First Day of School

I can't believe sometimes how quickly time goes. Grace and Sophie let me walk them to their classes for the last time today. Sophie made sure I knew this morning that in Middle School she was sure parents don't walk their kids in on the first day of school. In my defense there were many other parents also walking their 5th graders to class. Noah held my hand in the parking lot until we got close to the school and then let go. Happy and sad. He and Luke especially seem grown up lately. 2nd grade just is so much older to me then 1st. I feel blessed today and so grateful for my kids. Also for the good school they get to attend.

Summer Catch Up

 Our first time harvesting honey! We did everything by hand, low budget. The honey is sooo delicious. We have harvested again from one hive this summer. So exciting! And we bought a small extractor. Makes an enormous difference in how long, and how messy the process takes.

 Happy Father's Day to our awesome dad!

 On the last day of school Abby spent the night. The kids convinced me to let them burn all their old school papers. I think we have created a new tradition! Noah and Jason were camping in the woods so they missed out on our fun, but had a great time on their own.

 Catching fireflies never looses it magic. At least not for me or any of the kids yet. We have spent many an evening on the front porch watching while the kids catch them this summer. I love that it doesn't hurt the fire flies at all.

 Jason couldn't come on our camping trip to the beach in July. We missed him, but had a fabulous time at the beach! The hot, humid, sticky, dirty camping part was not so great.

 Our boogie boards were literally falling apart. I let each of the kids pick out a new one. They spent almost every second from then on body surfing. So fun! We also found some beautiful shells, the assorted clams and a small starfish. Luke found it first. It looked like a tentacle from some creature, but it was a tangled up star fish. We kept it in our bucket for a bit and then put it back out in the surf. Fort Fisher beach is our new favorite. I can't believe we have never been there before!

 

4th of July 2014

 Happy Fourth of July!

 We had a great time at the Greensboro parade this year. Our expectations have definitely changed and we just enjoyed what was there. Hurricane Arthur had blown through the day before and brought temps in the 70's. It was wonderful! Grace and Sophie continued their tradition of Patriotic toe nails this year. Grace let me put a red, white and blue thing in her pony tail but I admit that I miss the days when I would dress them all up and have fancy patriotic hair things.

My favorite part of the parade is always the Revolutionary war reenactors and their drums and fifes. This dancing hot dog was a close second! Not attached to anyone else marching, just dancing her, or his, way down the road. Super awesome.

Later we went to an outdoor symphony concert and fireworks. It was fun to watch fireworks while Sousa marches were being played. Not so fun is the hour it takes to get out of the parking lot. But again, at least we knew about it this year and were prepared.

Adventures in Beekeeping

 So I thought I would post some pictures of our beekeeping adventures. Jason and I are learning a ton, bees are really cool! But they are unpredictable and beekeeping is an art and a science. There are a lot of different opinions about how and why to do different things with your bees. You kind of just have to jump in and get started and figure things out as you go.

This is our first swarm. Sigh. No idea why. I had a camp out for the yw in our woods this weekend. Just as we were coming back to the house Saturday the kids ran up and said that there was a whole swarm of bees by the garden. I of course, totally thought they were exaggerating. But they were right, there was a swarm that luckily settled in a tree right by our garden. You can't know for sure why bees swarm. We suspect maybe the queen for this hive was just weak. But we really don't know.

 Our friend Peter Lindsay was over helping with the camp out while Jason was at soccer. He was super interested and wanted to help. Luckily we still had the boxes we brought the bees from the farm in. Jason climbed up and gave the branch a good knock and they fell back in. We did this a few times to get as many as we could. Luckily bees fill up with honey before they swarm and are super mellow. No one got stung and bees were everywhere. I had a few fly right into my forehead and bonk off. It was funny.

This is Luke and Jason adding frames to the "new" hive. So far everyone is ok with their new homes and we now have 3 hives. The down side is that we won't be able to harvest from the 2 small ones. But I am soooo glad we got all those bees back.

Abby and Grace picked the whole row of peas and then shelled them for dinner. There was actually a few cups of peas to be eaten!

