Despite a shaky start, the day turned out well. It was Evan’s first day at a new building with a new teacher with a big classroom of new kids. He woke up well and even left the house pretty well (notice the smiley picture). But, when we got to school, the tears started. A teacher walked him into school with his class as he cried hard. We hated leaving him like that. But, at 3:10 when we walked down to get him, we were pleasantly surprised at him coming out waving and smiling. He came home happy, jabbering about the day and telling us all the rules. Hopefully, tomorrow will be even better with no tears at all at drop off.

The other two pictures of Evan in the classroom are from orientation last week.

Mark was mowing the grass Sunday when he found Crystal, the neighbor’s one-eyed cat (he might have one eye, but he’s a fast little bugger), attacking a baby bunny. He chased the cat off, and we put the injured bunny in a box. We weren’t sure he’d make it through the night. But, he did. Hopper, his name given by Evan, even ate some lettuce and and pooped and peed (all signs that we thought meant we had saved him just in time). But, the day we were hoping to free him in Valley Forge Park, Mark found him dead in the box. Hopper succumbed to his injuries. We buried the poor little thing in our yard. Ashlyn marked his grave with a flower and said, “I’m going to miss him.” Then, the kids all ran off to play in the driveway before it got dark. Life goes on…even without Hopper.

After we saw our friend Jonah’s collection of 6 or so monarch caterpillars he found in Valley Forge Park, we had to head over there ourselves to hunt for some. The kids loved the idea of catching them and watching them make coccoons and hatch, etc. Since Jonah’s family made it sound simple to find them, we headed over there, each manned with a bug box. We stopped at one section of the park, found one unknown spiky looking caterpillar, some daddy long legs, a couple roly polys, as well as mosquitoes and some poison ivy. The kids were not happy with that. So, we called Jonah’s family and got more instructions–oh, keep driving. Go find the milk weed in the meadows, they are all over them. So, we did that, found the milkweed, and looked and looked and found nothing except a random strange rodent skull (which we had to bring home and have yet to identify–the mystery makes it more appealing at this point). Eventually, the scene was Mark and me in a field of grass and weeds over our knees looking under every milk weed leaf while all three kids sat in the car and asked when we could go home. So much for the caterpillar hunt. At least we found one. It will probably hatch into some hideously ugly moth. Oh well. We did get this cute picture of Ashlyn though (and, yes, I realize that most of the pics I post are of Ashlyn rather than the boys. But, she enjoys getting her picture taken unlike the other two).

We thought we may have had a gold medal winner with this one. Turns out we don’t. A sunflower grown in the Netherlands holds the record for being the tallest sunflower in the world. It measured 25 feet, 5.4 inches. Okay, that makes Ashlyn’s flower seem like a midget. But, before we knew that fact (what did we do without the internet?), her flower looked enormous. It seemed like it was growing right before our eyes. Ashlyn has been very proud of her plant, having grown it from a seed in a little dixie cup from Grammy. All the crazy green around the bottom includes Evan’s pumpkin plant and Drew’s watermelon plant (and a whole bunch of weeds–I’m just not so into gardening in this season of life).