not exactly the healthiest way to eat them...but look at that gorgeous orange yolk! our first eggs. many more to come (i promise not to post pictures of every egg dish prepared by our girls' eggs).

6 eggs this morning! what will we do when all 15 of the hens are laying? free brown and turquoise eggs, anyone?

back in july, i wrote about our day at the beekeepers association annual picnic. while we were there, we met a couple who we discovered were our neighbors (meaning: they live 4.5 miles from us). Buzz and Aleda keep several hives in their back yard - their house is near a busier intersection, so this proves that if you have a little bit of land, keeping bees isn't all that difficult. they gave us their card (they sell their award-winning "BuzzAleda Honey") and told us to come over anytime we wanted to "hang out with the bees."

tuesday was the perfect day. it wasn't humid, nor raining. kenny gave them a call and of course, Buzz was excited to have an excuse to open up the hives up and show a new beekeeper the ins and outs of the honeybee hive. Buzz and Aleda are grandparents, so the boys were entertained by lots of running around and jungle-gym climbing, and sand-digging (and two popsicles EACH!) while kenny met a few thousand bees.

i was able to grab a few photos of kenny suited-up with bees in-hand, but you'll have to excuse the window screen in the picture. i was holding adam and taking the shots (while the boys played about 3/4 of an acre behind the hives), and we weren't suited up. and although kenny said they were the most docile bees he's ever "met," we weren't chancing it to take a photo without a screen in between!

before you open a hive, you "smoke" the bees with a smoker. the idea behind a smoker is to make the bees easy to manage. when they sense smoke entering the hive, they engorge themselves on honey thinking that they need to stock up on honey, leave the hive and survive until the "fire" is gone. a bee engorged on honey is a very relaxed, docile bee, so it's easier to manage the open hive with friendly bees. kenny holding one of the frames:

if you look closely, in the center of the cluster of bees you'll see a yellowish dot on the back of the queen. Beekeepers sometimes put the dots on the queen so they can identify them quickly. there is one queen per hive of up to 50,000 bees! the queen lays all the eggs in the hive which produce either a drone (male) or a worker bee (female). the honeybee lives for up to 3 or 4 weeks while the queen lives for however long the workers deem necessary.


the setting sun on a hive of bees and their honey combs.

i never would have thought beekeeping was fascinating until kenny mentioned he wanted to keep bees one day. even then i wasn't interested. i kept referring to it as "his hobby." but now i am just as excited to receive and keep a hive ourselves.

you can't get a hive until spring, and if you order it through a catalog, you have to order in the dead of winter (january). you can also get a swarm from another beekeepers, but you still have to order a queen to keep the hive a-hummin'.

there is so much to know and learn about (and benefit from!) the honeybee. if you need or want proof of the One True Creator, study the intricacies of the intelligent honeybee. Intricacy and intelligence are God's specialty.

isn't it amazing that the littlest feet in the family are the busiest ones? the ones that keep the mama bigger feet busier than ever? i snapped a few photos lately of adam's feet because i recently came across his newborn footprints. babies have long, skinny feet when they're born, and padded and rounded when they're about to walk or crawl.

this weekend our beloved pool closed. we hadn't been in over a month due to traveling and cold days, so we spent a good two hours there on friday evening soaking up that 90-degree weather and sunshine. today, we met friends at the local lake beach for picnicing and swimming. the air was comfortable when the sun went behind the clouds, hot when the clouds disappeared, but perfect for sitting in the sand with toddlers and babies. kenny always swims with the older two while i frolic with adam in the sand and ankle-deep water. today it worked out nicely since i was able to chat with my friend jill who we met at the beach.

jill and i are friends (roommates, in fact!) from college, and two summers ago, she and her husband and then 2-year-old son, noah, moved from st. louis to a small college town about an hour away from us. we've gotten together several times since they moved here and it's fun to see our boys play together. since they arrived, adam was born, and they have a daughter now, ellie, who is 9 months. jill married joel, who i also went to college with. when we get together, i'm sure kenny tires of our "michigan" and "calvin college" conversations. but he's a good sport about it.