We have honeysuckle! Walking outside and having the air smell of flowers is one of my favorite things about spring in NC. I have been eyeing honeysuckle growing wild in different places and devising ways to transplant it to our property. On Friday I was working in the back yard and our resident hawk dove at the chickens. Luckily they were right on the edge of the woods and took cover quickly. I ran over yelling and waving my arms to try to scare the hawk,  I'm sure I was super menacing...and saw 2 huge trees full of honeysuckle! Makes me so happy! The kids stayed up late last night trying to catch fire flies. No success, they were all up really high. But it was fun.



Having chickens has been more fun then expected. They are funny and silly and run with a super awkward comical gait all over the place. This fearless girl is Pheobe. She gets into everything. Here she is up in the cherry tree. The cats were not happy about it. The tree is a refuge to them, they are scared of the chickens.

 Summerfield's Founders Day celebration was this weekend. The boys had soccer early so the girls and Jason went to the parade and we met them there. We only saw the end, but a good parade is still fun. Grocery bags full of candy from this parade has spoiled my kids. They get soooo much! It is fun to go to a old fashioned celebration filled with friends and people you know.

 

Wristbands are super cheap so the kids rode rides to their hearts content. At the end of the day the girls decided they wanted to ride this little kid coaster. They giggled the whole time, Gracie being embarrassed I was taking her pic on it I think is hilarious. All of the kids did the loop to loop ride that goes upside down. Grace and Luke were done with one time. Noah went like 7 times, Sophie joined him a few times. After her first ride I asked how it was. Her response - appropriately terrifying. Then she promptly went again.

My favorite part of Founders Day this year was one of our local police force joining in on a line dance led by a kid on stilts. She was getting down and having a great time. I thought it was awesome. Maybe in another life I will have the rhythm and grace to be able to dance.

Updates -

Quinn gave this saddle to Grace. She cleaned it up and oiled it and it really looks beautiful! 

 This is the stronger of our two hives. This one has stored enough honey for the winter and know the bees are making honey for us to harvest!

Sophie getting a special award from Mrs. Walsh at school. 

A Decade of Sophie & Grace

It is so hard to believe my girls are 10!

 Sophie's mustache cake was tie dyed inside all colors. It turned out really cute. I was surprised that it still tasted good with all of the food coloring I used! Grace chose an ice cream chocolate dirt cake, complete with worms. The fluffy pillows are courtesy of Noah. He actually had me buy them so he could stay home and play minecraft,j( he had gotten his homework, jobs and piano done) but they were from him. Luke provided a nail decorating kit and  new soccer ball. Sophie's big gifts were her new glasses, which of course she picked out. She also go her ears pierced finally. She has been asking for a few years now. Grace's big gift was a bow and she also got a bathrobe of her own. Somehow seems funny now I write it. We gave her a super dangerous, yet made for kids, weapon and a fuzzy pink robe...We all laughed at Sophie, she blew and blew and still couldn't blow out her candles. Not trick ones, just good old regular candles. Happy Birthday to my sweet girls! My life is so blessed with them as my daughters.

 

Bees, Eggs and a Dirtbike

 We got our first 2 eggs this weekend! One on Saturday and one on Sunday. It is almost silly how excited we all were! Grace and Sophie were at their first soccer game of the season. Jason stayed home to work on some things and he called to tell us about the egg during the game! Also to ask us to bring home ice cream...

We finally received the parts to get the dirt bike running. The boys rode it constantly all weekend. The girls are not as interested yet. Their friend Abby rode a bunch when she was over to play though.  She also came with us to pick up our bees from Brushy Mountain. We now have 2 bee hives! So exciting! I was not worried at all about working with them. Having a full suit on with veil and gloves I am sure helped. After we picked up our nuc boxes and were pulling back onto the road we passed a small family cemetery. Grace asked if that is were they bury people we got stung! Already the kids are getting more used to the bees. We did get a child suit too, so it helps that they get to see and help with the hives so far. Of course there is a ton of fighting because there is only one suit.