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! :)