Month: April 2020

2020 Pandemic- April

How has this pandemic affected our Monday lunches? They now include Paul which as been fun, but they are in my kitchen instead. We get take out at any fast food that has a drive thru.

Paul is still working from home. We think for the rest of the month.

What has changed at the store? I now eat breakfast alone. I really miss my breakfasts with my dad.

And since we don’t have customers to purchase cookies, I must take one for the team and eat one so they don’t go to waste. 🙂

April 8. Every time I go grocery shopping I go down the rice isle to see if they have any rice, and today I finally found Jasmine rice!

Stay home orders for the elderly. Paul and I have been grocery shopping for both our parents. Not as much for mine. They don’t stay home. 🙂 I called my parents asking if they needed anything and my dad said he already went to Costo for ice cream and they were out so he went to Arctic Circle to get some. Priorities. 🙂

April 17. Sams had stocked up on toilet paper.

April 20 Sam’s sold out of EVERY pack of toilet paper. People are still in a panic for toilet paper.

Most shelves have been filled. My essentials must not be part of the panic shopping. Mascarpone cheese is a staple in our house and they never ran out of it!

How has this pandemic affected my parents. It has forced them to stay home and rest like retired people are supposed to do. Funny that they social distance in their own home. I had to laugh.

April 20. Costco put a maze in front to keep people 6 feet apart. Again, I have to laugh at all of this.

April 27. The Costco line. Weaved in the maze…

And lined up around the building!

Crazy! Wondering how long this pandemic is going to last.

Miracle Saskatraz Queen

Paul was up early to check on the hive in our yard. He was really worried. The hive was crazy! He didn’t want to get close to take video or pictures, because of the wild bees. Without a queen they were flying EVERYWHERE. They were flying around the house, buzzing around the windows and doors, and many were landing and hanging out on the back of the house. It was quite scary.

We needed to get a queen quickly. Paul called Knights bees to see if they had a saskatraz queen. They had one and told us to come down and get her.

Paul went into the garage to get the queen to take with us, and….

And she was was alive!!! She must have warmed up in the garage over night. Good thing Paul put the plug in the cage!

We fed her some left over sugar water from last night. How do you spoon feed a bee? With a toothpick!

We dipped the toothpick in the water and put it in the cage. I was surprised it worked. She ran over and started eating the droplets of sugar water.

She was getting very nervous, so we put her in the little hive on our kitchen island while we called Knight bees. We weren’t sure if the hive would accept her, because they were without a queen for some time. They told us to just put her in.

Again no pictures, because of the wild bees. Paul duct taped his pant legs shut, and taped his veil on because the bees were acting so wild he was worried they would fly up an article of clothing a sting him.

Again, no pictures 🙂 After the queen was put in the hive, a few minutes later ALL the bees went into the hive. All the bees that were hanging out on the side of the house flew into the hive. It was pretty amazing. It was pretty amazing the bees were so lost without a queen. Next time – if there is a next time- I will make sure video is taken.

Picking up our bees

It’s finally spring and warm enough to go pick up our bees!

We purchased our bees from Knights bees.

Look at all those bees! Each bee bus has 10,000 bees. This year we purchased 4 hives worth of bees. So 4 bee buses with 40,000 bees!

We are going to put 3 hives at Paul’s parents house and the other one at our house. I’m a little nervous to have a full hive in our yard with Eli running around, so we will see how it goes this summer.

Eli feeling all the bees legs that are poking out 🙂

Several bees were flying around in the jeep as we were driving home. This is the part I dislike, having 40,000 bees in the back and all the stow away bees flying around.

Paul surprised me with my very own veil. Last year I was without and was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt filming, now when I’m covered in bees I will have a little protection.

He even purchased some gloves for me as well!

Where was the 5 year old? Feeding the horses, of course!

With the first hive we tried something different. Instead of shaking them out, we just set the bees in and let them crawl out. In a week we will come back to see if they crawled out and if this is an effective way of putting bees into a hive.

We removed some of the frames.

That was easy enough. Now my turn to put bees in a hive! 🙂

I started with the queen bee. Removed the cork, put the candy cork in and placed her in the hive.

The I dumped the bees in. That was pretty fun!

We did the same thing with the third hive.

Each hive is a little different. Each hive opens differently, has a different size of frame and different breed of bee.

The hive above has Russian bees. The hive is a simple, traditional hive with long frames. A light top with a rock on it 🙂 They all have rocks on top.

Our second hive is the first hive we had last year. We put Carniolan bees in there. This is my favorite hive. It’s so cute, with lots of detail carved into the wood. This hive has smaller frames.

