Butterfly Show @ Khron's

This year Rob and I went to the Butterfly Show twice.  The first time it was just us with my brother and his girlfriend, and I have to say that the Butterfly Show is probably three times more enjoyable with kids.  There's something about watching them experience it that is magical.

If you're my Facebook friend, you've seen a bunch of these pictures before, but just recently I thought to myself, why don't I log these on my blog any more?  So here they are:

Yes, this is about as much as Elijah smiles for pictures.  :)  The kids loved having the butterflies land on them, and of course, the adults did, too.  I had two land on my back, I was told, and one land on my arm.  The boys kept coming to try to steal them off of me, but I fought to keep them!

The boys fought us hard about going to the Butterfly Show in the first place.  They're too old.  They've seen it before.  Blah, blah, blah.  But we're mean parents and we forced them to go anyway.  And wouldn't you know it, they loved it.  They even stopped by the kids' craft room to make finger butterflies.  The rest of the day, Elijah flew that finger butterfly all over, flapping the paper wings as he went.  Too old.  Ha!

This is my goofy brother, petting a butterfly.  Really, the butterfly is dead, but I thought it'd still make a good picture cause, you know, you can't tell if it's dead or not in a photo.  So he's petting it.  Because that's funny.  We were all giggling about it.

One of the funnest parts of the whole thing was buying a caterpillar at the end.  It comes home in a plastic cup filled with food.  After about a week or so, it forms into a chrysalis, and then after about two weeks more, it hatches into a butterfly!  It was really fun to watch.

That's after a few days' growth.  It had roughly doubled in size already.

And this is after one of the butterflies was already out.  In the center you can see the empty chrysalis, to the left the butterfly, and to the right the second chrysalis, a few hours away from opening up.

A fun thing about chrysalises, apart from everything, because chrysalises are FREAKING AWESOME:  Right before the butterfly emerges, it turns this dark, almost black color.  We thought that maybe it had died and was rotting.  And you can see the butterfly inside, right at the very end of the process.

Also, I listened to a Radiolab podcast called Black Box, and they talked about chrysalises.  It kinda blew my mind and I don't want to spoil it for you if you don't already know what happens inside a chrysalis.  Here's a link to the 16 minute story so you don't have to listen to the entire hour program if you don't want.  (Though I totally suggest everyone listen to every single Radiolab.  Because they're all pretty dang fascinating.  I love that show.)

So, yeah, I recommend that at least once, everyone buy a caterpillar and watch the process.  It's beautiful and mysterious and captivating.  Also, once the butterflies hatched, we got to watch them sun their wings in the morning sun.  It was just beautiful.