Growing Butterflies, Little Women, and Laundry!

For Rocky's birthday I got him a butterfly growing kit. We received the caterpillars in the mail, we watched them form cacoons, and then emerge in to beautiful monarch butterflies.

Laurie, Megan, Rachel, and Hannah do the "diva thing" once in a while. They enjoy makeup and being pretty just like the rest of us. :)

Random picture, I know, but a family of 9 produces quite a LOT of laundry!



           

Crabbing in Oregon

Every year Grandpa VanderSloot takes anyone older than 5 years old crabbing off the Oregon Coast.  We flew in his private plane to Oregon.  The first plane stop was to meet everyone for Thai food.  Then we hopped on the plane and went to our next destination.  Bright and early in the morning we got stuffed with a big breakfast before heading out on the boats.  Grandpa and Grandma took Rachel and Laurie in their boat.  Brian, me, Connor, Rocky, Megan, and Uncle Caleb were in our boat.  Thank goodness for Uncle Caleb!  He did a lot of the releasing and pulling up of traps.  Brian mostly drove the boat.  What an experience!  You can only keep male crabs that have to be a certain size.  All the females or baby crabs have to be released back into the ocean--by law.

Following a day in the boats, we took our individual boat and camped it for awhile so Connor and Brian could do their tradition of roasting a crab on a fire.  I tried a little bit, but I'm not much of a seafood fan.  Rocky found little hermit crabs, and Megan was having so much fun collecting all sorts of shells, and crabs.

After we were done everyone pitches in to clean the crabs in preparation for the feast at the end of the day.  That is quite a long (and stinky!) process!  The kids had fun finding mussels.  During the adventure of looking at fish and finding mussels Rachel lost her brand new glasses in the water!  :(  The next morning Brian went diving (Ew yuck!) in the murky freezing water to find them but had no luck.

We all went to the the Tillamook Cheese Factory and got a tour of how they make the cheese and sampled the best icecream I've ever had.  So much fun!

That night we went to a nice restaurant where all of the crab was cooked up.  What a feast!  And what wonderful memories we will have forever!