Category: Special Days

I was asked to go with friends to Hacienda to eat lunch. I decided to dress up some.

Momma really likes me in this dress and asked if she could take some pictures.

 

We found this picture from June 2008!  Momma said it is one of her favorite pictures of little me.

Pyramid Point is a sand dune near Lake Ann Camp.  We followed the path up to the sand dunes.  Then once you get to the top, there is a dune of sand you can run down.  I don’t know how many times I did it because I would run up and down the sand dune.  It was fun!

Then we walked a little bit more.  From the top you could see water.  I think they said it was a mile down.  We saw a bunch of islands. One side was woods and the other side we saw a lot of milkweed (I wanted to go collecting 😉 ) and then trees. Then the other side had more sand dunes.

We had chapel on the top of the hill. We were talking about when words can hurt.  We need to be careful what we say, because one word can hurt somebody a lot.  We sang  Oh Happy Day, Romans 16:19 and other fun songs.

Once chapel was over, we stood on the opposite side in a line and sang “Our God is so Big!”  It echoed! It was pretty cool. Then we got to run down that side of the hill one at a time.  It was such a narrow path with trees on the sides.  On the way to the bus, we got to see the sun set.

Thank you Lake Ann Camp for permission to use these pictures on my blog!

I am at camp this week with my friend, Casteel. I am looking forward to a fun week.

This is my butterfly, Blueberry. She had just emerged from her overwinter nap when I discovered her. She is an Eastern Black Swallowtail.

I have learned that they are very different from Monarchs. When they emerge they start to walk around, but Monarchs stay on their chrysalises until their wings dry. Yesterday, I watched my butterfly climbing up a stick and it fell on its wings! Then it got right back up again and started crawling up. It was not hurt at all! When my Monarch fell, she could not get back up again and her wings stayed shriveled up. She never could fly, but could flutter for a little distance. Eastern Black Swallowtails overwinter, while Monarchs fly to Mexico for the winter.

Sometimes a parasitic wasp will lay an egg inside the caterpillar. When the caterpillar forms its chrysalis, the wasp larva will eat the caterpillar and then come out of the caterpillar’s chrysalis. It is pretty disappointing since we were expecting a butterfly.  Monarchs never get wasps, I think that is because they eat milkweed which is poisonous to other animals.

God made all the butterflies different and I am glad that he did!  I am looking forward to learning more about raising butterflies this year.

This weekend I had a tournament.  It was very hard! They put us on a higher level, but we do not know why.  That means they play harder and are tougher.

My first game was a good game.  I don’t know the score, but I think it was something like 1-5. We played pretty good, and we were proud of how we played. I played defense though I usually play mid. Coach Shorty said I did a good job. I got to play a lot in this game.

The second game ended 1-3.  I got to play defense again.  Coach Shorty tried hard to make sure that everyone got equal time. So I got to play a lot again.

 

 

The refs were not very good. When the other team’s goalie pretended to get hurt when we made a goal, they said there was no goal. But the goalie was ready to play right away. Then when the other team was ready to make a goal, they knocked the girl who had the ball on my team and she twisted her ankle. They made the goal and said it counted. The referee did not even come to check my friend until  they were already set up for the kick off. Lots of times the referee did not call the other teams jumping.  Near the end, one of my friends was kicked in the ribs! She said they came back to kick her while on the ground!  I felt like I really did not like that team!  We were sad that we did not win, but we played by the rules and did our best.

On Sunday we played our last game. We won. It was 5-0! I was told to play forward, but we played with only one forward. I usually play with two. It was a lot harder to play forward by myself.  After a major scolding the first time out, Coach Don told me I did a good job at the end of the game. Only one person got hurt, she fell as the other girl accidentally cleated her. We played hard, we were very tired, but it was the best game.  Not only because we won, but because we did not have mean people playing against us.

Our normal coach, Coach Anjelica told us to make 4 goals for her, we got at least 5! Tournaments are kind of fun. There is a lot more pushing because everyone wants to win. They don’t go in to have fun! I think my team wanted to win a trophy, but went in to have fun.

My teammate told me that we won 4th place.  This is my trophy!

  Last year I raised some Eastern Black Swallowtails.   I learned that they overwinter, which means that they will live in their chrysalises until the spring.  So we put them in the garage to stay safe.

We brought the chrysalises in the house in early April. We got two wasps and I was sad! Then this morning, my little sister came downstairs to wake me up. She told me I had a butterfly. I asked her “are you sure it is a butterfly” and she said “hu hu”.  She took me upstairs and showed it to me.

I will need to let him go tomorrow.  I know he eats honey water, but I don’t know what he eats in the wild.  He will do better outside, than in the house, and we will be gone all weekend.

We have two more chrysalises that we are waiting for. I hope that they are butterflies too!