just another morning here

We released the third and fourth butterflies today. This morning the dodgy winged one looked like he wasn’t going anywhere, but by lunchtime he’d disappeared so either a bird got him, or maybe he managed to sort himself out and fly after all. We’re expecting that the fifth chrysalis will hatch on Friday.

We did a field trip today as part of our Butterfly project, to the Buckfast Butterfly Farm … which also includes the Otter Sanctuary. The children really enjoyed seeing all the different kinds of butterflies in the tropical greenhouse, lots of chrysalides, and other interesting things like quail! We saw the otters be fed, watched them swimming, saw their webbed feet, and even got to see a baby otter in a nest with his mother. We then had a picnic near the steam railway at Buckfastleigh, now we’re home and about to go and pick up some friends from school. I thought I’d got out of doing the school run but obviously not!

News of the day is that the children have a new cousin – Caleb Ian Thomas, born to Mark and Heidi at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford this morning, weighing 8lbs 5oz. We’re looking forward to seeing a pic of him soon.

The butterflies have hatched! Big excitement here on Sunday as we watched the first three emerge from their chrysalides. We released two of them this morning but one has a bit of a dodgy wing, so he’s not going anywhere. The fourth one hatched this afternoon – we missed it . Anyway, here are some pics.

Have been busy doing all sorts of other things … finally got round to making panpipes (Ecuadorian ones, of course), and had a great time on Cathedral Green yesterday with a bunch of Roman Centurions. Abbie particularly enjoyed being part of the army marching up and down, while Anna liked the stalls showing Roman food/cooking and mosaics, armour, and Roman artefacts. A great followup/review of our Roman project!

Haven’t blogged for over a week – what’s wrong? It hasn’t been a particularly busy week really, but we’ve been working hard … doing our usual HE routine now that termtime things have started again. The chrysalides are still there, no sign of any movement yet. Apparently they change colour when they’re about to hatch, so hopefully we’ll notice in time to watch things happen. We’ve been swimming (twice), started our third kit from the Young Scientists Club, and lots more I’m sure. The kids seem quite tired though, for some reason. So I’m letting them watch The Wizard of Oz this afternoon.

We’ve spent a fair bit of time talking church again this week – think we may just about have finished our paper that we’ve been trying to write. I still think there’s a seemingly enormous chasm between the theory and the practice, though. We met with lifegroup on Wednesday and although people are of a similar mind, you still get the impression sometimes that some people really haven’t got a clue what we’re on about … when it comes down to it, our traditional thinking is so entrenched … then we also had a childrens’ work meeting – again, here I am perpetuating something that I don’t really believe in anymore. Can’t quite work out what the answers are though.

School have changed their timetable so that assemblies are accessible for home educators – putting them after lunch bang smack on Joe’s naptime. So, accessible for all home educators except us. I give up. I think the idea was that if homeschooled kids were coming in for the afternoons then they’d get the chance to participate in assembly, but it’s just stupidly in the middle of the day, if you ask me. But no-one did. Hey ho.

Anyway, think I’ll leave it to someone else to get all philosophical – here’s another blog I’ve been reading recently – musings on the subject of church at Organic Church - enjoy.

The other thing of note is that our chrysalides are now residing in their big box, and we’re waiting for them to hatch. The last caterpillar changed on Friday, so they’re about a week apart from first to last, if you see what I mean. Anna and Abbie transferred them into their box by themselves, here they are: