Summer kick off

Hoorah for the good ol' summertime!

Summertime brings popsicles

and Ruby's birthday

{I can hardly believe she's 4!  She loves to make us laugh and smile and you're not at our house if you can't hear Ruby singing her heart out.  We love our Ruby!}

and Vacation.

~After two and a half years, we finally made the trek back west to see family.  We packed so much into our two weeks and had the most wonderful time!!  Here are some highlights:

Camping with the Griffiths clan, including a day spent at a beautiful mountain lake!

{it was wonderful to be in the mountains again}

Once the cousins warmed up to each other it was fun to watch the packs of kids roaming the campground, playing their various games.  And of course there was some card playing,

and splashing in the creek among all the other fun camping and campfire things.

And when we got back we all needed a nap.

{what you don't see in this picture--and neither did I until later--is Ruby just out of this shot in the computer chair, also fast asleep.}

Another highlight was meeting up with several of my long-time friends and meeting all the kiddos and catching up.  We were missing and thinking of several others who were not able to make it.  Oh, it was fun to get together!!

Grandma Griffiths arranged for us to ride ponies, and while we waited for them to eat their dinner my girls were all giggles and pure happiness to maul a few kittens for a while. Just look at these smiles:

The ponies!!

{Who, incidentally, are Welsh ponies named Merry and Pippin  :) }

So much fun!

We celebrated Lucy's 2nd birthday in the middle of our trip.

{Our Lucy is really getting personality and independence.  She thinks she is as big as the big sisters and that she can do anything.  We think she is funny and so sweet and loving}

The zoo is always a fun place, especially when you meet up with all your fun new cousin friends again!

After so much fun up north, we headed south to spend our second week with the Tovey cousins!

We again packed all we could into our days.  We went to a petting zoo where we saw and held so many cool animals.  Some we'd never heard of before.  It was so much fun.

Meet Spanky, the baby monkey.

Can't even remember what this was or his name, but it was obviously captivating.

The anteater.  Such a long wiggly tongue.  A lot skinnier that I thought it would be.

Paige and the Spankster:

Anne and Ruby both held the toucan!  {Can you tell it was about a thousand degrees in the desert?  We were so happy to come in and cool off for a bit}

Anne and Chase held the armadillo.

There was a baby bengal tiger.  They breed these with cats to get the bengal cat. { I think I'm remembering that correctly...?}

Here's the bearcat named Frito.  He loved cuddling and smelling all the kids.  Doesn't look like it, but he was really gentle and nice.  Also, if you pet him and smelled your hands he smelled like movie popcorn.  Hee!

They had us line up and put our hands on our knees to lean over a bit, then they let this guy run along our backs.  He has an amazing nose the bends all over the place.  He loves to smell all kinds of things and when he finds something he really loves the smell of, he rubs the smell into his tail with his hands so he can smell it again later.  Are these the ones related to raccoons?  Maybe. 

Gotta have some pics of The Chopper!!  Enough said.

Whoops, this one got put in at the end.  Nobody will forget how the camel tried to eat Eric's cowboy hat--especially Eric. 

We did so much more, but were too busy and preoccupied to take pictures.  Lots of cousins playing all over the house, lizard hunts, friendship bracelets, and on and on.  We had a fabulous vacation with family.  We love and miss them so much and have so many happy memories. 

~Stay tuned to see what became of our yard and bees when we got home...

Picture Post

The Ward Campout

The girls don't even know that they slept through 2 ambulances, an emergency vehicle, a firetruck, and best of all, the life flight helicopter!  It was an eventful ward campout, and those involved are doing well now.

A Day in the Life of Ruby

{Lucy just picks and eats all the wild strawberries}

More Ruby...

Date night swap

Cloud Dough!

Anne sleeps just like Grandpa T.

Sister Jenkins and Sister Sidenstriker

Not great pictures, but the bees are beginning to make comb!

Everyone, look!

As Requested

I've had a few requests for some news, so here's something to keep everyone happy for a bit.

First of all, a little bragging--for you Grandma. 

 Anne has really loved kindergarten this year and it has been so fun to see how much she's been learning.   

Her school has an awards assembly each marking period, and each time she has gotten an award.  I though I'd share this one with you because she got an award for excellent work habits (like usual) and then she was also chosen as a Young Ambassador and got a T-shirt.  She was thrilled!  She "displayed outstanding school citizenship."  It is a very serious thing to keep all the rules, you know.  :)

While Anne is away, the little sisters play.  They cooked up some delicious food for me.

Our new favorite place to visit is Longwood Gardens. 

There are some really beautiful sites, and all kinds of different gardens. 

 Here's Ruby in the boxwoods.

As requested, here's my belly. 

It really should be documented I guess. 

This is 23 or 24 weeks along.

And the bees.  We got the bees in the hive and they seemed to take to it well.  This swarm happened to swarm on the first really warm day.  It was up in the mid 80's that day, but we were worried it may have been too soon because the temperatures dropped again and it rained--there was even frost--for over a week. The bees just stayed clustered in a ball trying to keep alive, but there were many, many casualties.  We even tried to insulate the hive a little for them. (bees like their hives to be pretty warm---around 85 degrees if I'm remembering correctly) Randy has kept some sugar water in there for them because they weren't able to go out foraging with all the rain and cold--and they obviously didn't bring along any stores of honey with them.

Well, we were horrified at how small their little cluster had become, and the number of dead bees on the bottom of the hive, but Randy (the one who's read all the books) said they like things clean and orderly and that when they had a chance they would take care of it.  

So, I've been curious.

With Randy out of town this week, I've been going out to check the bees--mostly just to see if they're more active and still organized (a good sign that the queen is still alive and "bossing" them around).  Boy, were they busy!  I was transfixed just watching them at the opening to the hive.  There were a lot of them going in and out, but I couldn't make out much order in how they climb all over each other.  Then I started looking at the ground around their hole.  It was littered with dead bees.  As I looked, I noticed two bees wrestling in the grass and wondered what in the world they were doing.  As I watched another two bees fell from the hole to the grass and "wrestled."  Then I realized that only one bee was wrestling.  The other was dead.  They were bringing the dead bees out --I'm really not an expert on bees-- but it seemed like they had hooked on to the dead bees somehow and were then trying to use the grass to free themselves from the dead bee.  It was totally fascinating.  Also as I watched I noticed other bees flying to their hole loaded up with pollen.  Yahoo!!  I think they are going to survive!

Quick, let's catch up!

Well, when I don't post for a long time I feel like I have to play catch up.  So much has happened.

The dying of the eggs:

The Hunt:

The Bunnies:

The hunter and the hunted:

This was a few weekends ago.  We started the front flower bed project.  It still looks just about the same.  With only weekends to work it was very sad and annoying when we were ALL put out of commission last weekend with a nasty GI tract something.  Maybe this weekend we'll have a chance to work out here again.

Wonderful Brother Mayes came with his tiller and tilled things up for us!

Here are the men, gabbing.

This is what is left of Ruby's black eye.  She had a run-in with the floor and the stool on Sunday.  It was amazing to watch how fast it turned purple and puffy, poor thing.

I really need to find out what these bushes are called.  This is ours and it is amazing (especially from the other side).  It is totally covered in beautiful blooms!

And now, what you've all been waiting for:

THE BEES!

Here's a video Randy took of the swarm he collected on Monday evening.

This is Randy transferring them from the box to the hive!

Here's the next beekeeper.

Well, I'm off to tend the bees!