Almost Crawling!

Baby's First Rockies Game

Good Morning

Father-Son Outing

One random day after work, Trent got home and said, "Come on, Cam. Let's go downtown and scalp tickets to the Rockies game."  (He is such a cool dad!) So, off they went!

Waiting for the train.

Not bad seats for 20 bucks.

Apparently, we demolished the Marlins that night. What a fun memory for those two!

7-month-old Liam

The soaping continues...

Trent took a "day off" from work a couple weeks ago. This is what he did with his time: 4 batches of soap. He's working on his color-swirling skills, and I think they look so cool!

Purple: gardenia shave soap

Blue/Green: tea tree & peppermint

Yellow: lemongrass

Small White: super gentle baby soap

Our etsy store is going great, and T is gearing up for Christmas orders. He is such a man of many talents! As the bars of soap cure, he's been staging and photographing them for sale, and I am continually impressed with his artistry -- and ingenuity! Most of the elements are from our garden/yard or around the house. He also made a corian bee stamp to imprint the soaps! Love it!

Peppermint & Lavender Hand Balm (peppermint and lavender from our yard, honeypot from our kitchen)

Lavender Soap, my favorite!

Anise & Tea Tree Soap (star anise from a local spice shop)

Mmmmm ... Our house smells sooooo yummy!

The honey harvest this year went okay. Not as much honey as last year. But at least now we have some fun stuff to do with all the wax!

My Favorite

There's a picture of our family masking-taped to the wall in the "gallery" in my little boy's room. It's my most favorite family picture to date ... for so many reasons.

It has kind of a hieroglyphic quality, doesn't it?

My little artist.

Here's another one, of me pregnant with Liam. Awesome.

And one more family portrait. When Cam showed it to me, he said, "I know, I look funny in this one, don't I, Mom? Because I look a little confused. That's funny!"

Slow ... slow down

I read this quotation on my sister-in-law's blog today. I love it and hate it. I admit, it made my heart ache a little. Because a lot of the time, I'm the getting-it-done kind of mom. I love you, Katie. Thanks for the reminder.

"... The biggest mistake I made is ... I did not live in the moment enough ... I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less." 
— Anna Quindlen

Dancin' Baby

The other day I turned on some music while I was doing the dishes. When I turned around, this is what I saw. Crazy kid. He's so funny.

Honeybee Rescue

Someone had honeybees in their playhouse and didn't want to exterminate them. Trent to the rescue! Here is some documentation from the bees' relocation into a new hive in our backyard. 

Step 1. Build a hive with special enclosed frames in place of the normal top bars in our Warre hives. (You'll see why later.)

Step 2. Build a bee vacuum. Yes, it's what it sounds like. It hooks up to a normal vacuum hose and is very gentle for the bees. Believe it or not, he just found some plans online and did it himself. Here's what it looks like inside.

Step 3. The extraction. (Video to come. I just haven't swiped it off T's phone yet.) He cut the combs out of the playhouse, vacuumed up the bees, and brought them all home.

This is some of the honeycomb. He filled a separate container to the brim with brood comb (that's where the baby bees are, kind of like the "nursery" combs). 

Bee vac on the bottom, hive box on the top, with a cute little helper on the side.

Step 4. Suspend the cut combs in the frames with rubber bands. The bees then attach the new comb to the bars, chew off the bands, and carry them out of the hive.  

Step 5. Fill the hive boxes with the suspended combs.

A little disoriented baby bee who hatched from the brood comb on the way.

Full box! 

Step 5. Hive the bees! Luckily Trent was able to locate the queen, let her crawl onto his finger, and then guide her into the hive. After that, the rest of the bees were happy to follow.

We made them a little ramp up to the entrance with a pillowcase.

That's our established hive on the left. We added a 5th box this year!

There they go into their new house!