Forget expensive butterfly kits

The kids have been playing with caterpillars that are yellow, black, and white for the past week then they started noticing chrysalis' hanging on trees, fences, and then one on our pineapple plant. These chrysalis' are green with shiny gold spots on them, when they turn black you can start to see the orange and black wings and you know it will just be a matter of hours before the are out. Trent spotted this one that had just hatched and was gnawing on it's empty shell. It was amazing to watch it up close since it wasn't afraid of us yet. We watched it flap it's wings a few times then it had two trial flights before it was off. Guess we will skip learning about butterflies when our homeschool curriculum tells us too. Butterfly metamorphosis, check. (By the way these pictures are in reverse order.)

Some husbands bring home the bacon. Mine brings home da fruit!

The fruit that grows here is amazing. We have to look up fruit online to figure out what you can eat and how to eat it. John has been bringing home huge mangoes, bananas, avocados, guava, passion fruit, starfruit, limes, and now all kinds of citrus and the bumpy green one is called a sugar apple. We were just told that we can go to this lady's "yard" (orchard) and pick whatever we want. So there is much research needed before picking more. John says there is even a cinnamon tree there. The fruit is definitely one reason why I chose Kauai and it's been so much fun trying it all with our kids. Sevan even requests guava, I have to confess that when she says guava it does sounds similar to how she says gecko so you definitely have to take location into deciphering her language.

Garage Sale finds for our new home

This chair was free I just had to recover it, Tay's head board was given to us, I bought the pink flower tablecloth for Tay's blanket, $1 poster already framed, old green dishes for quarters each, and a Le Creuset pan for $10. I look forward to every Saturday morning for garage sale'N.

La cooka rocha, la cooka rocha!

Sorry for not posting for the past few weeks but I always feel like I have to post a picture each time and my camera battery died for a while but I just received my charger so we will be back in business shortly.

Anywho, my mom sent the kids a science book about bugs and we received it yesterday. I started reading it about 5 minutes after John killed a GIANT cockroach and we weren't even sure where this giant landed except we knew that we had a leg. So in this bug book it has a little section that talks about cockroaches. "Hey honey listen to this info about that little critter that we think you got...they can live without water for a week, go a month without food, and survive a week without it's head." Yummy, I hope we got more than his leg and head

These are like giant Yukas that send up a 20' flower.
Two different varieties of passion fruit flowers.

Beautiful wood of a guava tree, yummy fruit too!
Last but not least a coffee plant which has a sweet outer berry.

How to drink coconut water by Sevan

Okay, Sevan didn't teach us how to do his but she is just demonstrating it for the benefit of blogging. These were the things I was dying to know about when I first arrived and on day 3 we had a nice visit with one of the homeowners as he showed us what was ripe, how to harvest it, and even learned that the skin around the coffee bean has the most antioxidants. So here's how he served up the coconuts. He climbed up in the tree and twisted a nut off then used a machete to cut through the tough skin. After making a nice hole in it he then cut off a stem of a papaya tree to use as a straw since it is a hollow tree. He sliced open 3 nuts ranging in age and size so we could taste the difference. The large nuts were sweet and a little fizzy. After the milk is gone he then sliced out the meat which wasn't dry like the ones at the store in OR.

Answer to our prayers #1

My goal was to have an address and a place to lay our sleepy heads when we arrive, and now we have it! Here's some pictures of where we are heading. Thanks Kristy for the connection!