although tomorrow's high is 85, tonight's low is 55. this makes for chilly mornings and evenings. as i type, i'm sitting near our enclosed back porch (which leads to the deck) with a heavy, hooded sweatshirt (grey, not red, for you adam sandler fans) on and i'm still cold. i sense we're nearing to the winding-down part of summer. schools start back up this week, and summer adventures are done. we'll use up the warmth out of every day as best we can, and then i'll be ready to dive right into my most favorite season of all (although summer is soonly becoming my most favorite season...watch out october!). i will want to be indoors more, which might lead to more sewing. i have several projects lined up for fall...after i finish my first quilt (pictures after it's finished and after it's gifted).

on the chicken-egg front...the chickens escaped their pen today, so kenny secured it even more this evening after we returned home from the beach. we did find two fresh eggs in the pen and in one of the nesting boxes in the coop, so they've been washed and refrigerated (did you know you don't have to refrigerate eggs if you never wash them? unfortunately, the two we found were also quite near a bunch of chicken excrement, so we washed them and they're in our fridge). we also found another nest of about 11 eggs on the opposite side of our house. so more than two chickens, at least, are laying. we'll see how they do tomorrow!

it looks as though the rebellious age is spreading throughout our chicken brood.

we have 15 chickens. last night, kenny found their hiding place: roosting in branches about 15-20 feet above the coop. we realize our roost in the coop isn't adequate for them, and we realize these chickens need to roost at night. it's in their chicken blood. but what will they do when the branches are ice-covered? or snow-covered? or there is a windy storm overnight?

tonight, we only counted 10 chickens in the coop...which means another chicken has joined the rebellion. we could only find two in the tree. so three chickens are unaccounted for.

i don't think they realize yet that bear and raccoons can climb trees. perhaps this means they haven't encountered one yet. that's good news.

the bad news is...we might have to clip their wings from keeping them from roosting so high up. and if clipping their wings is anything like bathing a cat or cutting the hair of a toddler boy [whose name (rowan) i will withhold for (rowan) the sake of his (rowan) privacy], we're in for it.

you know how some dreams stick with you for hours after waking, and it feels as though they were so very real?

last night, i dreamt that kenny and i were tight friends with the steelers head coach mike tomlin and his wife. we were so close, in fact, that we had their teenage daughter babysit for us while we attended the first steeler home game on their invitation. this morning, i feel like calling them up and telling them we had a great time at the game, and their daughter did a great job putting our boys to bed.

in reality, i think his kids are nowhere near babysitting age.

it must be all the heavy rain we're getting here that makes us all stir-crazy. or perhaps it was the saline drops i used last night to stop my sneezing. or perhaps i just have really vivid dreams every night.

we're back from a short trip out east where we had hoped to visit a few more people, but couldn't since:

a/ traveling in the car for more than an hour and a half at a time doesn't make three boys very happy.
b/ traveling in the car with a very sick little baby doesn't do a mama's nerves good.

we did, however, get to visit with kenny's parents, sail on their sailboat, visit with my grandparents, and ride a merry-go-round (which always makes the boys HAPPY!). and adam is feeling MUCH better as of this morning (i still kept him home from church as he needs his morning nap today, and he usually misses it on sundays).

more to come...

dirt and clay, all dug away.

last night, after all the digging and excavating and grading and loud trucks left, we walked over to "nana and pop-pop's house." rowan and sawyer decided to help dig...with their own hands (this is the basement):

it's a big day here. at 7:15 a.m., the ground across the street was broken for the laughlin lodge. kenny's documented it in film (daniel, you may not want to watch. this film shows the destruction of (spindly, skinny) trees, albeit for a good cause):

a mixture of rain and high heat and humidty has kept us indoors for the majority of the week. this makes a mama of three boys a bit ancy...

the jungle gym misses the little climbing feet that it's used to in the late afternoon/evening hours with daddy as mama gets dinner ready/cleans up from dinner. my row of zinnias hasn't been cut back in ages...maybe tomorrow? the blueberry bush out back was suffereing from not-being-picked-enough this morning (so i picked and baked blueberry muffins before rowan and sawyer awoke).

and now, an ode.

an ode
the pool!  the local beach!
oh, how we miss you!
the smell of chlorine or
small lake seaweed.
the sandy toes and sun-s.w.a.k.ed faces,
greasy hair from an over-obsessive mama with sunscreen...
will you return to us, sunshine and heat...
days of sandbuckets and shovels?

