Today we all went to a farm, the Barnyard Petting Zoo, to celebrate the 5th birthday of Hank's friend, Emme. The kids loved feeding the puppies, foals, baby goats and cows. They also saw ducklings and newborn piglets and puppies. They took rides on a pony. Corrina got scratched by a kitten. Afterwards we headed to a nearby park to have cake and ice cream, play on the playground, and frolic on the banks of a creek.

Feeding the month-old foals; Hank on a hay bale treating a low blood sugar; Rene loved giving bottles


Corrina preferred feeding animals who were INSIDE a cage; Hank on the pony; Betsy and Hank being followed by a baby donkey and a foal.


Rene on the pony; Corrina and Hank feeding the black lab puppies; Hank loved the welsh Corgi puppies


Rene on an old-fashioned jungle gym; eating cake; Emme, the birthday girl


Update on the silkworms. 11 of the 12 silkworms have spun their cocoons! They got very big, stopped eating, and then started roaming the box looking for a place to spin. After about 12 hours of roaming, they began spinning a matrix and then started spinning the cocoon around themselves. It was fascinating to watch them crawling around inside the cocoons. We have one twin cocoon; one silkworm started on a cocoon, and another silkworm just crawled in there with them, and they are both inside one cocoon. I found out that twin cocoons are rare, but very prized, and are used for making dupioni silk, a silk made only of the nubby silk of twin cocoons. (Dupioni is Italian for double).