The Christmas Lights at Temple Square

The moment we'd been waiting for all day- dusk.  It was time to admire the Christmas lights on Temple Square.

From here on are pictures from my phone.  So if the quality of the pictures isn't the same- that's the reason.

Once we'd had our fill of the cold and picture taking, we went to dinner as a BIG family for Ryan's birthday.  Happy 38th babe!

Have Some Honey

Ryan has been wanting to harvest honey from his beehives for a while now.  He likes to go check on his bees and admire how busy they've been.  He finally got around to asking to borrow the equipment needed for harvesting honey.  His friend Jason hooked him up.  

First you bring in the frames you are going to harvest from into your now heated garage, after you've knocked off a bunch of angry bees.  Later (once those angry bees leave you alone) you take a hot electric knife to cut off the wax caps.

 It looks like a gross mess.  There is a grate in the bottom of this bin to collect honey, too.

 Then the frames go into the extractor.

 Turn the centrifuge on, and wait.

The honey will start oozing out.  You need a filter to collect bees and wax and stuff.  There were a surprising number of bees gathered during this whole process.  There's only so much "swimming" they can do in the honey.  No bees survived that.

Once the honey is pretty well flung out of the beehive frames, Ryan took a spatula and scraped down the sides of the extractor.  We left the space heater in the garage all night and waited for the honey to all drip into the 5 gallon bucket.  We filled that 5 gallon bucket with honey.  

Ryan collected all of that bees wax into a bucket, and put the bucket next to the beehives.  The goal is to let the bees take the left over honey back, and then we will be left with the bees wax and then we can do.... something with it?  Along with 5 gallons of honey.  That's a lot of honey.  I'd say we could put it into our food storage, but then we will be getting more honey next year with any luck, and the following year, and the year after that, etc.  Oh boy.

After the honey harvest, we went on a double date with Ryan's friend Jason and his wife Lydia for some ice cream and deep friend asparagus.

Ryan Goes To His First Elementary Conference

Ryan has been busy with his new job.  He's already headed off to his first elementary school training conference in Tacoma.  He headed out Sunday after church, carpooling with the principal and several of the kindergarten teachers.  One of the teachers was Maddie's teacher last year, who I got to know pretty well over the course of the year.  She sent me these video clips of Ryan.

Ryan thinks the presenter may have chosen him because he was one of the very few men in early elementary education there.  Now, Ryan may have had a little juggling practice and skill before going up on stage.  But he wasn't going to let on.

The Journey Is Nearing Its End

Ryan has been just slammed with work.  Truthfully, I'm not sure how he's still functioning.  Ryan has done such a good job with his internship that he's been requested all over the district to cover at a school when an administrator is out.  I don't think that's entirely normal.  But with that, trying to keep up with his actual job (teaching...) and writing sub plans for all those days he's out and correcting the busy work he often assigns, his church calling, his family who like to see him sometimes, and all of his homework he is supposed to do, he's running on empty.  His professor at Gonzaga pushed up the deadline for all his projects to be completed and submitted, and so Ryan was determined to get everything done Thursday night.  We were taking pictures of papers with the cell phones, instead of scanning them onto our home computer and then me emailing them to him.  He showed me the ridiculous and often confusing number of steps it was taking to submit anything.  I tried to be his champion and cheerleader, but I failed after about 11:00 pm.  I took a picture of Ryan hard at work in his "study" and went to bed. 

Well, I went to bed after checking on the kids.  Annie and Maddie still crack me up.

Ryan said he finally got to bed around 2:30, and dragged himself out of bed again at 6:30 to make sub plans for his classes because he was "helping out" at one of the elementary schools for the day.

I took Ryan lunch, and brought him a piece of celebratory chocolate cake from Safeway.  He was beat, and still had the rest of a long day ahead of him.  

After school, he had his FFA plant sale.  We left at about 7 pm.

After a good night's sleep, he looked like a new man.  It was a very visible change in him to see that weight lifted.  Our life is not such that we can bask in that feeling.  But at least we got a chance to celebrate by taking the kids out to Red Robin for lunch on Saturday before heading to the baptism of a niece.

The kids have declared Red Robin their new favorite restaurant.  We just don't go out to eat all that often, so this was super exciting for the girls.

Ryan still has a day at Gonzaga to wrap everything up, and he will still have days he will be "interning" instead of teaching, but the worst of it is over.  The homework is done.

I have to say that again.

THE HOMEWORK IS DONE!  {happy dance and Halleluja Chorus}

I feel like we should make a bonfire with some of that stupid, tedious work he's done, but most of it is strictly on the computer so that won't really work.  Or make a target out of one of the worst of the textbooks he's had to read, and blow it to smithereens.  Just something to show that we survived this, and lived to tell the tale.  It's not the boss of us anymore!

I'll have to just settle for actually seeing my husband when he's physically home.

I can take that.

Ryan's New Machine

It was time.  Our ride-on lawn mower died mid-way though last year's growing season.  Ryan tried to keep up using a regular push mower, and well... even that one gave up on us.  

So, we've been keeping our eyes open on Craigslist, and Ryan checked out a place in town for used ones, but the decent ones were not that much less than buying new.  So we bit the bullet, after doing some research and window shopping, and bought a new John Deere mower.  

 There she is.  Ain't she a beaut?  Doesn't our tax return look nice?  It made me laugh to see this nice, new (albeit base model) John Deere mower on Ryan's poor old truck.

Ryan had to take the mower out for a spin right away.  All right Spring, now we are ready for you.

Bathroom Reading

Sometimes I wonder if Ryan will be happy pursuing an occupation in education administration, especially when I discover his "for fun" reading material in the bathroom.

