Butterflies and Turtles

Our butterflies hatched over the past few days. We didn't really get to see any good hatching since it's pretty quiet when it happens and it seems to happen pretty quickly. They leave a long trail of "bloody" stuff when they hatch. It's gross. But they are very pretty butterflies. We decided to let them go today.
Painted Lady butterflyThe last one out actually landed on Ellie's finger. The kids wanted that to happen since they show it on the commercial.

I was surprised that it stayed there for a while and even went onto Logan's finger too!

Yesterday morning I went out for a bike ride (too late- around 9 am). It was already sooo hot! Along the trail behind our house I found a huge turtle. I debated what to do. If I went home to tell the kids, I would be cutting my ride very short. If I didn't, they could miss a really cool thing. So I went home and got them. After we went to see if it was still there and look at it, we went back and told Stuart about it. He's a notorious turtle lover since childhood. I told him I was a little worried that it was pretty far from the pond and I didn't want anything to happen to it.

So we got a bucket and headed down the trail to find him. He had moved and we didn't see him at first. But then, we found him and loaded him up in the bucket.

This is the pond by our house where they live. On the way to the pond we saw another stray turtle. It was in the street, so we added it to the bucket. When Stu first reached down to get it, it peed everywhere! Eeewww!

You're free!! We dumped them out and they scurried down into the water.

Awww!

Loving the "wild" life! (Gordan's (this is how Logan wants to spell it) back legs have really popped out. More pics to come!)