tidbits

Thursday night, Mallory and Madison played softball in Baldwin. Madison pitched a great game - and they ended up winning both games of the double header! It was a good night of softball!

Today was "Discover Kindergarten Day" and Quincy was so excited to get to go to the "big school" and meet all sorts of people - including her computer teacher, librarian, PE teacher, and Music teacher. She also spent time in all of the kindergarten rooms doing crafts! It was a fun afternoon for her and now she is super excited about starting school!

Tonight Cameron and Colin had band concerts. Both the 5th and 7th grade bands sounded awesome (as usual). I enjoyed listening to them!

Looking forward to a relaxing weekend!

a few photos from Easter

We had a great Easter! After mass, we went to Grandma's house where the kids had a great time hunting eggs with their cousins. We also managed to get a bunch of lawn work done and some other work too!

Easter is one of my favorite holidays (after Halloween of course!). I always think of it as a holiday to focus on all our many blessings, as well as just the fact that warmer weather generally puts me in a much better mood after a long winter! We have been given much, and I am very thankful!

Easter Weekend

A few weeks ago, we started noticing Harper's eyes crossing regularly. We had to wait to get in with an eye doctor who specializes in little people, but we finally had our appointment on Monday. This is when we discovered that Harper is incredibly farsighted, and definitely needed glasses. Her eyes were working so hard to focus, it would cause her eyes to cross. We picked up her glasses on Good Friday. She was less than amused with them, and probably only kept them on her head for a total of 8 minutes all afternoon. Jim talked to her and put them on her and she kept them on all morning on Saturday morning. She probably kept them on for 4-5 hours, so this was progress. She then took them off, threw them in the trash and clapped her hands! So we let her slide on it for the afternoon (after many attempts to put them back on her head). Small steps! I did notice that her eyes do not seem to cross when she is wearing the glasses - I was watching closely to see! I am thankful to God that she had a problem that was so easily fixed....not everyone gets so lucky!
Mallory and Madison had a garage sale, concession stand and some drawing sales today during Overbrook's city wide garage sale. They had a great day and raised a lot of money! I am pretty sure it was due to Barack Obama, Homer Simpson, and an Army man waving in all the traffic off the street!

All the kids worked pretty well together, and it was a great day! They ended up raising more money today than they did at their last 2 fundraisers combined! Although, I do believe a year ago I said I would NEVER again do a garage sale! Kids make us into liars! In all honesty, I did some shopping for concession stand supplies, and I made a pot of gravy, but the kids did all the rest of the work, including the clean up!

Mallory and Madison's high school concert band was invited to play at a concert with Washburn University's band tonight. It was a huge honor, and they got to play in White Concert Hall, which was pretty cool! Their band had a piece of music commissioned just for them, and they got to play it. It was awesome!

And after all that, we ended up coloring Easter eggs at 10:00 at night because Easter kind of snuck up on me this year! The kids had a good time!

You can tell Quincy is tired though! She, Preston and Harper went to a wedding dance with my sister instead of the band concert. They had a great time dancing the night away!

Preschool Easter

Quincy's preschool class had their Easter Egg Hunt this week. She had a lot of fun finding eggs! So much fun, that when she got home, she wanted to have an Easter egg hunt with Cam and Preston when they came home from school.

Important lessons were learned during the at home hunt, as Cam decided that a great hiding place for the eggs would be in the tail pipe of my van.....nobody found them there! Except that nobody could get them out of there either! Luckily, when I started the van, they blew out! Then they were upset because I wouldn't let them eat the candy!

During the egg hunt, Harper wiped out in the gravel and skinned up her whole head! She does not enjoy me wiping her face, and she was very, very upset with me for trying to clean the blood off her face!

I am giving the kids a choice on whether to go to school or not tomorrow. I figure it is a holy day, they shouldn't really have to go. There was supposed to be a day off, but they are having a snow make up day. The girls are going even though I am not making them....the boys are all staying home!

Where did the weekend go?

