Safari Park | 10:02

I’m going to flashback to about 2 hours ago. We went to the Safari Park today with friends and the kids had so much fun. They literally ran themselves into exhaustion by 2:00.

Whenever we go to the San Diego Zoo or the Safari Park, we are obviously going to check out the animals, but I love it when we happen upon some fun extras. Today was full of them!

There were performers who I think were on America’s Got Talent or one of those shows. I don’t know if they ever won anything or not because I only enjoy watching the embarrassing performers – these guys (and girl) were definitely not in that category.

I don’t know the name of the dancers, but they did a lot of acrobatics, some fancy jump roping and fire limbo. I’m easily impressed when people are bouncing around and flipping effortlessly. I can do a cartwheel. Or if I’m getting really ambitious, I think I could land a round off, but other than that, I have no skills. I can’t even do a somersault anymore – I’m afraid I’ll break my neck. The woman in the second picture literally bent her body in half. Then she kept her head and torso in one place while the lower half of her body stepped around. It was one of the most unnatural looking things I have ever seen, but she did with a smile on her face the entire time. They also were playing the Follow The Leader Song. When we were in Riviera Maya, they played this song in the night club at the resort we stayed at every night. It’s so catchy and makes you want to shake what your mama gave ya.

Rory learned how to play the drums – he’ll be able to draw on this when he’s sitting in drum circles on the beach in about 15 years.

And we took our token picture of the kids on the black rhino.

At one point the kids completely drenched themselves in a little water play area. We didn’t bring along extra clothes so Rory has on a sweatshirt that he had on earlier and I made a tube top out of Kamryn’s jacket. I just wanted that to be noted that I don’t let Kamryn wear bike shorts and a make-shift tube top in public without a reason.

Today we went to the Safari Park (I will forever call it the Wild Animal Park – I don’t know why they changed it) to see the butterflies. These butterflies are a pretty big deal. We got there early on an overcast and cold day and the parking lot was already filling up fast. We got in and made a beeline for the butterflies.

We were Butterfly Jungle virgins, but there were some seasoned butterfly veterans there. One lady was decked out in a very colorful butterfly wing type hat and a nice butterfly print button up blouse. She knew what she was doing because the butterflies were landing all over her. Apparently the butterflies also liked Ryan’s Ween Poopship Destroyer shirt.

I had promised Kamryn that we would do some kind of butterfly craft when we got home and I got a little bit of inspiration while we were getting drinks at one of the little cafes in the park. They were selling a butterfly garland that you could hang from the ceiling or on a wall. It was pretty cool, but it was $15 for what amounted to 5 fake butterflies on a string. I knew I could make something similar using stuff that I already had at home.

My friend, Natalie, over at Crafting Crazy made some butterflies this week that she found here. They are made from milk jugs and Sharpies, which I had one jug, but no Sharpies. Every time I go to buy them, I’m at Michael’s and they are about a billion dollars. I ordered them off of Amazon today and they’ll be here next week.

For some reason I was thinking that we had made butterflies with wax paper in elementary school so after a quick Google search, I found what I was looking for. I love it when I find a craft that was originally intended for Kamryn to do and I end up doing the whole thing because it’s not kid friendly. It involves sharp objects and hot irons.

I started off tracing the butterflies onto the wax paper with a pencil. I used the templates from the Alphamom post mention above. I cut around the butterfly – I didn’t cut it out, but cut a square around the butterfly. I thought it would make it easier to accomplish the next step…filling up the butterfly with crayon shavings.

My camera is on it’s last leg and the autofocus only works when it wants to so I apologize for the blurry photos. Next put another piece of wax paper on top and get that iron on there! I used a napkin between my iron and the wax paper.

Yep, it’s a hot mess right now. It doesn’t take long for it to harden and then you can cut out the butterfly. You can’t see the lines in the picture, but they are actually fairly easy to see up close. I used an X-acto knife to cut it out.

See the light colored areas around the edges? I ironed the butterfly again to squish the wax out of the sides. It separates a bit when you cut it. Next I added some beads and pipe cleaners for the antennae and a butterfly was born!

Then, the pièce de résistance, the finished butterfly garland.

The minute I sat down to load all of these photos, Kamryn came out with tears in her eyes and half a butterfly in her hand. Apparently my butterflies are almost as fragile as the real thing.