Bees 1 Week Inspection

On Monday, we opened the hive up for the first time since we put them in there. It was very exciting! We had no idea what they would look like. But everything looked good. They had a good amount of comb drawn out on 3 frames and a bit on a 4th frame. We saw some eggs, pollen and even sugar water that they had put into the cells. Here's the pictures I took:

Here is one of the frames. All the bees are clustered on the comb.



Here are some of the bees clinging on to each other. This has a name but I can't remember what it is called but they do them when they are making comb.



Here is an upclose picture of the comb and inside the cells you can see eggs. They look like tiny grains of rice. Sort of just to the bottom right of center there are 3 cells in a triangle that all have eggs in them.



In this picture you can see the pollen in the cells. It is dark in color.



Here is the 1 week inspection video. It's weird for a few seconds then it gets clear.

Hiving the Bees

Yesterday was the big day! The bees came on Saturday and they were in their little box. Last night we finished painting the hive and put them into it. It was exciting and scary! We only had one veil (the funny looking hat beekeepers wear) and wore it. The hubby was very brave but also got stung on the back of his head. Poor thing.

Here he is shaking the bees out of their box into the hive.



Here is the queen in her cage.



Here they are all in the hive.



Here is a video of them being shook into the hive.

Love Letters

The other week in Relief Society the lesson was out of the Joseph Smith manual. Basically, the only material given was some letters that Joseph had written to Emma. Before the lesson, I had seen a book at Deseret Book where I'm assuming they published a bunch of "love letters" that Joseph had written Emma. In discussing these with my Auntie, she said that she was sort of against reading them because they were so personal. I, in turn, thought that it would be sweet to read about someone's love for their significant other. Neither of us read them.

This made me think about my relationship with the hubby. I kept a journal the entire time we were dating and that has always been precious to me. I'm not sure why I wrote because I didn't continuously write during the year before or the year after. It is special to me and every so often I take it out and read it to remind myself why I fell in love.

Then the hubby showed me that he also kept a journal! I think I knew that he had but I hadn't ever really read it or thought too much about it. This week I read it. And let me just say I married the best one, too bad ya'll missed out.

There is nothing in them that is inappropriate or too private. If you really know Russ, then it's so sweet to read about his concern for me, his true inexperience in dating and genuine sweetness. My love letters are all superficial and immature. But his are so insightful and thoughtful. So if he ever becomes the prophet, you have our permission to publish his love letters after we're dead and make a killing off them. (not mine)

And just to tease you, I wanted to share one little quote from them (hang on it's a tear jerker),

"I am going to marry an awesome girl. I don't know how I got to be so blessed. The Lord sure does love me. She is just plain awesome. I hope that I can be worthy of her as my wife." (Russ)

Losing His Edge

The hubby told me this story last night. It is so funny that I had to post it on here.

The Babe was supposed to be sleeping but he continued to get out of bed for one thing or another. The hubby was sick of it so he finally said,

"If you get out a bed one more time, I'm going to spank you."

The Babe looked at him and started laughing (in a cute non-smart-alecky way) and said, "Daddy, your spanks don't hurt at all."

The hubby's lost all his edge. He no longer has any leverage. I think it's funny because he only half-hardedly spanks him anyway. I could probably count on one hand how many time he has spanked him. But it's funny that the Babe thinks that way. LOL.

Things are Fine

This is a picture the Babe drew at preschool today! How fun, huh? I can actually tell what it is....can you?

Things are going well with us. Today the hubby had a genius idea. He wanted to open a grocery store that sells already blessed food. This of course would be so you wouldn't have to bless the food at every meal. Genius huh? Would you shop there? Just doing some market research. lol.

Name Confusion

I was in the car with the Babe and he asked me what his other name is. Being confused, I asked what he was talking about. He said well like your other name is Kendra (the first obviously being mom). I was quite surprised that he knew my first name but not completely shocked because lots of people call me that. If there is anything about being a parent that I have learned, it's that children absorb everything! Then they'll typically bring it up when it's the most embarrassing. So I knew he had figured out his name, the Babe, already but what trying to figure out his name where he fit into the family (like my being called mom). So I struggled on what to tell him. The hubby came to the rescue and told him his other name was brother. That satisfied him.

This brings me to my other story. The hubby and I were talking. I told him how comfortable I am with my maiden name and how proud I am to be associated with my family. Then I said that I am very happy that I married him and I loved taking his name to be associated with him. But that I didn't have the same feelings of gratitude about being associated with his extended family. Not that I don't like them! They are just different than I am. Which is ok! It's ok to be different. Perhaps it was just that I don't know then ALL very well (extended family and so on). I guess the conversation was going no where and I really didn't have a point. I was just thinking about how when I'm 39 how I'll have been with my married name longer than my maiden name. I realize that I naturally am drawn to my own family. It's just weird automatically being a part of a family I didn't grow up with. And it's completely weird when someone I met casually says, "oh do you know so and so (with my married name)." Since I married into this family, I don't know all their distant relatives or really their not so distant relatives. Please, don't get me wrong. I love my in-laws. They are the nicest people ever and I enjoy how they've accepted me into their family so willingly. It's just hard mixing two different families.

When it Rains, It Pours...

The hubby is now banned from driving any of our vehicles.....forever. Today he broke our only working car. Well I guess it wasn't entirely his fault but man, it's still broke. I guess he was driving back to work and once he got there, he noticed that 1 of the tires is flat. Must be a bad week for us car wise.

