Morning Mess!

I got up somewhat early to get my son ready to go hiking up Camel's Hump with his dad this morning.  I have been trying to be a better housekeeper so as soon as I come downstairs I clean the kitchen, take care of the dishes, and sweep and vacuum the floor (its white, because someone thought it would be fun to put white vinyl down in a g-d kitchen) and then have my coffee and eat breakfast.

I got the kitchen all pretty except for the Eternally Cluttered Counter which seems to breed crap when I'm not looking, and went up stairs to make my bed and get dressed.  The girls had gone downstairs and Alex had left for the day.  I sat down to continue cleaning out my computer (the kind of housework I probably shouldn't be doing) since it has been running slow lately, when I hear "OH NO!" and "OOPS!" in a midget voice.

I gently laid my forehead down on my keyboard wrist cushion and closed my eyes.

"MOM there's a HUGE MESS of cereal down here!!!  Autumn spilled Kix everywhere!!!"

All I could picture was a sopping milky mess of soggy nasty sticky yellow balls and me going through a million paper towels and having to mop and fight the cats to get the milk cleaned up.  Did I mention that I ran out of both coffee k-cups AND creamer so I hadn't had my go-go juice?

I sighed and got up, walked downstairs, and to my slight relief saw this:

Thank you, God, that it was DRY CEREAL and not the nightmare I had imagined.  

"Autumn, what the heck happened?" I said.

"I was trying to get these CRACKERS when the cereal went upside DOWN and all OVER the place!"   

"But you need to have breakfast not crackers!  Those are a snack!" I said. 

"Oh."

Alicia jumped up and said "I'll vacuum!  Mom, you go relax, you deserve to be lazy today."  Aww.  How sweet.  Except that our vacuum can only hold about 1-2 cups of Kix so I had to supervise and empty the canister a couple of times.  Those Kix really take up a lot of space.

Autumn helped too with her little broom and dustpan :)

It's full!

Afterwards I went to make my coffee, emptying out a previously used K-cup and putting in some Starbucks Vanilla coffee from a bag, dumping half the old grounds on the floor when trying to tap it out into the trash and causing me to curse a few times.  I finally got it taken care of and went to the Dollar General to buy a box of those nasty little (no refrigeration necessary) International Delight creamer cups, a box of nail glue, and a box of fake nails.

Alicia has a new obsession with fake fingernails since she cannot stop biting her real ones.  Yesterday I tried to put some fake ones on her with Krazy glue before reading that its a horrible idea and therefore within 10 minutes I soaked her hands in nail polish remover and took them off again.  She was after me this morning at 7:30 to get her some real nail glue.

Unfortunately the problem with putting fake nails on a 9 year old is that she won't stay still long enough to let them dry and set properly so she kept coming back to me with different ones that fell off from switching gears on her bike, opening the front door, etc.  Eventually they all came off and I told her we can try again maybe tonight so they can set while she's asleep LOL

Bowling with Three Year Olds

Today Autumn's preschool went to Spare Time for a bowling field trip!  I was unsure how bowling would go with kids this age, but they all behaved really well!  At first Autumn wanted NOTHING to do with it and wanted to go home.  She hates crowds and loud noises.  I had to un-cling her from my side and then had her "help" me push the ball down the ramp.  I was getting a little frustrated with her at first but I took a deep breath and just relaxed.  Being cooped up inside so much is not good for me.  Makes me irritable!!!

Since the lens I normally would use for this kind of thing is busted, and I forgot to grab my 50mm portrait lens that would have allowed me to use 200 or 400 ISO instead of 1600, these are not the greatest pictures!  Still cute nonetheless :)

Caroline, who shared a lane with us 

Lily

Autumn lol

Most of the class.  It was really hard to get a good group shot from my angle.

Nicole

He wasn't the only one cooling his head off on the blower!  Hysterical!

Another head cooling session

That's Autumn's score on top!  100!  She does better than I ever did!