Early Birthday Cake

We picked up one of those great, big, chocolately cakes from Costco today for Ryan's birthday.  We decided we could just as easily enjoy the cake tonight, as wait for his actual birthday.  

We didn't put all the candles on his cake.  Just three on one side, and seven on the other.  I let the kids put the candles in, and I did the lighting.  I guess the kids got excited about "helping" so they tried to help Ryan blow out his candles.  You can see what he thought about that.

Internship Update

This is what I see of Ryan these days.  When he's actually home, that is.

The guest room has his table, chair, books, and school laptop.  That's where he has "set up shop" for his school work.  It's amazing really- not only do we pay Gonzaga for the time Ryan spends doing the Admin Internship (the part where he's practicing to be a school principal at school), but there's a whole boat load of school work to do too.

Ryan has a bunch of projects and papers due tomorrow night, and he's been trying so hard to get it done tonight since we have plans tomorrow.  He's on track to be done.

And then we have a blissful two week break- a break from his job, and a break from the internship madness.

When he's done tonight, it will mark the halfway point.  He's put in his minimum required number of hours already (540 hours since August), and he's halfway done with the school work.  I wish I could say that we were set on the "hours" portion of the internship, but I imagine he'll keep busy on that too.

He will be officially done on May 15th of next year, but he says the interns often keep doing intern stuff until the end of the school year.  And the final project is, of course, getting a job.  We are hoping/praying/keeping our fingers crossed/knocking on wood that the right job will open up and Ryan can get it.

News Worthy Family

Ryan and Maddie made it into two local newspapers from the parade!

Administrative Internship

The Administrative Internship has really and truly begun.  Ryan has been putting in many an extra hour, going to meetings, conferences, sports, and even a dance since he started.  But last week was when the homework aspect started.  As if spending an extra 540 hours working in addition to his usual job wasn't enough.

So, it is after 10 pm, and I am catching up on blogging and watching my dear husband still diligently working.

Master Ryan

We were so excited to see Ryan's diploma arrive in the mail today.  

I have to say, Concordia University was impressively quick about sending out the official transcript (like 2 weeks after he finished- hello pay raise) and the diploma (three weeks after finishing).

Can we just shout for joy?  His masters is DONE DONE DONE.  YAY!

This a good thing, because next week Ryan has his first meeting at Gonzaga for this year's project- the Administrative Internship.

Sheep Shearing

You know, when I married Ryan, I knew he had done quite a lot of sheep shearing.  I just didn't realize this particular skill would be used as often as it is.  Grandpa drove cousin Megan's two sheep all the way down here for Ryan to shear.

 Megan and Amy came too.  Some of my girls tried to sneak into Grandpa's truck before they left.

DONE!!

Just a shout out to Ryan who submitted his final project and paper for his Master's degree, and now he's DONE and PASSED!

{insert Hallelujah chorus}

I'm so proud of you, Ryan.

Happy Father's Day

I'm so glad I get to share this crazy life with you, Ryan.

Tree Trimming

We don't own a tall ladder, and we had an over grown tree over our driveway in need of some attention.  When Bishop R came by one day with a load of things he was giving Ryan after selling a piece of property (fence posts and such), Ryan asked if he could use the lift on the truck for a few minutes.  Ryan has been known to get creative with his methods sometimes.  He fired up a chainsaw and took care of business in a matter of minutes.

Afterwards, the kids all wanted a ride on the truck.  Sean was over to check on his bees that we are babysitting for him, so Charlie got a ride too.

Bishop R wanted a picture with the kids to show his wife. 

Father-Daughter Bonding

Nothing says a "good time" quite like shooting an old pop can with the BB gun.

Chicken Tractor

Ryan had big plans over spring break.  He was going to design and build a chicken tractor for our new pasture, so the chickens can be out of the current chicken coop, but not tear up our yard.  Well, it's no longer spring break, but the coop is done-ish.  Ryan got it moved out to the pasture (and out of our driveway!!!!).

We are just waiting on the electric chicken fence to arrive via mail so the current inhabitants (baby turkeys) can be let out.  Ryan still needs to finish the laying boxes, and then the chickens can be moved.

He's still got it

Ryan was asked to shear some sheep for a friend.  Sean Q wanted to come watch (and maybe learn to shear himself).  So Ryan, Sean, Jared (friend with the sheep), and Michael (Jared's son) all went out in the field to catch the sheep.  

Ryan caught two.

And the others didn't catch any.  Ryan felt pretty proud of himself.

Eventually they got all the sheep penned up, and Ryan gave those sheep their spring hair cut.

Take Your Poultry To Work Day

Today I got a picture message from Ryan.  It said, "Me and turkey selfie."

It was a group message, which also went to Ryan's CTE director and principal.  Holly, the CTE director wrote back, "That's hilarious," to which I responded, "I think the fact you used the word 'selfie' is even more hilarious."  Because, truly, I think that is the first time Ryan used that word.

Anyway, yesterday Ryan took several of our hens (no roosters) to his Animal Science class, and today was turkey day.  Ryan came home with a funny story about one of his students confusing the term for male turkey and male chicken (not rooster).  Ryan was taken aback until he figured the student was not referencing what he thought at first.

The Half-Way Mark

Ryan is officially half-way done with his Masters degree.  It's funny- some people go on about online degrees being easier than traditional schooling.  Ryan might disagree with those people.  I would too.  This is generally the view of my spouse these days when he's at home.

I spend all day waiting for him to come home, and then I don't hardly talk to him when he gets home either.

Only another 6 months to go.