You can't keep me down, Apple!!

Kia Ora, friends! I've missed you all! :o) It's been a week since the big crash and since then, I've learned a lot about hard drives and my computer has a brand new one. The original one was not salvageable unfortunately and so I lost a few documents containing passwords and account numbers, and sadly, all of the kids' iPod videos that they'd taken since we've been here. I did have all of my photos backed up, thank God. What a hassle, but obviously things could be far worse, so from here we'll move forward.

I am sooo backed up with interesting photos from the past few weeks, but I have to start off with something that's been a source of big excitement around here for the past few days. We've made a few lovely new friends here in Auckland and one of them, Marie, showed up in my kitchen last Friday afternoon with a potted plant. It took Laurel and me maybe 3 seconds to notice that there were two fat striped caterpillars chomping away at its leaves. Our mouths literally dropped open and Marie explained that this was a swan plant and the caterpillars would stay in it and soon would go into their little cocoons and emerge as Monarch butterflies! Of course we all know how this works, but I've never in my life had someone give me my own butterfly science experiment to keep on a table in my house!

That night was Trey's 13th birthday party, which meant a house full of 20 other 13-year-olds and a lot of Dorito crumbs, wet bathing suits, and noise. I totally forgot about the caterpillars until I went upstairs finally around 12.30 for bed. There on the landing was the plant and one of the caterpillars was now a waxy green cocoon! The other was still gobbling up every leaf of the quickly dwindling plant.

A few days later he was still eating and the leaves were nearly all gone and the poor fat little guy was wandering the edge of the container looking for more. Marie gave us another branch, and soon he was in a swan plant stupor hanging upside down from his little behind.

He stayed like that for a whole day and we checked him nearly every 15 minutes because we read that the whole cocoon process only takes a few minutes. We didn't know what actually happened next so we looked it up and learned that the skin actually splits open down the back and the green part is underneath their skin! They wiggle the skin up to the top until it falls off and then their green skin underneath hardens into the cocoon over a matter of a few hours.

Thank goodness Laurel woke up this morning just in time to see the end of this gruesome process. When he wiggled out of the skin, she was super close to him and it nearly hit her. She loved that! :o)

And that is what we have so far. I think it said that in 9-16 days the butterfly will emerge. You know I will post updates as things change here. And now I have a whole bunch of little poopie pellets to clean up.

So happy to be back in blogger-land! Hope you all are well... xo, K.