_____________
i've been having fun organizing some crafty things with my needles, fabrics and threads,sewing machine, boys' drawings, patterns for more pants (how do you dew a jersey t-shirt neckline?)...more posts on those when they near completion. at least the rain has allowed for some major painting/marker/crayon drawings from the boys for me to frame/file away. bursts of creativity from all members of the family is always a good thing.

i think the sun is returning tomorrow. with less heat. perfect for swimsuits.

tonight, i got to spend time alone pouring over patterns and materials, floss and frames...all by myself! sadly, we only have joann's and michael's, but i am determined to find onlines sources for cheap but lovely materials.

i am starting small, but planning BIG. when i returned from my shopping, kenny and i were chatting about how i can make the boys' halloween costumes this year (!!!). so i asked rowan what he wanted to be for halloween...bad idea. because now, he thinks halloween is tomorrow. or in "two sleeps or four?"

however, we have some big time creative challenges ahead of us as sawyer has announced that he wants to be...the SKY for halloween.

love that. though i am a bit fearful that i'll fail at his concept of what the sky would look like worn by a 3-year-old.

i actually experienced post-vacation "let down" for a few hours on saturday. fortunately, it only lasted a few hours, otherwise, we'd be on our way back to another beach (where it isn't raining) right now.

sunday morning was lovely...woke up to partly sunny skies, black coffee in our mugs, and boys who love to snuggle. we put up a new hummingbird feeder on the deck, so we were entertained by "fly-bys" and territorial wars between the one lone male and about five females:

...for a trip to the beach! we're a few hours from lake erie, one of the "great lakes," so the beach is similar to the ocean beach, without the fear of sharks. or crabs. or the 12 hour drive!

there is nothing like a vacation around the water with the sand. i don't know what it is, but me and this "getting old" thing is making me long for many more hot days. i'm afraid i'll be looking up retirement villages (Del Boca Vista phase II, anyone?)  in a few years for our "golden years" (remember...i do day-dream of this time in our lives) and i'm not about to wish autumn upon us anytime soon by waxing nostalgic about the cooler breezes we're heading into. last winter was way too long for me, and i'm sucking the marrow out of every summer day. i'm already planning our week-long vacation to the beach next year. (and everything is washed already so that if it's hot again tomorrow, we'll head to our local lake beach!)

the boys loved the sand the most. adam felt as though the lake needed more of it so he spent his time picking it up and throwing it into the water. sawyer loved the first day of "mini-waves" but was fearful of the windy second beach day. so we spent that day at the tip of the peninsula, where the water is stinky calm. rowan could care less where we were as long as there was water for him to play in (although for the record, he loved the big waves!).

we drove home much later than we had expected, smelling of sunshine and suncreen, in a car full of sand and damp, dirty clothes. but more importantly, tired, happy boys with a full two days' worth of pure fun behind them.

digging was really the best part:

the sunset from the west side of the peninsula. this was my favorite part of the trip...letting the boys wade in the shallow bits and play in the sand...adam couldn't stay dry or clean for very long:

these next three black and whites will probably go in their memory book, or hung in their room:





i love this picture. it looks like a religious moment, when really he's standing there flinging sand into the lake all the while yelling "ahhhhh ahhhhh!"
hmmm...perhaps it was his religious moment. :)

back to life...and to the sewing machine!

i just can't get enough of the sewing machine! rowan's $.25 pants:

sawyer's pants are already cut out...i'll sew them up tonight!