Lyric and Cadence decided to pull out the cicada shells tonight.
They built a block tower and decorated it with cicadas.
Then Lyric walked around the house asking us all to make a prediction of how many we had. We all gave our guesses around 50 or less. Lyric guessed 90. Devon and I both thought she was way off. When she counted she discovered we had 99! We were shocked! That's a lot of cicada shells!
The girls and I have been making our own laundry detergent for a few months now. We really like it. It is SO much cheaper than buying it and we aren't throwing away all those plastic bottles. This is the recipe we used this time.
I decided to do a little experimenting this time. We have been using Ivory soap in our detergent and a few weeks ago I saw this idea on this blog.
Grating the soap isn't really a big deal, but it is the most time consuming part, so why not have some fun with it and make it a little easier? Blowing it up in the microwave worked perfectly! The girls loved watching it blow up (Cadence wanted to do it again!) and it basically just crumbled after it cooled.
Story started out helping me (dressed as a beautiful snow princess),
this was taken with my phone
but Cadence ended up sticking with me the longest.
I have to start this post off by saying I have never heard of cicadas. In Texas, we had locus. In the summer we would find their shells stuck to trees and we would play with them. I had never heard of them staying underground for 13 years and then all coming up to mate. So, when it started this year we were a little surprised! Those things are everywhere! And they are LOUD! The first day we got back from our trip to Texas I could hear them, but I seriously thought it was someone weed eating. It never stopped, but I just thought it was a good day to work in the yard and lots of people were doing it.
Of course, this whole thing is right up Lyric's alley! She loves them! The other night we set out to see how many shells we could find.
Story was the spotter and Cadence, Lyric and I were the picker uppers. There was noway Story was touching one of their shells!
The shells and live cicadas were covering our bushes.
Devon, who is terrified of anything that flies, was helping Cadence look in the bushes. There were too many live ones for him. He was keeping his distance.
By the end, we had quite a collection.
Cadence showing me one of her finds.
Lyric was telling Cadence how proud she was that she overcame her fear and was helping pick up the shells.
The bushes were full of them!
We saw these two mating.
We decided to collect a few live ones in our butterfly house for observation.
Lyric and I did some reading on the internet to try to learn about the fascinating little creatures. Very interesting!
When we were in Texas I received a call from Make a Wish asking my if we would like two tickets to see Taylor Swift. They said they had one ticket for the wish child and one for a parent. I wanted so bad to say yes, but I just couldn't do that to Lyric! Well, a couple of days later they called me back saying the had three tickets for us if we wanted them. Um, yes!
So, we left Texas Friday afternoon and arrived in Nashville on Saturday morning. The concert was Saturday night.
The girls were SO excited!
I took the rest of these with my phone. Getting ready to go they had to have their jewelry.
At they show, enjoying an icee while we wait.
Story had an icee and cotton candy! Beautiful blue teeth.a
We had great seats!
They had a good time playing with their glow sticks while we were waiting for the show to start.
