We had a family outing this week!!! On Monday we went to the botanical garden! It felt so good to go and do something normal. It has been so long since we have been able to do something like this. We are still being very cautious about going out around people, but felt comfortable going to the gardens. It was outside, we were able to take our own food and have a picnic, and there were not too many people in close proximity. The gardens were beautiful! Cooler weather is around the corner, and so I hope to visit the gardens again. The kids had a fun time! Their favorite part was feeding all the fish and turtles in the koi pond! We also enjoyed the butterfly garden! I love butterflies, and it was so neat to see the caterpillars, the cocoons, and the butterflies!! It made we want to plant different butterfly attracting flowers in our yard come spring!

Visiting the Botanical garden was a great start to our week of learning about bugs and insects! Since having David I have learned more about bugs, spiders, and various insects than I ever imagined I would!! Honestly, most creepy crawlies don’t frighten me, as long as they are NOT in my House!

We actually found an amazing variety of insects this week! We have a tree in our front yard that the cicadas love! So we found several of those. We also found a few praying mantises this week! This is the first year that I have seen praying mantises since we moved here. I don’t know if I just wasn’t looking for them before or what!? One day David caught a giant grasshopper, that he immediately looked up in his bug encyclopedia, and discovered it is actually called an Eastern lubber grasshopper. We even caught a dragonfly! We went on a bug scavenger hunt one day, and observed lots of different bugs. I let David teach us all about the parts of the insects. He was more than willing. 🙂

I have a couple more recipes to share with you this week! One night for dinner I cooked a delicious peach glazed grilled chicken breast recipe by Bobby Flay! I paired it with rice and a Caesar salad. The glaze for the grilled chicken is so good! Don’t be afraid to slather it on. Also, I recommend setting some aside to serve extra with the chicken!

We also made our own Caesar dressing for the salad! Andrew helped me out and made the dressing! I like to use Ree Drummond’s recipe for Caesar salad. I had anchovy paste instead of the fillets, so we substituted a couple teaspoons of the paste. It tastes amazing!

I also make baked Ziti for dinner last night! This recipe by Ree Drummond is a lot like lasagna. I cheated on the sauce and just used jarred spaghetti sauce, but I have made my own sauce before and it is good too! I just happened to be tired, and so it was easier to open a jar of sauce! 🙂

Love,

PK