Bye Bye Baby Locks

Ma chopped my hair just like my brothers. She has a thing about keeping it trimmed above the ears. Sheesh I can't even make it a year without the buzzer treatment. Style, flair, character... it doesn't exist around this house. It's all serious MTC business.

Sweet Drippy Harvest

Way to go girls!!! The Carniolan bees have done themselves proud. We pulled out quite a stack of frames that were FULL of honey. We don't have an extractor yet so we have been nibbling on the honey that drips from the frames as it waits to be extracted. We will have to cut off the wax top of the comb to access the honey tucked neatly inside each hexagon. We anticipate getting up to 3 gallons of honey off from this single hive. The Italian bees have not done as well. We suppose that their original queen died and they hatched a superseder cell establishing a new queen. She has been subpar because the hive has not thrived. Either that or there are way too many man bees getting in the ladies way. Did you know all the honey comes from the gals? The boys really don't do anything at all other than occasionally donate a chromosome or two.

Michael's Love Affair With Warm Squishy Sweetness

Laparoscopic Berries

Blackberries have NASTY thorns but they are sooo yummy. I was on my way to do another picking and noticed Jonathan's pincher grabber thing that he brought home from the hospital some time ago. It is the most remarkable little device on the planet. I reach up and bring the berries to me instead of sacrificing my arms in through the thorns to go after the berries. It greatly increases my yield because I can reach the big plump yummy ones that no one else can reach. I have picked gallons and just canned up 7 quarts of pie filling. I cannot wait for dutch oven cobbler with those little devils.

I am finding it is quite the coveted item. While picking I had a nice gentleman drive by, turn around, and ask if I had a special tool for picking berries. I tried to explain it was a surgical instrument for performing laparoscopies that my sweetie pie brought home from the hospital. Limited edition.

Some Things You Just Don't "Get" When You're a Kid

Like how terrifically terrible your aim is when you try to pitch a rock across the street, and well, miss. Miss the other side of the street but perfectly snag the sliding door on the van. What a shot little Ma-Mow. He was terrified and all I could do was hold my roaring laughter in. I wish now I wouldn't have tried so hard NOT to laugh. Is it bad that I find things like this absolutely hilarious? There is something about shattered glass that really gets my funny bone... Kind of like the time I was cutting my wedding cake and tripped over an electrical cord to the cake fountain, knocked my newlywed to the ground, plowed down the cake, shattered my crystal temple and found Angel Moroni at half court in the church house gym. Truly it was really, really funny.

Mother nature has been Matthew's best punishment. It gets chilly in the back seat when the windows are down, way, way down.

Don't Worry, They'll Come to You

We left the house this morning to go pick blackberries. On the way out of the house we noticed the praying mantis Matthew caught a few days ago had escaped from his plastic container. We did a look through the house but couldn't find it so decided we would have to find it later.

Fast forward an hour post picking and I pit-stop to change Michael's diaper. As usual he had been playing like a gem in the middle living room floor. He can't crawl yet so I seldom worry about him putting things in his mouth because we keep things out of reach. Well, if you can't go to them, they will come to you. You know, things like a praying mantis. When I laid him down to change his diaper I noticed something kind of green and stringy in his mouth. I couldn't identify it at first. It wasn't until I did a swipe of the roof of his mouth that I found the leg and could clearly identify the other parts and pieces I had extracted. I didn't know what to say other than dry heave.

I'll spare you the pictures.

And to think, we all survived childhood.

Can you imagine how excited Michael must have been to have something crawling to him? I can only imagine the effort required to catch it, paw it from fist to fist and then devour. Wow.