Penny, That particular mama could've just been at the end of her egg laying term. :P If I recall, I was getting you some toward the end there in that particular 'batch' which could explain the problem with the lack of viability. *sigh* Too bad since I have so many caterpillars right now from the previous group! I have been collecting more, again, in the past few days. There were some new mamas out there today. I swear, it is interesting because I haven't released any in a month. Just goes to show that if you have Milkweed, eventually the Monarchs will find it! I do have loads of the stuff...two huge plots in the backyard and one plot in the front. I also have it in sporadic places. I listed 100 plants on the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project but I know I have more than that. I just refuse to go and actually count the darned plants! I figure counting eggs and caterpillars is plenty. My room is a fun place to be. You get a bit of an idea from the three pictures. It's hard to tell what it really looks like (I don't want to show much of the kids' faces in the pics for security purposes) but the sea turtles that are hanging from the lights, for example, actually have the children's faces on them for the heads. They are so fun to look at. Way in the back in the 2nd picture is my 'library' area and I have this pop-up tent/house thing I got at Target. I have a picnic table and a pond rug back there as well. The wall is covered to resemble a rock wall (this awesome rock-patterned paper)with the grass and the sky (cloud-patterned paper). The flowers' heads are the children's faces. The butterflies fluttering above the flowers are the children's bodies. The tree to the side? The leaves are the children's faces as well. :) I take a lot of pictures and use them in the room which makes the room so much more cheerful and alive. Mary, I am sure we can talk Kindergarten to no end. I've been back in the classroom for going on six years now although I've been in education for 23. I chose K because I wanted to lay that important foundation in education. When I considered moving up to teach math at the new high school my husband said, "Sherry, I think you should stick with Kindergarten for a few more years." That was two years ago. :) Each year, the parents come up and ask, "Are you leaving? Please stay because I have a daughter/son coming to Kindergarten next year." K is a fun group but most definitely EXHAUSTING! (maybe because I am so type A)

Brenda, it is nice when even family members are enablers, eh? LOL!! I actually keep telling my husband "There's this garden in Western NY that someday we have to go visit!" I would love to see your beautiful garden some day. The different areas you have planted and the variety is amazing. I've been lusting for some more photos from you. Would love to see what you have on file for your veggie garden from last year if you have any time to post some. Goodness! I finally cracked open the catalog for my local nursery who I really like to support. She's a true plantswoman who I so enjoy chatting with, etc. I just sent an email over to her with my "list" (is was a long one) of plants to put aside for me for pickup when they open. It's a terrible habit I have of giving her a list each year for pickup. But my birthday is always right around when she opens, so it's a birthday present, right?!?! LOL!

Hi Iggie. If I may. If the use of Back Yard Bob, reaches a point where the professional shop is forced to cut back on tooling, training, and maybe even personnel to the point that say they are no longer equipped to deal with your transmission question (which is actually already happening, one MUST have the $9000.00 factory scan tool for ONLY Chrysler to operate at the level required) then what is anyone going to do, with or without the financial resources? Back Yard Bob would never go anywhere near this level of an investment, we can only do it when we price correctly, and are fully utilized by our customers. There is a difference between price and cost. You can get a cheap price by going around us, but how do you really measure the cost of doing that? I had a customer who took her Honda Odyssey to a back yard bob to have a timing belt job done. She came back here a month later thinking she had a transmission problem, that he discovered right after doing the belt. The transmission was fine, he missed the timing marks when he did the belt. What if she totally lost the chance to ever bring her car back here because we weren't doing enough business to keep our doors open? Don't be too sure there will always be someone else, the cars got way too complicated in too short of a time. The tools are not being widely purchased and very few technicians are attending sufficient training to keep up with today's technology. The best part, is its all because most shops are actually priced to low already to afford those expenses. Now with many other people losing their jobs, and thinking they are capable of, and attempting to work at home and grab some/most of the easier work, we are getting hit with all kinds of problems when we are the second person in, (sometimes the third) with cars that have lots of parts thrown at them, that they easily may not have needed. In many cases, if someone else does a job like that timing belt in the back yard, we are faced with either turning the customer away, or completely re-doing the repair. You see, once we touch it, we are expected to stand behind the repair, fully. Meanwhile Back Yard Bob can sit back and still say he did everything right, and act like we don't know what we are doing. The Honda owner I referred to, once the car was diagnosed, was handed her keys and sent back to the person that did the work. As far as we are concerned, she does not ever have to come back. If her Back Yard Bob can't handle everything her car needs, she can take it to the nearest dealer, a sixty mile round trip. That's a real cost associated to the cheap price she got. BTW, like that Chrysler tool, I'm the only independent that has the Honda Factory tool, I won't bother going into detail right here what that means that I and the dealer can do, that no other shop, or especially anyone working at home in their garage cannot. Seriously it would take way too much time to try and look it all up and type it out. BTW, I know it sounds arrogant to turn her away, but its more about preserving the shop in one of the toughest business climates ever. We are all in, customers that don't understand that can't help us, and for the sake of the customers that do understand we have to make choices. "Nothing personal, its just business"

Oh my goodness....I rarely come here anymore and today thought I'd see who was still around. I don't recognize a lot of the names anymore. Steph and I both can be found on Facebook. She stays busy with the kids. Grant will be 5 in July and starts Kinder in the fall. Camryn was 2 in January. They are such fun. I only live a mile away so see them everyday. Things for me have been really sad. My sister Jan is in the hospital on a ventilator right now. She has COPD and has had such a rough time since January. It is very very sad that her life is so hard right now. Some of you may remember my talking about her in the past. She had struggled with alcohol for many years. Little over 2 years ago she stopped drinking and worked very hard to put her life back together. She has her own apt now and was doing really really well. And now her health is so bad that she will be living in a nursing home if she survives this. It is just heartbreaking that she won't be able to have the good life she has worked so hard to achieve. Thanks for asking about us!! Here are a couple of recent pictures of the kids.