Munchie - A New Creation

When we had gone our nature hunt, we looked and looked and looked for monarch caterpillars. They were very hard to find (after searching I don't know how many milkweeds, J gave up - he was tired of looking!) But Z and I didn't and we finally found one - HOORAY! So Munchie came home with us:


We set him up in his new home and fed him some milk weed (which he obviously enjoyed from the mess he left behind:). We continued to feed him for a few days and he then went into his "J" position:

And the next day he became this:


I was really annoyed that we missed this part so we brought him inside after that. I certainly did NOT want to miss him coming out of this!!! Now he was in his chrysallis when we were getting ready to go on vacation and we didn't want to miss him coming out. Sooo....we did what any normal homeschooling family would do....


Yep, we took him along! He was a good traveler - didn't complain, didn't ask how long it would take, didn't ask for a potty break and he didn't mind my loud music either. What more could you ask for in a travel companion?

About five days later while we went out for lunch we came back and ....

TADA....

He came out while we were gone! Sigh.... maybe next time we'll get to see it. Anyways, we didn't want to let him out because the weather was rainy and miserable. So he got to stay with us one more night before we let him go. The following day we let him out. He didn't come out right away so Z pulled the stick out that Munchie was on. I think he was getting a little nervous that something happened to Munchie and that's why he wasn't flying. After awhile he finally fluttered his wings but stayed on the stick. Perhaps he really, really liked his stick? I'm not sure. But eventually he fluttered some more and went a couple inches from the stick:

He stayed there for awhile and fluttered his wings some more for us. We were going out for lunch so we said good bye and wished him well on his journey to Mexico.

His wings were fluttering while I took this picture which is why it's a little blurry. It was really neat to see this new creation.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17

After we returned from vacation, we finished our pages for our nature journal:


Next year I'm going to start looking earlier so maybe we can have more than one. We'll see if I remember - time goes oh so fast!