was it.   So she has to now take two pills twice a day for the rest of her life.    But this lets me know what is wrong and we can make her feel better.    She is so worth it!!! 

Then we get to Camille.... Today I get that dreaded phone call from her PE teacher.   

"Camille's Mom,  a big heavy door has hit Camille in the head!  You may want  to come and see her.   The bump, is pretty big"   

When I got there her eyes were dilating differently so I,  and the school nurse , felt it best to go get it checked out.   Well we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon in the ER.  (Camille had to miss her first hip hop dance class and was VERY upset about that!)   Doctor wants us to treat it like a small concussion so we have to watch it and wake her up every three hours to check on her.      No jumping around and shaking her head tonight!  She had a pretty good headache so keeping her still wasn't too hard.  Good thing we got that new comfy couch!  Her biggest worry is not being ready for her spelling test and book report due tomorrow.    

The doctor told us it would probably bruise up really nice in the next few days.   Camille wasn't too happy about that either!!

Up date:  Took Camille to our regular Doctor and he said that she has a Grade 2 concussion.  She still has a headache  but the knot looks better than it did last night.    She can't do any activities for a week.  She wasn't too happy about that.. 

What a day!!   Oh  and we got a ton of waterproof cup label orders today.   Way more than usual.  Who knows..    Can't wait to see what kind of excitement tomorrow brings!!!!!

  I haven't written in a while.    The reason , on August 2nd,  something changed my life.    So I had to take some time to adjust.    I am still adjusting but felt it was time to blog.    

So what has happened in 22 days?      I have a lot of Monarch caterpillars and a  lot getting ready to make chrysalis.   

I had around 76 to start with.  Then all of a sudden my babies started dieing.    It was so weird.   Last year out of 150 I only had two or three die.    Now so far I have had 26 die.     I got really worried and try to find out what could be wrong.   Then I saw that one of the research places that study Monarchs,  said that a lot of their caterpillars were dieing.    So I am afraid something is wrong with the butterflies all the way around.    I have decided not to collect any for a few weeks and watch them outside to see how they do then collect some more.   

Took the kids to the science museum.    They had so much fun there.   Griffin kept running from place to place and I could barely keep up with him.    

Feeding the Dinos.   These are the babies.    These cute little guys are tame enough to pet.  But watch out for the moms they are not so nice.  And WAY bigger!!

Griffin got to be on TV.   He was pretty excited about that!

Swinging on a rope....

George, George, George of the jungle... 

This must be Jane...

While we were there Griffin broke both his legs and had to learn really fast how to use a wheel chair.   His favorite part of the wheel chair course was going fast down the ramp.   

Camille was on her way to school in the magic school bus when they got a flat tire.   

So she had to ride a bike and she had a long way to go... 

Then she ended up in the back of an ambulance.   That is what happens when you ride a bike in this heat without drinking enough water! 

Just Camille's luck the ambulance driver today is.... 

Griffin.   I told her she needed to always be nice to her little brother.   That one day she would regret picking on him.   

Griffin pay attention!  Keep your eyes on the road!!

No No Griffin!!  You can't drive and climb out of the window at the same time!!!!    Hands on the wheel!!!  Camille is depending on you!   

In the end they both got to go to the moon.    When asked what their favorite thing about going to the moon was...  They said, "Free-zed dried ice cream! " Nuff said. 

So that is some of the things I have been up to since August 1st.  Two cool things happened today.  But I will just have to write about them tomorrow!