Butterflies at Meijer Gardens

Today we visited one of my favorite places to see one of my favorite things. 

We have come to a point in winter where I simply can not take it anymore. Cloudy and cold. Doldrums. I need sunshine. I want to see the grass and flowers and know there are more colors to the world than white and brown.

Enter the butterflies at Meijer Gardens. Lush, beautiful trees and flowers. Warmth and of course beautiful butterflies. 

We were all pretty impressed by the blue morpho emerging from the chrysalis.

Yeah Georgia, I feel the same way. 

The girls sat entranced by this butterfly for quite a while.

After the butterflies we checked out the Japanese "zen" garden. The girls collected bugs, raked the "sand" and tried on kimonos.

Hopefully this small infusion of warmth and beauty was enough to sustain us as winter comes to a close.

School

Earlier this year we made the difficult decision to pull the girls out of their school to begin homeschooling. When I look at my girls I am reminded that one of our goals as parents has been to foster a love of learning. We want our children to see the endless possibilities in the world around them. We want them to know they can learn not only from computers and books but also from nature as well as music and art and everything else in this great big world they are a part of. A little piece of me died every time they told me they did not want to go to school. 

There are so many reasons we decided to make this transition at this time. Realistically the reasons are too many and too deep to address in one quick blog post.

I understand that not everyone is a fan of homeschooling. But for us, for our family, for right now, it is what is best for our girls. Our girls are thriving and learning and growing.

This is glimpse of what school looks like for us:

 It is messy and beautiful. Sometimes it is structured and sometimes it is just a hot mess but it is oh so worth it.