Yesterday was a somber day. As we remembered the most intense moments of modern American history, my brother-in-law began his 365-day call to duty. As a physician’s assistant, he will serve on a medical unit, taking care of our troop’s medical needs.
We attended a ceremony to send him and his unit off with celebrations. I caught a shot of his unit’s flag.
Pray for us over the course of the next year. It will, no doubt, be a rough year for a mother, father, sister, two brothers, a girlfriend, and two sisters-in-law. And it will for the families of thousands of other soldiers.
Patriotically,
During the second half of Labor Day weekend, Seth and I visited his parents for the day. I witnessed perhaps the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
You probably can’t tell what this is. This is the emergence of a baby butterfly. Can we call them baby butterflies? Does that really mean it’s a caterpillar? At any rate, this is a brand spankin’ new butterfly. A child, if you will.
My mother-in-law is a science teacher–probably the coolest, most passionate science teacher ever. She collected caterpillars a couple weeks ago, stored them with food, and let them make their cocoon in the jar.
Fast forward five to ten days later and I was visiting.
She announced that a butterfly had come out of the cocoon, so we watched as she collected the butterfly with her finger. As we were releasing the butterfly to some flowers, a second one emerged. We missed its beginning. So, we waited for the third one to hatch; when the cocoons are black, they will hatch within the day. So, we figured the third one was coming soon.
More than an hour later, after discussing child birth beyond my comfort zone, here she came.
We noticed that the butterfly came out head first; even my mother-in-law didn’t know that. When butterflies first emerge, the abdomen is super fat and short and the wings are short and thick. Eventually, the abdomen began to pulse, stretch, and thin out as the wings lengthened and thinned.
Check out the entire set of pictures I posted to facebook.
A butterfly mother,
For the first part of the Labor Day weekend, The Hunk and I visited Kentucky. We had dinner with some dear friends of mine on Friday and then spent Saturday with my parents.
My dad’s birthday was last week, too, so we took him and Mom out to lunch.
We went to the Shiloh Roadhouse, which is a couple hours south of their house, near London, Kentucky. The place is a lot like Texas Roadhouse, but with its own personality.
For instance, drinks come like this:
And, of course, customers can break up and throw peanut shells on the floor.
We had a nice time.
On the way back, Dad wanted to stop at a store that he just thinks is the neatest store in existence. It’s kind of like Super Wal-Mart before Super Wal-Mart even existed.
I, of course, snapped some artsy pictures. It weirded Mom out that I even brought a DSLR into a store like this. I couldn’t pass it up.
What the heck is that?
This was in the same aisle.
I love the way jars photograph.
I’ve always wanted to take a pic in a security mirror like this.
That’s right; this grocery store also has hardware. Two whole rooms of it.
To clarify, this grocery has hardware, groceries, clothes, shoes, and housewares in the same place. This joint is like a Super Target from the early twentieth century. Which is crazy.
Laughter,
I thought this would be the worst week ever to have “map” as a theme. I’m back to school now. Why couldn’t map have been the theme when I was going or planning a vacation? Silly.
Anyway, we ended up driving to Cincy this weekend, where Seth officiated his first ever wedding ceremony. I captured this.
Exciting map, eh?
Congrats to Tim and Liz! May your marriage be full of joy and selfless love!
Love,
This week, I went back to work. That’s right, school is back in session!
On Thursday, we made pasta salad with lots of green pepper. I love pasta salad. Here’s a shot of it before I mixed it together.
Pasta salad us the universe’s way of saying. “That’s right, summer is this good!”
There are two chores I would rather never ever do. Ever. And, when I was single, I almost never did them.
1) Cleaning toilets. I was better about this when I was single, actually. But there’s something about cleaning a shared toilet that I just can’t get over. It’s a problem. I mean, I share it with The Hunk. I should get over it. But places get dirty and I don’t know how. It’s gotta be his fault, ya’ know? Gross. Let’s move on.
2) Folding laundry. I wish I could get over this extreme hatred. Left to my own devices, I am one of those girls who would rather pull something out of the clean clothes basket and put it on. In fact, in my bachelorette days, that’s pretty much what I always did. I only put my clothes away when I needed a basket to put my dirty clothes in. Furthermore, in my more lazy/busy days, I just skipped the dirty basket altogether and picked up dirty clothes to move them to the laundry room, did a quick tracks retrace to find any strays dropped, and then start up the washing machine. I have/do go to great lengths to be lazy. Again, it’s a problem.
Currently, there is a bit of laundry I need to fold. I’m doing so for The Hunk, who prefers order and organization–and not organized chaos as I prefer.
*sigh*
Procrastinatingly,
PS: They have a washing machine, a drying machine… when are we going to have folding machines?
