Friday, November 19, 2010

5 cRaZy YeArS

Adam and I have made it to our 5 year anniversary....
Here is a little of what we have been up to...

We have had 7 cars, 3 residences, and 9 jobs. We have been to Florida, Colorado, California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Cabo, Belize, Isla Roatan, Costa Maya, & Cozumel. We have had 3 fish, 2 roommates, and 0 kids. We both have worked on our education. We have been blessed with 1 new sister-in-law and 3 new nieces that we love dearly. We have been to 3 high school graduations and uncountable football, baseball, and basketball games. We have watched way too many movies and read too little books. We have been to 9 concerts that I can remember. There has been lots of camping, amusement parks, water parks, and many more adventures along the way...

We have gone on walks and bike rides, watched the sun rise and set. We have cooked, made messes, cleaned them up, been lazy, been crazy, worked hard, and done service next to each other.

We have had many ups and down along these 5 years but I do know that I am so grateful to have him as my husband. He is kind, caring and patient. He has a soft heart and an open mind. He loves me unconditionally and I am truly a lucky woman. Love you Adam.
Happy Anniversary!


Tuesday, September 28, 2010

This Summer I ....

This Summer I enjoyed a new hobby... BEE KEEPING!! I have had so much fun since the beginning of Spring buying and painting my hive, gather tools and equipment, and actually getting my first 3lb package of bees! I have a hat, a veil, a long sleeve jacket and gloves as my armor and I have gone out to my hive many times over the summer. I get to open up the hive and with 100's of bees flying around my head I give them water and make sure that the hive is functioning well.
My in-laws have been nice enough to let me put my hive in their back yard. Even though I am sure it has been a pain for them at times they have been gracious hosts to the stinging insects living in their back yard.

Adam has been a great help! He took on thousands of wasps over the summer who had threatened my hive. He also was the one out side with the camera to take pictures of everything. He has yet to be stung by wasp or bee! How is this possible!?!?

Finally the end of the season is here and after all my hard work, (ha ha! Okay, so the bees did all the work) it was time to take my hive apart for the final inspection of the year and to take any excess honey to harvest and have for myself.
I invited my family over as well as the Healey family to have a BBQ and enjoy the first sweet tastes of ABC Honey.

Ben came over to help me with the inspection and harvest and we had a big snag. The late afternoon sun had covered the hive with shade. The problem with this is in order to get the bees out of the hive so you can take the honey you must have direct sun light. Ben quickly suggested moving the hive into the sun. This entails completely uprooting the bees' home and moving it. Meanwhile having more bees out of the hive and potentially making them more angry and agitated.

We started out smoking the hive and spraying them with sugar water. The hope is that this will get the bees distracted and busy while we do our thing.

Then we moved the hive into the sun one box at a time. (these boxes are full of honey and pollen, they are heavy! Sometimes up to 100lbs each!)

Once we get the boxes over to the sun we start pulling out each individual frame to make sure the hive is healthy and operating well.














After checking everything and deciding which frames we can remove for honey. We move the hive back to it's original home and put it back together. Yes, all of the black spots on the camera are bees. There were thousands! (Notive the ABC Honey sign that Hilary and Tammie made for me in the 3rd picture. So cute!!)















Here we are in the garage extracting the honey. First, you use a hot capping knife to cut off the wax capping that holds the honey in place. Then, you put the frames in the extractor and spin the frames super fast to pull the honey out.

























End of summer totals:
I hung around with thousands of bees.
I received 6 bee stings (all out of love)
I accumulated about 3 gallons of honey which equals out to be about 36 pounds!!
The amount of anxiety I experienced while bees fly all around me and crawl all over me and the amazing time I had learning about bees and having my own hive! There is no number here, it was simply too awesome.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Payton


She is not a baby anymore!
She looks like a little girl...

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Peytons Birthday - 1 Year Old

Yesterday was Peyton's birthday! I can believe she is 1 already!! We all went over to Chris and Kelly's house for the big par-tay.. Peyton is in that phase where she loves getting her picture taken and she cheeses it in such a way it almost looks painful.. We loved it and I took lots of shots. So cute!! The real funny thing is I still have her new born pictures on my camera.. so you get one from the beginning too!













She loved all of her presents but the three she was the most excited for was her blanket from Tutu and Hoto, her new Teddy from Uncle Colton and Aunt Paige and her favorite of all was her Winnie the Pooh birthday card from Granny and Wes. (she looked at it forever and held it up and babbled like she was reading it to us!)
















She was not into her cake at all. We had to force her to get into it and then she got kind of mad when we did.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

The Cruise!

All right I know I am a slacker but here are the cruise pictures! Finally!!

Stop Number 1... Costa Maya































Stop Number 2... Roatan!

































Stop Number 3... Belize





























































Stop Number 4... Cozumel!















































Random Pictures from the Cruise Boat....

Formal Night. Dave and Koreen, Mitch and Diane, Adam and ME!



















































































































Here is our huge stateroom and cute little towel animal made especially for Adam to karate kick off the bed.