The Bee's Knees

The blessings are many in this season of the year and this season of life...the outdoor life is filling us with its abundant activity and beauty, and our children bring us many more reasons to smile each day!

Progress on Joanna's high chair! Here Matt was was testing it out for height. Meanwhile, Joanna made good progress on my salad while I was getting everyone else's lunches ready. I thought salad would be safe to make ahead of time, but I should have known better with this girl around. She stole my avocados and cucumbers.

The finished product! I think it was supposed to be a birthday gift but she is thrilled to be using it already!

The boys had been watching my brothers' daily vlog about their camping expedition out west. They set up this whole scene by themselves. Levi staked the tent with bicycles and broomsticks, then they had hot dogs and baked beans for supper...

...and even found some pillows and sleeping bags to use at bedtime! It is so fun to see them use their creativity. Levi is the one with the ingenuity/creativity to make something out of nothing using whatever he can come up with. I'd say he takes after his dad in that area. :) And Micah and Joanna love to go along for the adventure! 

We watched the SpaceX shuttle launch a couple weeks ago. I happened to remember it two minutes before launch, so we were just in time! The boys were so fascinated that we kept watching it into the first fifteen minutes of flight. We tuned in later after the news conference to see the astronauts give a tour of the inside of their shuttle while they were in space. 

Last week, "Bob and Doug" showed up in Matt's office. It took me a minute to remember who Bob and Doug were (they are the two astronauts on the SpaceX mission)! Clearly they left an impression on the boys!

Went fishing one Sunday! Photo credits to Micah... he got the subject matter in the picture, even if he did cut off the cool guy on top! Phil and his boys came over in the evening to fish and ended up catching a bunch of bullfrogs to bring home for a frog leg dinner!

Our first strawberries are getting ready!

After a grocery run last Monday evening, I brought the children (and Jesse for moral support) to Sprat's for the free ice cream sandwiches provided by Two Rivers! Sprat's had already gone through all 700 of their frozen sandwiches by the time we got there, but they still came through with cookies and ice cream in a dish! It ended up being less messy for the kids anyway. :)

Tim Ita finally arrived on Matt's birthday to plaster the outside wall where we put in the egress windows last fall. Not sure if this was a more exciting birthday gift for me or Matt! I am thrilled that we can finally try to make at least one side of our house look a little less like a construction zone. 

This is how close we've gotten to "not looking like a construction zone."

Matt's parents and younger siblings joined us Tuesday night for his 32nd birthday party...ice cream cake compliments of The Flour Barn! I am so burnt out of making food right now so, yes, I bought a cake. Definitely worth it. :)

A dip in a nice pool has sounded so refreshing recently with some of the hot days. Pools have been closed until now, and trying to take the kids swimming in the pond has sounded dreadful, but I finally took the plunge one day during Joanna's nap. It went really well, much to my pleasant surprise! Maybe we are starting to grow out of the crazy baby stage after all.

After a boat ride one night...

We are thankful that Iowa has now opened up all businesses and everything in between, with the stipulations of social distancing. Any social and church gatherings are allowed if social distance can be maintained. I have also started up piano lessons again, so we have another sense of normalcy and social life to appreciate. The main thing I am still missing are the libraries, which are allowed to be open, but the local ones are only doing curbside pickup right now. It's not really a feasible task for me to pick out children's books online, so we are still memorizing the thirty books we own. And memorizing them backwards. And upside down. Ok, fine. We haven't really been doing much reading at all these days. Thankfully it is summertime and we aren't cooped up indoors. We did sign up for the virtual reading program so maybe that will force us to dust off our books again.

The kids were excited to do the take-home craft for the reading program on Tuesday!

As far as pregnancy goes, thankfully the baby and I are still healthy. At my appointment this week I learned that if I would test positive for Covid-19 at 38 weeks that Matt won't be allowed to come to the hospital when I have the baby. Him not being allowed to see the baby for its first moments and days in the world sounds tragic, but we don't really feel like there is anything we can do about it besides worry. So we are just going to pray that it doesn't happen. If it does, I can still be very thankful for the expectation of a healthy baby, good health care, and an interesting story to tell. 

I share this information so you can all join me in praying for all the soon-to-be mothers you know. And to discourage anyone from coughing in our family's faces during the month of July (we will still accept coughs and snot for the next couple weeks in hopes of getting over it by the time I get tested). And I am also taking references for local home birth options for the future...because hospital births stress me out.

Anyway, on to deeper subjects...like bees. Matt has gone from a bee hobbyist to a bee fanatic in the past couple weeks. He caught a swarm a couple years ago that has been going for awhile (albeit had not given us a drop of honey yet due to some minor neglect). On his birthday, he found a swarm of bees in a tree in our yard and Zach helped him catch it and get a second hive set up. This past Monday, he and Andrew went to Mike and Elisabeth's to remove a HUGE hive of bees from inside an old chimney in their house. They had to break out the bricks to get to the hive, take out at least an overflowing tote full of honeycomb, and sweep out a zillion bees in hopes of capturing the queen. It was quite the experience. Matt has been completely hyped up about bees ever since...trying to keep them alive, settled into their new homes, and maybe even produce a little honey someday.

Operation: Bee Removal

Matt's developing aviary. He would like to get some more suitable hives set up. This newest swarm of bees is a different species of honey bees that seems to be more aggressive. Matt has been stung several times by them already despite his bee suit. 

This guy and his hobbies...tune in next time to hear about the rattlesnake terrarium he's setting up in his home office.

Just kidding. There may not be a next time if that comes to pass. 

Hope the rest of you are staying well!