Our third hive has Saskatraz bees. This is our largest hive, has smaller and larger frames and opens differently. This hive will have a post of it’s own!

We left to our house to do the last hive.

It was quite late when we got home. I put Eli to bed and Paul decided to put the bees in the hive by himself. He was doing fine, and was almost done, when a bee got into his veil. Paul dropped the queen in her box trying to let out the trapped bee.

It was so cold out, we didn’t find her in time and we lost her. We found her crumpled up body and put it back into her cage, put the cork back in and put her in the garage. We are hoping Knights bees have extra queens. We will have to call in the morning.

Our hive is complete, minus the queen. This is a smaller hive, but significantly larger than the cute little hive last year. This hive is small, but long , has smaller frames and lots of wood carved details in the side. The breed of bees in this hive are saskatraz as well.

It was a very busy day, but we got all 4 hives done!

Eli’s 5th Anniversary

Five years ago we were sealed as a family. Time has flown!

Every year we do something special for his anniversary and try to make it memorable for him. I didn’t know this little boy remembered last year. He told me he remembered the pouring rain causing me to slip up the stairs and smashing the cupcakes. He remembered us being a family that day eating dinner outside the temple. I hope he continues to remember these fun anniversaries.

This year we let Eli plan his day. For dinner he chose to go to Nielson’s.

Due to everything being closed, we had to go to a restaurant with a drive thru and it was packed. Look at the drive thru line!

After dinner we went to Harmons to pick up his cake. They decorated it just as Eli instructed. It was too cute to have a 5 year old describe all the flowers and colors he wanted and what he wanted it to look like. I wish I got it on video.

This is one happy boy! He was so excited and couldn’t believe they made a cake just for him! We packed up the cake and headed out to the temple.

This year we went to the Oquirrh temple.

Our little Pea!

The temple grounds were closed this year with everything that is going on, so we only we could take were outside the temple gates. This year was also simple with just dinner and cake, but I hope he remembers today.

Love you little Pea! Thank you for coming to our family and making us a family of 3!

Popcorn tree

I looked out the window and what did I see?

Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

I can take an arm full and make a treat. A popcorn ball that will smell so sweet. 🙂

It wasn’t really so, but it seemed to me… Okay, so I changed up the lyrics a bit 🙂

Spring has sprung!

My tulips are looking beautiful!

Including this one hiding. Not sure how he got in here.

Even the chicks are out today. Saw these little ones on my run this morning. I love you spring!!!

Happy Easter!

The Easter bunny had fun hiding eggs this year.

I think the Easter bunny has more fun hiding than Eli has finding!

Lots of eggs all over the house.

When Eli got up, he ran around the house finding all of them.

Some were easy to find.

Others were a challenge.

Eli looked everywhere! 🙂

Then he had to find his basket. He loved going through it!

A carrot? 🙂

Out of his basket full of treats, the hunt of filled eggs, the three mini cars he found in three eggs were his favorite!

We saw my parents, but we stayed in the car.

We went home and had an Easter dinner with just the three of us. Short and simple, many wonderful memories!

Bear Canyon Suspension Bridge

Paul asked if I had ever been the the Bridge in Draper. Bridge? What bridge? I have never heard of one so we decided to check it out.

It was a beautiful day! We could see clear across the valley and see the snow capped mountains.

We started out at the Orson Smith Trailhead and headed up the mountain. This hike is a short 2.3 mile loop.

Almost there! It’s only the beginning of April so the terrain is quite dry and dull. The spring leaves haven’t come out yet, but it was still an enjoyable hike.

We did see some colorful wild flowers.

Made it!

This bridge was very popular with lots of hikers. More than I expected. Even with being the first of April, the sun baked the mountain and was quite hot out. But seeing the bridge out in the middle of the mountain was kind of fun and worth hiking in the heat.

Easter Eggs

We started out the day with a bike ride through the river bottoms.

It’s a fun little trail with lots of bridges.

That afternoon we colored eggs.

We used fresh eggs from a neighbor. It’s hared to see in the picture, but we had a mixture of white, light blue, and light green eggs. We already had nature colored eggs 🙂

Eli really enjoyed this. Not to turn eggs a different color, but to play in water. Colored water!

We showed Eli how to use a clear crayon to draw on the egg. He thought it was pretty fun to be secretive on what he wrote on the egg, dunk it in colored water and reveal his secret message.

We purchased a spinning thing. I don’t know what it’scalled. You put a few drops of dye in the bottom, put the egg in and spin it. It’s supposed to make the egg look tie dye.

Lots of egg dying, and lots of fun. Lots of memories made!