Butterfly!

A bit delinquent in our posting, but about 9 days after the last post about our monarch caterpillar our dear light green chrysalis's' turned to black and orange (well the actual chrysalis is clear, the color change was the actual butterfly inside, whoa!). The first one was entirely black and orange when we woke up on Thursday morning. We ate breakfast and went to play for a while. When we came back to check the butterfly was already out! We were bummed to have missed his emergence from the chrysalis but were so amazed to see him in all of his orange and black beauty! We took him outside, but had to leave for the day and when we came home he had already flown away! The second one was black and orange by Friday morning and we didn't want to miss the excitement this time so we hung around the kitchen. While we were skyping with grampa Addy excitedly shouted, "The butterfly, the butterfly!" and surely enough our friend was quickly busting out of her chrysalis. We enjoyed watching her wings unfurl as she got her bearings in her new body. We, too, took her outside, but this time hung around outside and marveled at her first flutters into a nearby tree a few hours later. We see monarch butterflies in our front and back yard fluttering around, hanging around on the milk weed. We call them, 'our butterflies' not really knowing if they are really the ones we watched grow, and grow, and change again and again, in awe! But we all get excited when we see them flying around and feel so lucky to have been witness to their metamorphosis.