Fly Away Butterfly

Apparently Monarch butterflies migrate through Grapevine, a neighboring town to us here in Flower Mound, on their way to Mexico. To celebrate, the city hosts an annual butterfly festival. When we showed up we saw that everyone was dressed in their butterfly and fairy finest. Plus there were several wagons and strollers decorated also. Unfortunately we missed a parade and costume contest for the kids. (Now that I know, I'm already planning for next year :) ). But there were still a ton of other activities going on when we arrived. They had venders, booths with info on butterflies, face painting and butterfly crafts. The girls made butterfly puppets out of brown paper bags and also got to make butterfly antenna with headbands and pipe cleaners. A family in our ward (I didnt know this before) runs a face painting company and they were working this particular festival. Being friends, they kindly offered to paint my daughters faces for free. That was really neat and special for the girls, since we usually dont splurge on that kind of stuff. Then, the big event, was the butterfly release. They had hundreds of butterflies in envelopes which they distributed to the families. At the appointed moment, after a big countdown, everyone opened their envelopes at the same time and watched as all the butterflies flew off into the sky to continue their journey south. It was actually very awesome to be surrounded by all the butterflies. And it was great to find a free, fun event that I know my girls will look forward to year after year. :)