Labor Day Weekend and Back to School

We ended our summer with a busy fun Labor Day weekend.

First, we spent Saturday on the boat on Lake Minnetonka. It was a beautiful day, but it was bit chilly when the wind kicked up and made the water choppy and the waves splashed over the boat.

Hanging out having PBJ sandwiches for lunch.

Tubing with Nanny!

Student drivers.

 Where are we headed, Captain Trevor?

On Sunday, I had to work, but in the afternoon when I got home, we managed to clean out all 3 kids' closets!  We discovered that they all need some new fall clothes.  They grow so fast!

On Monday, we had lots of fun!  We started with apple picking at Minnesota Harvest Apple Orchard.

Trevor's got his bag ready for apples.

We hopped on the tractor ride out to the orchard in search of the kids' favorite apples - the chestnut crab apples.  We also got some yummy Cortland apples.

We picked 30 pounds of apples!

Sarah ran ahead down the row

And Trevor decided to climb some trees to get the ones he wanted.

"Don't worry, Mom!  I'm good at climbing!"

After the orchard, we headed home for some lunch (passing right by Minnesota's Largest Candy Store) just in time to make it up to Richardson Nature Center for the Monarch Butterfly Tagging event.

Checking out the caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly in this tank.

The kids were very excited to see them!

In this view, you can see a green chrysalis on the right and a newly emerged butterfly on the left (with 2 adorable kids in the background). 

Playing for a bit before the presentation began.

We learned a lot about Monarch butterflies!

After a presentation about the Monarchs, we got to bring the captive ones out to release them, and then we got a chance to catch, tag, and release our own butterfly. 

Here we are heading out with a little cage with 2 tagged butteflies in it.

Check out the numbered tag on its wing.

The naturalist put this butterfly right in Sarah's hand to release it!

 It didn't want to go anywhere, so it stayed on Sarah's hand for a while, then hopped on to her shirt.  Trevor thought it was hilarious that it was hanging on Sarah's shirt.

It is harder to see with its wings closed, but it is hanging on just under the letter S.

Then it was time to go catch our own.  We walked through the prairie grasses and weeds (so I'm glad I took my Claritin!), but Trevor was too short to see over the long grasses, so he rode on my back for a while.  Here he is showing off our butterfly net.

Two days before we were there, the last group found 33 butterflies!  Unfortunately, it was really windy on our day there, so there were fewer butterflies we could catch.  We found the first one of the day, and only 1 of 2 found during our time there.  Austin spotted it, and I caught it in my net!

The naturalist tagged him (it was a male)...

 ...then handed it to Trevor to release. 

Our butterfly was in no hurry to fly off, so he hung out on Trevor for a while, then we transferred him over to Austin for him to hold the butterfly he found!  Austin then very sweetly handed him off to another little kid who wanted to have a chance to hold him.

Our butterfly is #XET 881.  There was 1 other butterfly found by our group and that on is # XET 883 (a female).  Now we can track our butterfly's migration all the way to Mexico on www.monarchwatch.org

We had a blast and had some tired but excited kids by the end of our prairie adventures.  They were still hoping to go to the gigantic candy store that we had to zoom by earlier in the day, so we headed back down to Jordan to get some sweets. They have added on since were last there (since it wasn't big enough already, right?!).  They had a new spaced-themed room and also had a candy band set up that would play music and dance every 5 minutes. We got some yummy candy, an apple pie, some caramel apples, and headed back to Shakopee.

After bath time that night, we had a brief, but strong, storm roll through.  It hailed pea sized hail for about 2 minutes, then poured for a while longer, but then had sunshine and a double rainbow at the lagging edge of the storm!

The next day was the first day of school!!

Austin started 5th grade with Mrs. Spandl and Sarah started 2nd grade with Mrs. Conniff on Tuesday!

And they're off!

While the big kids were at school, we worked on his new Lightning McQueen and Jackson Storm puzzle that we got at Minnesota's Largest Candy Store, which also happens to be the world's (?) largest puzzle store!

Trevor started his 2nd year of preschool on Wednesday.  He'll go 3 mornings a week this year, and then on to Kindergarten next year.

Trevor by his cubby at school.  He is in the same classroom as last year, so he is a pro at the morning routine by now.

How did my babies get so big?!