Hickory Horned Devil Catapiller

Really neat catapiller Katie's Great Uncle Brady caught for her. It was about the size of a hot dog. It looks pretty gross, but it does not bite. It lives in trees during the pupa stage, then falls to the ground and burrows under for about 2 years, it turns into the Royal moth (the moth with a 6 inch wingspan).

Katie and a few of her friends.

We had a church campout last weekend and the girls had a great time. I got them to slow down for a minute to take this picure...

From L-R (kinda..) we have

Grace Bailey, Aubrey Young, Katie Boytim, Eva Harris, Marot Smith, and Claire Stevens. They make up most of our Little Women of Virtue group. I think only Rebecca Robison and Emma Reith are missing. Little Women of Virtue is a girls group that we go to every other Friday and it teached the girls different "girl" stuff like sewing, latchhook, baking, manners, etc...

Card, Bella, Sara, and Lauren

The Guthrie girl, Card and Bella

We had a work day at Debra Rayberns ( a widow from our church) and this is where Card and Bella stayed. Card LOVES the girls and Bella is getting fond of them too. The girls actually babysat for us this last week so we could go Christmas shopping.

Arabella 9 months

Arabella Colleen Boytim
9 months old

Bella is standing all by self these day. That is until mommy yells "YEA!!", at which point Bella gets frightened and sits down. She enjoys playing "tea" and "house" with her sister and "screa," with her brother. I guess "scream" is a way of communication among little ones- they really enjoy it until mommy's nerves get rattled.

Rough day for the animals.....

The kids a couple of weeks ago.
Katie is still 8, Card is 2, and Arabella is 9 months old now!!!

Rough day for the animals today. We built a yard for the ducks, but made it where you could open the door to the duck coop and it became the door for the yard. We figured we would just see how the doves did (we have been told that they do not go far). They did not go far, but they also can not go very high. I think their wings are too weak from being in a coop all the time. So they could not really get off the ground when are dogs come by....... well having a bird dog and one very good hunter dog..... yep- one of the doves became doggy food today. By the way, the other doves flew back into the coop- I guess they are smarter than we thought.....
So fast forward a few hours----- Blue, the famous Bette, who lived approx. 7 YEARS, died this afternoon. Katie mentioned that it has just not been her day today. Poor girl, losing two pets in one day. We will probably replace the fish tomorrow and Will is buying a gate for the duck yard so we can let the ducks out and leave the doves in. We will eventually enclose the yard so the doves can fly around it and not get out. That is not very high on our list of "to do" things though. Now we just have to keep Ralph the bird dog out of the duck yard and we will be good.