On Saturday morning, Mallory and Madison had to be in Osage City at 6:00 am to run a concession stand for CWF at their city wide garage sale. The concession stand was a bit of a bust - and we are hoping for much better luck since we are doing that all over again next weekend during the Overbrook citywide.

While I was with the girls in the S-L-O-W concession stand, Jim took the little ones to the Easter Egg Hunt at the nursing home up the street. Brookside does a wonderful egg hunt, but I always have to feel sorry for them because no matter what day they plan it for, it is ALWAYS cold and windy! It has been in the 80's for 3 weekends in a row, but yesterday morning - it was freezing! All the photos of my kids with the Easter bunny every year they have on winter coats, gloves etc! It is like a sad tradition!

They had a great time, despite the cold and managed to bring home a feast of sugar! Saturday afternoon, Cameron's mentor came to help him set his hive up properly, and put the bees into the hive. Although we did learn how to put bees in a hive at the beekeeper seminar a few weeks ago, this made me tremendously nervous! The mentor explained to us that the bees would not attack anyone because they have no home....apparently they only attack when they are defending their hive, and since they are temporarily homeless, they have no reason to sting anyone. True enough as I found out - Jim, myself, Mallory and the mentor's wife stood right there and watched with no protective gear at all, and those bees did not sting a single one of us! They did buzz around my hair, and I was told to not use my flowery shampoo if I was going to help with the bees!

We also learned that the queen is in her own little box, and that she must stay in the little box for her own protection until she gets her pheromones in the hive and the bees begin to recognize her as their queen. In 3 days, we have to go release the queen (whom Cam has named Elizabeth). I must have had a touch of panic in my voice, as the mentor is coming out Tuesday to help with that little project! Somewhere when he was explaining that we should open the hive, pull out the comb where he put her little box, open the cork and let her walk out, I did feel a little overwhelmed! By the time the 3 days are up, they will need to be smoked in order to not defend the hive - that sounds overwhelming to me! I hope that I learn all this stuff because we only have the mentor for a year! Of course, he is a very nice man, and I don't see him turning his back on Cam in the future if Cam decides to continue this project long term!

The top of the hive right now is a feeder, since they have no established honey, they could starve to death before they found enough food, so they must be fed for a while. They just eat sugar water - so that is a recipe that we had an easy enough time concocting! Jim went out today and filled the feeder - he reported that they did not act like they cared about him being there - even a little bit!

We also got our pig pen built...but we have no pigs to put in it yet. It has been still getting chilly enough at night, that they are still under lights to stay warm. Whenever it either warms up enough at night, or they get big enough to hold their own, we will be getting them...and now they have a nice pen to live in! Right now it is even very clean! The kids are getting excited about getting them....names are picked and everything!

With all that is going on, my plans of trying to get our house ready to put on the market have not been happening. I hope to get the closet cleaning underway this week! I still wonder how upset the neighbors would be if I built a huge fire on the back yard and just started hauling stuff out there! :)

what did you do today?

We got a phone call that Cam's bees were being delivered today. So that meant that we got to start and finish painting the hive yesterday! Cam did a great job on it! He hardly got any paint at all on the garage floor! I would love for him to have done this little paint job outside, but there were severe storms in the area, and I only bought the paint yesterday, so he had to do his work in the garage! After work today, I drove to Gardner to pick up the bees. This was a little bit of an adventure for me. I was not sure what to expect, as I have never picked up a package of bees before! They needed to be picked up before Cam got out of school, so he could not go with me. So Quincy, Harper and I made the epic journey! Cam's mentor had warned me that sometimes a few bees can escape from these cages, so I might want to put the package in a tote so that they could not escape in the van while I was driving home. When I got to the place to pick them up, the man in charge told me that I really should not do that to them....that they would not escape in the car and that I would be fine! Nervously, I listened to him. Now, when I was picking up these bees, it was at an established bee farm. Apparently, when you bring in a truckload of about 500 packages of new bees, the existing bees get a little curious, so as I was waiting for our package to be unloaded, and then loaded in my van, I happened to notice that there were quite a lot of bees flying around my head, and the girls heads. I convinced Quincy that bees do not eat little girls, and that she should not swat at them....which she did a great job of not doing! I did happen to notice that the father of one of the other scholarship winners was not doing so well with the bees around his head. I had to giggle when the professional bee keeper told him DO NOT SWAT at them or you are going to get stung! Quincy quickly told him that bees only eat honey and flowers, NOT people!

