Wake Up Sleeping Giant!

I have made it a point to keep this blog focused on my family and our daily lives but I can remain silent no longer with this travesty that our government, well the executive branch, has forced upon this great country.

This representative sums it up nicely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=G44NCvNDLfc

And The Wall Came Tumbling Down

My college guys were off for spring break last week and their dad took advantage of having them home for a few days and put them to work. I must say that this was not their idea of spring break!! However, the weather was too cold for a day at the beach, or camping or any other outdoor activity we could come up with. It even rained for two days!

So, off they go to accomplish the task at hand. Don't they look excited? In reality, the only thing that would be exciting to them about now would be that they got to drive and use this beautiful tractor. It just happened that Monroe was making a repair on the tractor for a friend and he allowed us to use it while we had it

Their job was to tear down a brick wall at the end of our drive. This wall had been an eye-sore since we moved here. It is/was white brick, to match our house, but it was made of a type of sand. It was very dingy looking from years of neglect and when we tried to pressure wash it we noticed it began to come apart. Taking down the wall got put on the bottom of the "to-do" list around here. That is until now!!
The wall came down very easily. Brandon is standing where the wall once was. The chain link fence belongs to the neighbor in the background. It was behind the wall. Now for the large corner post. Here Brent tried to chain the post and pull with the tractor. That didn't work so......

Brandon a.k.a. "Mighty Man" gave it a try! Unbelievable strength but still no luck ;-) One more idea...push it over with the bucket of the tractor. (Notice the county putting in water pipes down the highway. We are not too happy about it! So much for country living, huh?)

Finally!!

And here is the reason it was so hard to tear down! It was buried in the ground with concrete and rebar. We have noticed that with the many repairs and updates we have had to do with this house that it was built extremely well. We have seen that the builders did not cut corners with the materials. We had only lived in this house about a year when our area of Florida was hit with three huge hurricanes. The eye of all three storms went directly over us. We were very concerned about our home since we had not been able to complete alot of the repairs needed. However, the only harmful damage done was that we lost about 20% of the shingles on our roof. After making it through those three hurricanes we felt very confident that this house was well built!

God is good!

Honey Harvesting

We are looking forward to some fresh honey soon! This week our beekeeping teacher/friend, Ethan, came by and picked up our supers so that he can extract the honey for us. We will get wildflower honey this time.
Here is Ethan working the bees. I told him that he is such a blessing to our family. He has taken Brandon under his wing teaching him how to keep bees. When Ethan gets a call from someone to come and get a swarm he stops by and picks up Brandon and takes him along to show him how it is done. When it was time to harvest our orange blossom honey Ethan took Brandon for the extracting process. Bran is learning so much. I hope beekeeping becomes a lifelong hobby for him. Ethan, thanks for all you do and we love you!!!

Here is a proud beekeeper-in training. Can you tell we had a warm, sunny Florida day? Brandon was playing outside with no shirt on!

Ethan gave us a "thumbs-up" on the condition of the beehive. He said they looked very healthy. I was a little concerned because we had an unusually harsh winter with many days below freezing.

Here they are, all loaded and ready to go! The hives were replaced with empty supers so our energetic little bees can get to work on some delicious orange blossom honey, which is my favorite!! The orange groves start blooming in March and the season for orange blossom honey is over about the middle of April. So, get busy all you Florida bees!

Notice in the background that we now have two hives. Several months ago we had a swarm of bees come by our back yard and they stopped in a tree in the back pasture. Ethan came to our rescue. He and Brandon gathered them and he gave them to Brandon to start a second hive.

I can't wait to find out how much honey we will get from these supers. I'll give an update as soon as we get the honey in jars!

Thinking Outside Of The Box

I watched my college son trying to accomplish his Life Of Christ homework assignment one weekend recently. The assignment was to draw or trace a map of Israel. Bradley tried tirelessly to come up with an acceptable copy of Israel. He had the colored pencils out and everything. After finding the correct map of Israel he tried drawing it freehand. Ummmm....not so much. So he attempted to trace the map but the problem was that he couldn't see through his piece of paper well enough.

I was trying to be a supportive mother and give him some ideas but I wasn't much help. I thought to myself, "I am just going to sit back and see how he solves this one". I left the room for a little while. When I came back in this is what I saw...


Now that was a pretty clever idea! I have to admit that I was a little surprised. I don't know if I would have ever came up with this plan. Then I was reminded of some of my goals for home schooling. I wanted my children to be able to think "outside of the box" of education. I wanted them to be thinkers/problem solvers. I wanted them to discover for themselves who they are and know their passion in life believing that our Creator has a blueprint for everyone's life and we are all unique. Not all children fit into the "cookie cutter" mold that our public education system tends to rely on.

So, watching this little scenario play out in the dining room on a Sunday afternoon was amusing and rewarding at the same time. I realize his solution is not complicated. In fact, it is rather simple but he didn't give up and produce a sloppy product. Just look at how accurately he traced this map. Yep, it made this Mamma smile.
Bradley was literally thinking Outside Of The Box.....get it???? Ha! Ha!

Okay, Okay, I know. Reese has NOTHING to do with this blog topic today but I just couldn't help myself. I just had to share this picture of my little baby doll!! Do you recognize this outfit, Kay? It was from you! It looks adorable on doesn't it!