Barrett's Birthday- 2016

Barrett's 36th birthday!!! 

Our date nights are usually pretty calm- and in our true form, his birthday celebration consisted of hanging at the bar in our favorite theater, Movie House and Eatery for dinner and drinks, and then a great movie! Nothing fancy, but such a wonderful night with my wonderful husband! 

Also, a few days before Barrett's actual birthday, we had a combined birthday dinner with some of our great friends, the Cookes. Matt also had a birthday a couple weeks ago, so we had a double celebration! The kids were all very excited to help blow out candles and eat cake!!





A few years ago, Barrett was reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to LJ (I don't even know if the other two had come yet!), and he had a funny moment of, "OH MY GOSH- how does a caterpillar ACTUALLY CHANGE into a BUTTERFLY!" It is really a crazy thing!!! He looked up several videos, and we laughed about how something you have known as fact for so long can actually  be incredibly crazy when you really think about it! 

The boys have done these projects in their preschools where they get to have caterpillars in their rooms and they watch them go through the life cycles and turn into butterflies... but I had never seen it (and neither had Barrett). So for his birthday, we got him his own set of caterpillars! And we got to see the whole process together as a family!! 

Barrett opening the kit with 5 live caterpillars! They had cute little faces, and really were very hungry!!! They ate a lot, and we watched for about 5 days as they continued to get bigger and bigger! 


The caterpillars were so still when we first opened the box that we weren't sure they were alive! But slowly, they all started moving around and eating!!! AND EATING! 



 About five days after we got the caterpillars, we say the first two caterpillars forming their chrysalides! Wow!  They slowly climbed up to the lid and formed their chrysalides hanging from it! When they were all in the chrysalis-stage, we removed the lid and put them in their butterfly habitat! 
 We put the the habitat up high (because Ellie kept trying to gab them), and then one day I noticed two very pretty butterflies flapping around up there!!! So we pulled it down, and got to see the others come out soon after! 
 We put some food in there while we waited for all the others to change. In two days, we had five butterflies!  




  The big release!!! We took them out by our garden to release... boys were very excited! 




 We didn't realize we could be playing with them more- but they were cute to watch fly away!! 
 The old/ empty chrysalides! 

Loved this gift and getting to do it with our birthday boy!! We will definitely be doing again!!! 


Happy happy birthday Barrett!!! We love you so much!!!

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