Just Because

Some kids thrive on making noise.  Lots and lots of noise.

That's Elizabeth on the piano, Emma on the bass clarinet, Maddie on the trombone (Ryan's from back in the day), and Annie on the clarinet (Elizabeth's from band).

Maybe someday they will collaborate on something that sounds... good.

Volleyball picture

End of the season!  Emma is in the middle row.

English

The English language really doesn't make any sense.  Why wouldn't "ghost" be spelled like "toast"?

Corn Maze

I was one of the drivers to take the youth to the corn maze in Union Gap for mutual tonight.  As you can tell, we are all a bunch of serious adults in the haunted corn maze.

School Pictures

The middle school pictures came home today.  I keep all of the pictures in the same frame, stacking one on top of the other so I can look at them all side by side when it's time to insert the latest one.  I love the comparison of the pictures, watching my girls grow up.  At the same time, I want to freeze time, or reverse it so I can snuggle my little girls one more time.  Emma is nearly as tall as I am, and not particularly snuggle-able.  Hugs-yes, snuggles on my lap- not so much.  Elizabeth still tries to sit and snuggle on my lap.  She is definitely not ready to give that up, but she's big too.

Honey Harvest

I was brave this year, and helped with the honey harvest.  Or perhaps it was the fact that Ryan had gone through the process before and could make do with my unskilled help.  We both suited up in our half bee suits, taped our pants closed at the ankles, and walked out to the bees.  Ryan went through his three hives and took out the frames he wanted to harvest honey from.  It makes the bees very mad to shake things up like that.  The sound of angry bees is something that belongs in a nightmare, with the bees that try to dive bomb your face.  I came through the process unscathed, but Ryan picked up a sting or two.

Once we had our two heavy boxes of honey frames, we took them over to the garage.  Ryan shook bees off the individual frames one by one, and I took them into the garage.  With that done, we wandered around a little bit waiting for the bees to leave us alone so we could take off the bee suits and sneak in the back door.  There were still some angry bees by the front door of the house, since it is so close to the garage.

One evening after a couple of days, Ryan turned on the space heaters in the garage.  It is supposed to help get more honey off the frames because warm honey is less stiff.  This year Ryan put two space heaters out there to make sure the honey was good and warm.  Did you know there is such thing as honey frames that are too warm?  We didn't.  At least until the next morning when Ryan went to check on things and found that the wax cappings had collapsed and honey was oozing off the frames, onto the table and dripping onto the floor.

Whoops.

So Ryan let the garage drop a few degrees and we tried again today.  

 First you take the electric hot knife and cut off the wax cappings.  You do this over a bucket with a grate in the bottom so you can collect honey from this part too.

Then the uncapped frames go into a borrowed electric centrifuge and you let that thing spin for an hour or so.  And you watch the honey start to trickle out of the bottom.  It's a good idea to run the honey through a colander to catch bits of wax and bee parts.  Meanwhile, you and your kids catch honey on your finger for tasting.  Yummmm...

 Once your 5 gallon bucket is good and full, then you filter the honey one more time and then put it in containers.  In our case, those would be canning jars.

Our honey was a different color this year.  The big jar on the left was last year's honey, and the smaller one is from this year.  Ryan thinks it is because he grew a whole lot of sunflowers this year.  He planted those sunflowers partly to keep weeds down, and partly for his bees.

 This is all the honey we canned tonight.  There is still more.

Planting

We have had to do some changing in our landscaping.  Both the dogwood tree and the big bush in our front yard had to be taken out, which has left us with a lot of empty space.  So we ordered a whole lot of daffodil and tulip bulbs, and today was planting day.

I can't wait to see spring!

Bill's Berry Farm

It's been a few years since the last time we went to Bill's Berry Farm.  There were some friends from out of town who wanted to see a bunch of their old Sunnyside friends, so they arranged to have a play date at the farm.  I didn't want to go see Ty and Jenn and their kids without my play date "buddies" so Annie and Maddie stayed home from school.  (You can't go to a play date without kids.  That's awkward for everyone.)  

We arrived on time, and then waited for everyone else to show up.

 Finally people started showing up.  After I started berating myself for keeping the girls home from school for nothing.

 Jane also skipped school.

At least there were fresh pumpkin spice donuts.  We bought a dozen, ate half, and took the rest home.

 (Maddie likes to have a bandaid on her chin every day.  She doesn't like her hair or anything else getting caught on her stitches.  But things seem to be healing nicely.)

 At this point in the day, it's lunch time.  I had packed a lunch for the twins, fully expecting I would let them eat it while I drove them to the last half of their school day.  But our out-of-town friends were tardy and by the time they showed up and we had a chance to visit, there was no point in going to school.

At least it was a nice day.

All About Maddie

Maddie had the honor of being Student of the Month in her class for the month of September.  She was quite excited about being chosen first, and picked out her all black and white outfit carefully for her special day.  I was able to go to the assembly and watch her light up while her teacher explained all the reasons she was chosen.  

 We haven't had picture day yet, so there were no certificates.  They are promised to the kids sometime after picture day.  But the kids still got to go up and get their sparkly Student of the Month pencil.

 For Family Home Evening we were invited to a surprise birthday party game of Dodgeball in the church cultural hall.  I have a remarkable skill at dodging the ball.  Either no one was aiming for me because I look pathetic, or I am just that good, but for a couple of rounds I was the last "man" standing.  I'm not really a fan of flying objects, and try to avoid them as much as possible.  It was more fun playing than I remember.

At the end of the playing, we gathered for cake and to sing Happy Birthday to Jason Moyer.  While we were finishing up the evening, Maddie tripped and fell.  Her chin collided with the floor, and there was much blood.  We took her to the girl's bathroom and saw how big the gash was.  It was going to need stitches.  Luckily for us (but maybe not his wife), Dr. Weaver was also there and he offered to stitch Maddie up at his office.  A late night visit that saved us a trip to the ER.  He's the best.  He also missed helping put his kids to bed, so we owe his wife as well.

There are Maddie's 7 stitches.  I hate blood and gore, but the revulsion isn't quite as strong as mothering.  I held Maddie's hand through the cleaning, the numbing shot (which is the worst part of it all), and the stitches.

Also, here's my Facebook status of the day: Want a day of stained clothes? Run out of laundry detergent on a Monday. Later that same day you can have one child come home from school with art paint on her shirt, another with mustard on her pants, and finally one more child who splits her chin wide open requiring 7 stitches and bleeds all over. I will never run out of laundry soap ever again.

Sunday, Pajama day

General Conference weekend was a relief from the usual non-restful Sundays of the past couple of months.  Not only did we get to listen to our prophet and other church leaders, but we got to listen surrounded by comfortable pillows and blankets, and hot chocolate.  We upgraded ourselves  and bought a Roku a couple of weeks ago, and then downloaded the BYU tv app, so we listened to conference on the tv.  Our tv has much better sound than the laptop.

Also, I am looking forward to the time I get a Beehive advisor so that I'm not teaching every Sunday and doing Wednesday activities.  I've been alone in the Beehive class for two months now, and so was glad to have a week off from regular church.