We Win Some We Lose Some

This morning the boys eagerly woke up and proved ready to leave the house by 8am.  They were convinced they were going to win a turkey or two.  I had been convinced to purchase three tickets to take a chance at winning these turkeys from a young man from our 4H group.  I was not hopeful but figured it would not hurt to help his Boy Scout troop.  And, the boys would have fun shooting at targets.  

I had heard this annual event could draw a large crowd so the best option was to arrive early and try our chances before the crowd arrived.  Indeed, we arrived early and the only crowd were the crowd that came to see the soccer games that were also being played at the same park.

We were able to walk right up to the shooting line and let the boys take their shots.  Each boy was given three shots for their ticket.  Edward was first in line and he shot well but did not hit the target.  He did mange to hit the hill behind the target and so we knew how he should adjusted his aim.  However the next two shots ended in the trees behind the target.  He did not hit a target but he did scare a few birds from the trees!  In fact, we thought for sure he must have hit a bird as it flew up and then straight down!  LOL...not the kind of bird to win!  Sean and Henry were no more successful   We were done with the turkey shoot within five minutes.  I think we all looked around like we were lost.  However, I was not surprised by our loss.

No worries...I told the boys it just gave us a chance to head back home.  We had had a busy week and needed to finish the last few lessons from our school week.  The boys were not too excited about the idea but they did manage to get their school work done by lunch time.  Even in spite of the fact that I spent an hour of that time on the phone.  I spoke with two good friends about our latest adventures.

One of these friends did call with bad news to start.  For those who do not know me well, I grew up in the small town of Marietta...yes in Texas!  I went to a very small school that only had K-6th grades and had FIVE teachers.  The school building was a nice brick building that must have had a historical marker on it because it was old!  I have many fond memories of that old school house.  A few years back the school shut down and now all the children are bused about 20 miles to the next town for school.  I always dreamed that Michael and I could buy the building and use it for something amazing!

Well, my friend called to tell me the gym was sold and was turned into a factory!  Oh!...it just breaks my heart to think of it!  The memories of the fun we had in that gym go flashing through my mind...I do wish I had pictures of the basket ball games that drew a crowd in spite of our small population.  It was the place to be anytime we had a game!  We also had dance classes... cheerleading practice...PE...rainy day games.  Now it will only be known to this generation as a smelly factory to build some kind of iron works.  It breaks my heart!

No time to mope for this loss as we had our beekeeper friends arriving at the house to inspect our bee hives.  Marie and Roger arrived and we all suited up to see what we had in our boxes.  We were pleased to see that the first bee tree hive had an emerged queen cell.  We could not spot her since she has not had time to make her mating flight.  We will hope that this occurs some time in the next week and we will check on her again a week from Monday.  The hive seemed to be doing well and Roger kindly added some honey frames from his hive to our hive box.

The second bee tree hive was doing well also.  However, it appears the queen that we found on Thursday that allowed us to capture the hive easily must not have survived the move.  We could tell because the bees were producing several queen cells.  These cells were new (most likely new today!) and not even fully enclosed.  We will need to look back in 16+7 days (16 days for emerging  and then 7 days to allow for mating flight) to look for queen activity in this hive.

Then we decided it would be good to check out our original hive.  I was very proud of the boys as they showed off their original hive.  It is a very strong hive and they have worked hard to maintain it.  We have been blessed with a strong set of bees that produce great amounts of honey.  We were assured that it would be more than ready to split into two hives next spring.

After this great success, we decided we earned the right to be lazy through the evening.  We sat around watching old TV shows and eating store bought pizza (always a treat in our house that does not happen often!)  Then we managed to get every one cleaned up and ready for bed at a decent hour.  It was nice to enjoy a quiet restful evening.  I even dozed off after putting Zaira to sleep for the night.  I woke up to write this blog post and now I think I will go back to sleep to enjoy a go night's sleep.  In spite of the losses of the day, it seems to have leaned toward the win side of the scale as far as I am concerned.