Walk in the Woods at Niquette Bay State Park

While I was finding all those Monarch caterpillars I was also keeping my eyes peeled for large moth caterpillars.  I don't care much about regular moth rearing but if I could find a nice Cecropia or Luna moth caterpillar I would be thrilled!  The last time I had my hands on a big fat moth caterpillar was when I was oh, 12 or 13 years old.

Today I decided to take Autumn to Niquette Bay, our local state park here in Milton, because I was sick of sitting around inside and I can't walk locally right now.  We got headed out at 10:00am and after I missed the turn and had to reverse direction we got into the woods by 10:30.  It was beautiful, a little chilly but the crickets and birds were chirping and there was almost no one else there.  We took the Allen Trail which leads to the little sandy beach.

Allen Trail entrance

I'd never really gotten myself together before noon to go out in the woods so I got a cool surprise: spiderwebs!  Lots of glistening (but not dewy unfortunately) orb weaver webs everywhere!  The first one I saw had a milkweed fluff in it:

Way up high in the trees!

Then I saw some that I didn't have to crane my neck to see:

Bowl & Doily Spider

Assassin Bug

Orb Weaver

Hover Fly caught in a web

Now this was a head scratcher.  A leaf all rolled up and there was silk on it.  If I'd had a big ziplock I would have brought it home to see what was inside...

We continued on to the beach once Autumn got sick of me stopping every 5 steps to take pictures of spiderwebs.  

How nice to see another Heron!  I think that makes 6 I've seen this month!

Vulture

Autumn and I hopped across the little river that separates a big chunk of the beach from a small one and had a little picnic of goldfish crackers and cheerios.

Perfect day for fishing or just sailing.  Nice warm breeze, not a cloud in the sky, 70ish degrees. I could have stayed all day!

Autumn and I explored the beach a bit.  The water had an algae warning even though there was none present, but still it made it less fun.  The water level was also extremely low just like everywhere else.  I hadn't been there since Spring so I was kind of amazed at how much beach there was.

There is usually water where these are growing

Huge dead June beetle

Beetle or fly? 

You can see how low the lake is.  All that green stuff usually is under water.

Poplar-like plants growing where there should be water

Autumn digging in the mud with shells:

I was walking along in the mud when one of these fluttered up at me!  Is it one of my babies?  I am definitely going to tag the ones I raise next year.  You can get a kit for it online:

I tried so hard to photograph a butterfly in flight but it was next to impossible to get a clear shot.  They are not very predictable hahaha  This is the best shot focus-wise that I got, and of course it had to be only a partial:

Most of the pics look like this:

I'm sure those fishermen enjoyed watching me make a dork out of myself chasing Monarchs in the mud.  OH well who cares!!!

He's toying with me here.

Nothing about this looks like fun to me^

Autumn looking for me

I tried getting closer to the heron, and this was him before he decided I was too close and took off!

Yay more Narceus americanus millipedes!  They are all over this year.

Autumn thinks they are adorable.  I love her so much! 

I just love their funny little down-turned faces!

Haven't figured out what this is yet.  Anyone know?  Please leave a comment if so!

Bug's eye view of the beach :)

After about an hour Autumn had had enough beach and wanted to go home.  So we started back on our .5 mile trek.  She was very excited that she had found 2 giant acorns (couldn't get a clear picture of them today because she was clutching them tight).  She declared "Its my Lucky DAY!" Man, I wish finding 2 acorns would make me that happy!

We found another millipede and I tried desperately to photograph it without it being blurry.  Those things like the shade and move around a lot!

Onto the real disappointment of the hike and the point of the intro story that you probably already forgot about!  I looked down and saw a huge fat green caterpillar in the gravel on our way out.  I got all excited because I'd been wanting to find one for so long so I snatched it up only to find upon inspection that it has been parasitized by something.  It doesn't look like the traditional braconid wasp parasite eggs, more like something that WAS there but is gone now.  It's back is full of holes and there are strange white egg shaped things clinging to it's face:

It is some kind of sphinx moth caterpillar, but I'm not sure which one exactly.  Maybe the One-eyed Sphinx or the Blinded Sphinx.  Again, if anyone knows what it is and what those holes on it's back represent please let me know!