A rare event (and some butterflies, too)

It's 6:46 am and I'm just now starting to hear Laura stir. This is, in case you don't know, a big deal for her since she's been up at six (or well before) pretty much every day since she was around four months old. So I'm taking this time to have a little bit of coffee and some quiet time before the madness begins. (The "madness" being mainly of the Will variety.)

Yesterday was Will's last field trip of the year (only five more school days left!) and we got to make it a family affair since Jamison was able to go with us. Besides the 30-minute wait in the holding area/tent outside the actual room where the butterflies were, things went pretty smoothly, considering there were 15 or so antsy three, four, and five year olds involved.

The field trip was at the conservatory here, which was really nice. The kids went to see the butterfly show after learning about butterflies and their life cycles at school. The butterflies in their classroom had conveniently hatched (is that the right word?) right before the field trip so they were excited to see other kinds of not-caterpillar-or-boring-chrysalis butterflies (butterflies of Brazil, to be more specific) flying around everywhere.

After a while, Will figured out how to coax the butterflies from the flowers onto his finger. He was (surprisingly) gentle and let them crawl around without bothering their wings like the nice volunteer ladies had instructed the kids to avoid doing. Laura was also interested in looking at the butterflies but wasn't quite as gentle. (I had to act quickly to avoid a tragic homicide-type situation when I held one too long too close to her curious and quick little hands.) She decided about half an hour into the butterflying that she had kind of had it and so we had to make our exit and go have some lunch.

A few pictures from yesterday:

Will's fake smile is slowly improving. Now he just looks like he may be in some type of pain when he smiles for pictures. Maybe by kindergarten he'll have it perfected.