Has it Been Almost a Week?

Last you heard of us, we had harvested our first wild bees!  Maybe some of you are wondering if those bees had done us in...reminds me of My Fair Lady..."They done her in!"  Not quite!  In fact, it is just the opposite as you will see by the end of this post.

I must admit...we were pretty tired on Sunday.  We gathered ourselves out of bed and made it to Sunday school on time.  The boys talked about the Ten Commandments but through in stories about the bee harvest as well.  I even had time to prepare to lector while they were in class.  I love reading the Word in church.  I take it very seriously and I am always blessed with inspiration as I pray about what I am to read.  Today I was also blessed with one of our older couples who volunteered to take care of the two youngest while I was at the lectern.  The three oldest would be altar serving.

Then we came home and enjoyed a quiet afternoon of rest.  I think everyone was a little more subdued from the experience of the day before.  Henry's arm swelled to his elbow.  He said he was not in pain but that it itched a lot.

Monday we had a normal school day and even finished a little extra in preparation for the rest of the week.  We went to speech therapy for Sean and to the grocery store (I hate shopping even for food!), so it was a nice full day.

Tuesday we had another good day of school completing a third day so we would not be behind when we miss school work on Wednesday.  Then we had our trip into town to pray at Planned Parenthood.  Then headed over to have our usual evening of 4H activities.  However, it rained today so we were not able to spend as much time with our Wildlife project.

I had the boys dropped off for Robotics and left with our friend.  Then Zaira and I rushed to the next town over to attend the Heartbeat banquet.  Shawn Carney (National Director of 40 Days for Life) was the guest speaker and I could not resist asking him to attend an impromptu candle light vigil at our 40 Days for Life site.  Unfortunately, he had a flight that left immediately after the banquet so he was not able to commit to this event.  I told all would be good if he could just mention our site when he gave his speech.  He agreed whole-heartedly...only to forget in his focus to details about pregnancy help centers!  Poor guy!  You should have seen his face when I walked up to him after the dinner!  He was so embarrassed...I just told him it was not meant to be!

I then raced out to meet those who might attend our candle light vigil.  Zaira and I arrived just before 10pm to an empty street.  I knew it was early so Zaira and I sat in the vehicle and I started a Rosary.  I was so sad to think no one interrupted our prayer by tapping on the window.  When I finished our Rosary, I was sure that I was still alone.  Imagine my surprise when I looked our vehicle window to see two candles flickering in the distance!  We joined our faithful prayer warriors, Vicky and Bill.  We stayed and prayed together as well as discussed the dynamics of our clinic.  We know that in the end the faithfulness of prayer is the only answer to end abortion.

The day was not over for me as I still needed to prepare for the next day.  You see...I made a promise to our soon 9-year old.  The next day was his birthday and it was also the day of our first 4H Wildlife contest.  Normally, we let the one having the birthday pick a restaurant for dinner.  However, since his birthday was on our contest day we would not be able to go out to eat for lunch.  Since his birthday fell on a Wednesday. we serve dinner to the college students so he would not be able to go out to dinner.  This left breakfast!  At the time, I thought how great is that for me...he will choose a donut shop and all will be easy for meals that day!  Ha!  Edward decided he wanted to go to IHOP!  The only way that would be possible would be to wake up at 5am and leave as soon as possible.

All the boys agreed to this adventure, so that left me to get all the contest equipment in the car Tuesday night before I went to bed.  And isn't it amazing what a little bit of motivation will do to get someone up in the morning!  Those boys were up and ready to go so fast, I could hardly keep up with them!  We made it to IHOP by 6am...there were few diners in the place so we had our waitress to ourselves.  I cannot help but laugh...she walked up to our table full of children and turned to me..."Are you the mother to all of these children?"...I just looked at her and said, "Who would take someone else's children out to eat at this time in the morning?"  LOL!

We enjoyed our breakfast and headed to our contest with time to spare!  To read about that fun, you will need to check out my other blog.

We also made it back in time to clean up from the morning and then load our spaghetti sauce into the car before racing to the student center to prepare dinner.  When I arrived, I found a note that said our regular kitchen leader was not going to be at the dinner!  I looked around for the food supplies and there were no packages of meat or bread!  After about an hour of searching and asking around, it was discovered that the person who normally brings these supplies had forgotten!  So, a race to the store and all was well....we even manged to get all the food out for the meal (only a few minutes late!)

You know what I love about helping the college students?  They love playing with the children!  It is so wonderful to see them interacting and playing with our children.  I can see that most will be good parents in the future.I really need to get some pictures of this in action.  I will try to do this in the next couple of weeks.

Thursday (that is today!)...we worked on school again in the morning with a twist!  We had to take Brendan in for his dreaded baby root canal (actually called a pulpotomy).  So, I left Henry and Edward at home with a list of school assignments.  Sean, Brendan, Zaira and I went to the dentist with books in tow.  We were at the dentist for three hours so plenty of time to get school work completed!  Brendan was the star patient ..sitting back in the dentist chair and falling a sleep with little effort.  He came out at the end with two silver teeth in his sleepy smile.  He ended up sleeping through the rest of the afternoon (You know what that will mean for later in the evening!  NO sleep at bedtime!).

Brendan even slept through our side trip to Planned Parenthood to pray.  It turned out to be a beautiful fall afternoon with a cool breeze to go along with the sunny 90-degree temperature.  We found a shady spot and enjoyed praying for the women who entered the clinic.

He did not wake up until we headed out for our second wild bee harvest of the week!  Luckily for him, we were passing a fast food spot at the time he called out..."I'm hungry!" (He had not eaten since 6pm the night before and it was close to 4pm!)

So, we managed to pull up to this new bee tree at an angle where the little ones (Edward, Brendan and Zaira could watch from the closed vehicle.  This tree was smaller but had a fork in the main trunk...it turned out that this was where most of the good hive would be found.  This tree was also in better condition than the first tree, so Roger had to a lot more cutting.  However, the best part about this tree was that an active queen existed in the hive!  Truth be told, they never saw the queen...only signs of her activity..such as eggs and larva.

The big clue that showed that they actually had the queen in our hive box came when they shook a piece of the trunk into the hive.  The bees that were surrounding the branch and the tree began to swarm into the hive box!  Roger told the boys that they must have the queen for them to swarm like they were...and it was a sight to see!  I was able to walk around the tree with out a worry about being stung as the bees were only interested in getting to their queen to protect her!  I just love bees!  If only we could all be so protective of our moms!  LOL!

It still took time to gather all the comb and tie it into the empty frames.  This hive also produced a lot of honey that was able to be collected.  It also was another example of how quickly beetles can take over a damaged hive...half the honey was no good due to the beetle larvae.

So, another night of peaceful children, except Brendan.  He and I stayed up and played with Zaira. Glad to enjoy this time with him even though I was exhausted!