Well, where do I begin?

So Lina tried something new this last weekend. She drag raced her bike at the King of The Hill drag races in North Bay. I really had my doubts about her going through with it but Friday night after waiting two hours in line to register, she got out for her first time trial and did wonderfully. She listened so well to instructions! Hubby put street tires (from a scooter) on her Honda 50 and explained in quite some detail what she had to do. Friday night she did an 1/8 of a mile in 23 seconds and reached about 29 miles and hour.
















Lina and Hubby at the line setting up in front of the Christmas tree getting into the "box", Lina is on the red Honda in the red suit and blue helmet.

Here is Lina waiting in the staging lane. Her little friend she met there, JJ is on the blue Yamaha behind her.






















Here's Hubby giving her some last minute advice and instructions.






















So Saturday she made it to the quarter finals! Sunday she "broke out" (went faster than her dial-in time) and so didn't go on. By then she was down to a 17.2 second 1/8 of a mile and 35 miles per hour. If she was more confident with her gears, she could probably get it down a few seconds and believe it or not would be just a few seconds slower as some full size vehicles!

Hubby brought his bike up too, cause we were there anyway, and did very well, getting a third place in the superbike class.

After the day was done Sunday, Hubby took Lina up for a helicopter ride that was there on the grounds. All in all an exciting weekend for Lina.

And, she wants to do it again. I wonder when the next opportunity will be? I'm so proud of you Lina for trying something so different!

Getting Bigger!

Yah, I know, not at all crafty. But I just had to update. This little critter is now 6mm long, and both caterpillar's are eating up a storm, if you can call tiny pin sized bits a storm. You can even make out his little feelers!

getting bigger!

Red-winged Blackbirds too!

Oh! Did I forget to mention that our neighbour called this morning looking for an eye dropper. I guess a clutch of eggs they had found (damaged) had a chick hatch this morning - to their shock and surprise. Our neighbour said she was taken aback when she heard peeping this morning when she woke up. Anyway... Lina snapped these pictures this morning at the neighbours. Man we barely got the kids on the bus for the excitment of egg hatching going on!


Red-Winged Blackbird Chick


Feed Me!

Monarch Time

What a day we had yesterday. I waited until yesterday morning to tell Lina that I had to pick her up from school for a doctor's appointment - one she had been dreading - to get her needles updated. Anyway, we got over that one, the amazing part was that when we were exiting the building we saw a Monarch fluttering around the parking lot and before our eyes it proceeded to land on a little milkweed plant sticking out from between the brick walls of the building and the asphalt and lay an egg! Well, we were amazed. In the 4 or 5 years that Lina has been raising Monarchs in the spring we have never had the good fortune to happen upon that wonderful event. We gather caterpillars in late spring and keep them in a huge jar we have. We feed them fresh milkweed daily and watch them grow. Lina has been able to see them change into a chrysalis, emerge, pump blood into their wings and fly away many times. But we have never found any eggs.

Now that we know this is the right time for them, we stopped on our way home and found 3! And more wonders, this morning when we got up one had hatched and shortly after a 2nd one hatched in front of us! The third one is still in it’s egg.


Here's the container we put the leaves in last night. I had no idea when they would hatch and I didn't want the leaves to shrivel up and dry out so I put them on some moist paper towels. in the picture there is two hatch caterpillars and one egg.


Close up of the remaining egg


Here's one of the little guys, can you see it's Monarch markings?

Here it is against a ruler. Those are millimetres!

So we were able to watch the tiny caterpillars under a magnifying glass. There really tiny, if you look at the photo with the ruler, those are millimetres, so he is under an eight of an inch in size. Lina has started a journal and we will be watching them every day.

Next Pincushion Challenge!

Look what boogaj has given all those that participated in her inaugural pincushion challenge. I guess I earned my "fruit badge".


So this month's Pincushion Challenge is Flowers, I'll have to get around to putting up the button on my sidebar. So, since I had nothing in particular to post for "Inspiration Wednesday" yesterday I will be searching out some flower pincushions that inspire me today.