Family Days Archives - Yearning to Create

I have four daughters with birthdays in March – that’s our version of “March Madness”! And to make it worse, they’re on the 6th and 7th and the 22nd and 23rd!!!

So, just to make life a little easier, and because it’s a birthday tradition, they decorate their own cakes! Well first of all, they get to chose their own dessert – might not even be a cake (because honestly, can’t you think of lots of desserts that taste better than cake?).

Jo here chose Rice Krispie squares with caramel icing (she needs gluten free foods).

Her “cake” was too gooey to get much decorating, and too hard to stick candles in. So they’re just sticking to the caramel and were flopping over. Blow quickly Jo!

Jen planned hers all out carefully and worked with much care to get her cake perfect. She chose a marble cake.

Perfect! I like how she used candle holders as flower clusters rather than as candle holders! Love the pink and yellow colour scheme!

Okay, I did this one . . .

. . . it says Happy Birthday and has two candles – one for each decade!!! (Do you think it’s too much?) She was too busy finishing up college and starting a new job to decorate her own cake. She chose the delicious Tres Leche Cake (always love making that cake – gives me a reason to open a can of Eagle Brand and lick out the can!)

Note: I can’t believe I have a 20 year old daughter. It’s really hard to fathom since I’m only 25 myself!

And finally . . .

. . . Kat requested a rainbow chip cake with purple icing. Here she is with her finished cake and toothless 7 year old grin.

Then a few hours later, she decided she needed to add a little more . . .

. . . and now we have a finished cake!!! Wow! It took more than a few minutes to pull all that out of the cake before we could eat it. All those animals and ballerinas came from my childhood. Mom used them to decorate our cakes. The tradition continues!!!

So . . . it works for everyone – they have fun decorating and I have time for other birthday preparations. And then we put the cake stuff away until the other three birthdays in the fall. My guy and I usually chose undecoratable desserts for our birthdays – like coconut cream pie or black forest in a bowl!

I home school my kids until grade 4 – that’s when they start public school. So this year I have Kat at home and she’s in grade 1. We have this wonderful facilitator who comes to our home once a month and does a science lesson with her.

Well, last weeks lesson was about bugs and so Miss S brought in some real live bugs for Kat to play with (although I think I was more fascinated with them than she was! I like bugs – it’s snakes and worms that creep me out because I accidentally killed a snake once by riding my bike over it, and now they’re all after me for revenge!).

We got to observe the three stages of meal worms.

The beetle stage – that light brown one emerged that morning and all he wanted to do was hang out on the cucumber – that’s how you give them liquid (a slice of cucumber about every two weeks). I think he drank too much cucumber juice though because he has since “crossed the bar”.

This is the boring stage – the little cocoons or chrysalis’s just lay around and do nothing. I wonder how long it takes them to emerge. This morning, there was a light brown beetle among them. He’s since been transferred to the beetle dish and I’ll see if he survives better without a cucumber nearby.

This is the grossest stage – maybe because they resemble snakes and worms! But they have legs so they’re not so bad – it looks like they have three little legs on each side, up by their head. And they hardly move at all. I’ve been wanting to see how they make their cocoon, but when I come back to look, suddenly there will be a new one already there and I missed it being formed. Today I did get to see one that wasn’t completely hardened yet because the tail was still moving. Fascinating stuff!

They have these nice secure lids so nothing is going to escape. Even when a basketball knocked them over, the lids stayed on! Phew!!! My family doesn’t seem to appreciate them on the table though so I’ve had to move them to the laundry room.

After observing the bugs with Miss S and her magnifying glass, Kat got to create her own bugs in the three different stages out of all this material that Miss S brought. (Sorry, forgot to take pictures and the worm balloon has since left us. You’ll have to use your imagination – think egg cartons, etc.)

Miss S is wonderful and does all these fun science projects with Kat and asks her probing questions and then listens and talks and laughs along with Kat – and Kat can talk the ear off an elephant!!!

So, why a meal worm post on a “Creating” blog?

I was thinking of the most amazing creation of all time – our world. I often see things (like the life cycle of a meal worm) that just remind me of what wonderful and glorious things our Heavenly Father has created for us. And I am just in awe – especially at this time of year, when it’s so exciting to watch the world start to wake up and spring to life after it’s winters rest. What a loving Heavenly Father we have to provide such an awesome place for us to dwell.

We are truly blessed!

Get Updates in your Inbox!

Category: Family Days

Birthday Cake Traditions

Meal Worms (Not for the Squeamish!)