Yesterday, we met a guy from Germany who helped us push our 1st broken car out of the busy road. He missed his bus because he was helping us so we gave him a ride home. He told us that him and his wife share 1 car (been there, done that, am currently doing it) and it was broken down so he took an hour and a half bus ride to and from work. I thought man that would be awful. But tomorrow the hubby is going to have to experience it because he's banned from driving our vehicles.

Even as I write this, more trouble is happening. The Little Lady fell down the stairs again. She's fine, just accident prone. lol.


P.S. There is a new poll down there so check it out. Well it's been there a few days but nobody is voting so.....check it out.

Life's Semi-Emergencies

So you're driving down a busy road (down a hill) and all of the sudden you notice your car is not running. And it won't start. What do you do? Tonight, the hubby's car broke down on his way home from work. He pulled over to one side then coasted off to a side road when there was a break in traffic. He called me and said to come get him. We got the car safely to the hubby's office and met some interesting people in the process.

For some reason, I have this problem with reacting the wrong way to semi-emergencies. When I was in high school, I was rear-ended on my way to school. Instead of doing what normal people would do and stop, I took off. I'm not sure why except that maybe I got scared. Once when I was 8 months pregnant, my car broke down in the middle of the road. I got scared again and walked home. I didn't know what else to do. When I go to get my children out of bed in the morning and they have had a bloody nose during the night, I freak out. I don't know what to do so I leave them until the hubby can take care of them. I'm sure someone would tell me this all has to do with my childhood or something crazy. But for some reason, I freak out in those little semi-emergency situations. I'd hate to see myself in a real emergency.

Anyway we are down 1 car again. And perhaps we will let it rest in peace. We'll see what the diagnosis is later.

The Future Generation

I am worried about our future generation. The hubby is teaching a class here at the local college. He rather enjoys doing this in addition to his regular job. This is the first class that he has taught that is a general education class though. So of course he has hired forced asked me to do his grading for him. I of course said no yes.

He has given one test so far. After grading that, I thought perhaps the hubby wasn't teaching the concepts very well so they did poorly. This may very well be the case but it really doesn't make a whole lot of since because they missed concepts that I know he taught thoroughly. Now I am grading a 3 page paper he had then write on a famous scientist.

What is wrong with these kids?!?!!

They can't write. They can't form complete sentences. I know most of them did not proof read their papers before handing them in. I am fairly sure a few of them just made up tons of stuff that was untrue about the person. One guy spelled his scientists name wrong! Helloooo? Earth to students. *Hint* You should probably spell the guys name correctly if you want to get any credit whatsoever for this paper. I have seen a paper that was completely plagiarized (that's the kind of doctor I want take care of me...one that cheats). I have seen papers where they completely misunderstood the assignment and wrote about the scientist's personal life when they were supposed to write about their contribution to science. I don't know how many grammar errors I found. And I didn't even count the missed commas or numbers not being written out completely. Do they not teach English in schools anymore?

I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe most of them are freshman. But how do I grade a paper that has the scientist's name spelled wrong? How do I deal with plagiarizing? What should the hubby tell these kids to help them understand how poor their writing skills are?

Fatness

Last night the hubby, the Babe and I were jumping on trampoline. It's fun to go out there and play with the kids. The Babe loves to put a ball on it and try not to get hit by it rolling around and try not to let it fall off. So I got on and was jumping with the hubby when one of the springs flew off! They are held on by a strip or tramp material around a triangle where the spring connects. The material ripped clean off.

At about the same moment, our backdoor neighbor came out. The Babe just had to announce that daddy had broken his spring on the trampoline. The neighbor said oh how'd that happen. The Babe then told him it was because daddy was too fat. That's when I crawled under the trampoline and died.

I promptly made the Hubby look at the tags attached to the trampoline to see if there was a recommended weight limit. He looked and it said something weird like only one person could be on at a time and they weren't allowed to breathe. So not 2 minutes later, the Babe was "reading" the "instructions" as he calls them. His instructions went, "Daddy's aren't allowed to jump on the tramp because they are too fat and they'll break this thing right here. And then they'll fly off because he's too fat." I reassured the hubby that he's not fat.

Newly Widowed

The hubby has decided again to take a 2nd job teaching at the University one class. So I will go back to being a widow. Well figuratively anyway. This time he is teaching a more general education class in the science department. So if you see a crazy lady with 2 kids yelling at her kids in the grocery store without a husband, that's probably me.

No, I'm really excited for him about this. Teaching has always been something he has wanted to do. It is just impossible for him to do full time. He would take a huge salary cut initially and then over the long run his pay wouldn't increase like it would in the business world. He is very nervous today because his license should be coming in the mail and he is just crossing his fingers that this time everything went smoothly with his paperwork (they are a little finicky). We'll see. So we have reason to celebrate!

The hubby has promised that if he teaches this job then I can buy a hemstitcher machine. I am very excited about this. So stay tuned for more info on that.

The Love of My Life

5 years ago, I married the love of my life! We were so young and in love. It was so sweet. Our families surely thought we were crazy. We'd only known each other a very short time and we were so young.

But 5 wonderful years later, I am so very much more in love. Marrying my sweetheart has been the best decision I've ever made. He compliments me in so many ways. Where I am weak, he is strong. And of course, he has no weaknesses. He's perfect. I mean come on have you seen this guy?

I wonder how I got so lucky. Somebody must have been watching out for me. I got the whole package, my bestfriend, sweetheart and lover.