So the professional guy loaded up the other scholarship girl's van with her bees and they left. He then showed me that he was sweeping 'his' bees off the outside of the package and loaded it into my van. He instructed me to try to keep my van on the cool side for the ride home, and I was off. I got maybe 1/2 mile up the road when I see the other scholarship winner's van pulled off the road, the girl is wildly swinging her arms, and they have all the doors/windows open on their van! I am thinking that they had an escapee!!

Cameron's bees were very well behaved all the way home! Nobody escaped, and they were nice and quiet all the way. They arrived safe and alive at our house!

Cam's mentor was going to help him load them into the hive this evening, however he decided that since it was so cold and rainy, it would be much better for the bees to feed them in the package and place them in their hive tomorrow when it is nicer. He instructed Jim on how to feed the bees. They like to drink sugar water. Well, I can make sugar water, but I did panic a little bit about how in the heck you feed a package of bees without losing an arm! You might notice the can in the center of the cage? Well, we had to use a can opener and re-fill that with the sugar water. I was a nervous wreck, but the boys and I got it done....and the bees did not seem to even notice that we were messing with their cage....and most importantly, we did not let any escape or get stung!

All in all, if they survive the cold tonight, I am going to call Cam's first day as an official beekeeper a success!

I can always tell when spring has officially started, because my calendar suddenly becomes very inundated with ball practice schedules! Quincy had her first practice yesterday. She is playing coach pitch softball this year, and oh my goodness is she excited about it! She started in at 7:30 yesterday morning asking me when it was time to go - the practice was at 6 yesterday evening! Our postmaster, banker, grocer, and 17 random people on the street knew she was going to practice! I was surprised that they didn't come over to watch!! Preston, and Cam both had their first practices this week too. We are pleased with the teams that they got put on.

Preston had his last Religion Ed class for kindergarten tonight! I can't believe how grown up he is! Of course, this meant that I had my last class with my first graders too. It has been a fairly challenging class.....they do not know their prayers, they do not know the sacraments, they do not know what the 10 commandments are, they do not know most of what they need to know. However they did learn to stop saying curse words during RE class, and that they cannot hit, punch or arm wrestle during class, and they did learn that they cannot eat in my classroom without saying some sort of a prayer - even if it is not the recommended prayers for first graders! Part of me feels a little bit bad, like I failed, but the other part knows how very far that they did come, and I have to see it as a success! I wish that I could have taught them more...I hope for their sakes that their 2nd grade teacher can do more for them!

New Week...more fun!

On Sunday, we braved the 400 mile per hour winds and had a picnic in our pasture. The kids had a great time running around, exploring and eating! Jim might have overdone it with the chainsaw and is paying for it today in the lower back! Poor guy is just so excited to have unlimited stuff to chop up!

Tonight Mallory and Madison played softball against Burlington. I would by lying if I said I wasn't a little proud of my girls! Mallory started both games at 2nd base. Madison started the first game at right field (her favorite spot) and then pitched the entire second game. They both played really well!

Cam spent a lot of time taking photos and I thought he did a pretty good job! He was having a great time! In between his photo sessions he took Harper to the concession stand for MORE popcorn, MORE Laffy Taffy and MORE M&M's! She had a really good time tonight too!

Quincy is so excited she can hardly contain herself because she gets to go to her first softball practice tomorrow night! She wants to be a pitcher like Madison - I don't have the heart to tell her that she is on a coach pitched team this year!

Preston had his first practice tonight too, Jim said it went really well and he is on a great team! We are excited about ball season - warm weather, late nights at the ball park, nachos with jalapenos keeping you up even later, seeing old friends who we haven't seen because we have been hibernating all winter....aaaahhh bring on summer!