Stephen had to remove a frame from our hive on Friday because of the way the bees had built the comb. We had a lot of fun examining it, tasting some of the capped honey, and watching some new bees hatch.

Uncapped honey

Capped honey

Just hatching

Newly hatched

Samuel trying to get a newly hatched bee to walk on his finger

These newly hatched bees are too weak to sting, so we allowed Samuel to hold one. We all really enjoyed getting such a close look at the bees.

Beekeeper in training

This post is linked to the Homestead Barn Hop.

This winter, our lawnmower died. Monday we picked it up from the shop. Tuesday, Stephen mowed our lawn for the first time this spring.

Today, Stephen started it and the engine completely locked up. He called a mechanic friend of ours to see if he knew anyone selling a motor that would fit our mower. Our friend just “happened” to have one at his house. He said he’d been trying to sell it for two years and hasn’t been able to get rid of it. It’s the same brand we have in there already, and is a bit stronger too.

Stephen and I just stood there laughing. Moments earlier we had been trying to figure out how we were going to buy a new mower. We talked about getting a push mower, but with the size of our yard and the amount of other hauling we do it just isn’t a practical option. Then, with one simple phone call, we learned about a motor that was better than the one we had was pretty much waiting for us.

I just love how God works. Yes, it’s an expense we weren’t planning on, but this repair bill sure is better than trying to figure out financing for a lawn tractor with a price tag of $1,000 or more! It probably sounds like a “little thing” to anyone reading, but to me, it’s just exciting to see how it worked out.

Miss Anna sure does love playing outside. It’s been gorgeous outside the past few days, so the kids have been outside a lot. I took this yesterday when Anna was playing in the water dripping from the well faucet. She’d stay there all day if we’d let her – playing in the mud and drinking the water. She loves being outside, that is for sure!

We are now officially debt free (except our mortgage). We made the last payment on our last medical bill this morning. Our credit cards we paid off a couple weeks ago – we used our tax refund for it. We were so close that Stephen and I figured we’d use the lump sum to take care of it all that way.

It has been a long process of cutting back to pay off our debt. Some of it was from a bad business decision years ago, but a lot of our debt was survival debt from a few years ago. If I could go back and redo things, I wouldn’t have used the credit card, but that’s what we did. It amazes me how when we stopped using the credit card, that’s when God provided for us in some truly amazing and spectacular ways. He is so faithful, just as He promised.

In February, when our tax refund hit our account, we called and paid off each credit card in full. WOW did that EVER feel good! Then today, I logged onto the hospital site and made that last payment too.

It is so freeing to not have that debt hanging over our heads any more. There are plenty of things right now we’ll need the extra money for (like replacing the tank in our well), but it’s so wonderful to know we now have money at the end of each month to do it with.

So now we work on fixing some things around the house. This is so exciting!

Last night was an adventure.

After church, we went to McDonald’s with some other families from church. We had a great time and the kids ate way too much sugar. We headed home with the intent of putting the kids right in bed.

We got into the house and told the boys to put their pajamas on. I started changing Anna into her pajamas. I had gotten a new diaper out for her when I heard a CLUNK in the living room. Samuel immediately started howling and came running into his room.

He vaulted onto his bed and sat there absolutely yelling about “MY HEAD! IT HURTS!” I stood there with Anna on the changing table and decided from the way he was crying that I should probably take a look at his head.

Right about then, Caleb came tearing into the room, hollering too. “BWOOD! BWOOD! BWOOD on MY bed!!!”

Samuel moved so I could look at his forehead, and when he took his hand off his head, we saw that it was covered in blood. Samuel flipped out. Since I was still standing at the changing table, I grabbed a handful of cloth wipes and started to apply pressure to the wound.

As I stood there, I realized that Anna was still on the changing table and that I never finished putting a diaper on her. I glanced over at her and apparently I already had. That was weird because I really didn’t remember finishing fastening the clean diaper! She had just been laying there the whole time, taking in everything. I let go of Samuel long enough to put Anna on the floor.

At that time, Stephen came into the room and took Samuel to the other room so I could finish getting Caleb and Anna in bed.

Anna was easy. Put pajamas on, find bunny, set her in her crib. Caleb, however, was not happy. There was “bwood” on his bed and he was NOT going to sleep there. You should have seen him flip out when he saw blood on his quilt. (The quilt I made him for Christmas is now a sacred object. Don’t you dare touch that thing unless you’re Caleb!) Thankfully, we discovered it was on Samuel’s quilt, and not Caleb’s, so that disaster was avoided. A Tide stain pen took care of the spot of blood on the sheet. We put Caleb in bed and went to tend to Samuel.

By then the bleeding had stopped. We could tell that the gash on his head wasn’t as deep as we thought. We put a band-aid on it, gave him an ice pack, and turned on some old-fashioned cartoons for him to watch while we kept an eye on him for a while.

This morning he is fine. Changing the band-aid wasn’t that fun since it was stuck in his hair, but the wound looks a lot better. Samuel is already trying to milk the attention for all it’s worth. Smart kid.

Although I was concerned about Samuel, I have to admit that Caleb’s antics really cracked me up. I was telling Stephen about it later and just couldn’t stop laughing about it. Just the way he was running around, yelling about the “BWOOD!!!” gives me the giggles.

I thought last night would be a peaceful, put the kids in bed and relax night. It wasn’t. But I guess that is part of having children, isn’t it?

We discovered today that one of our hens has hatched three chicks. A couple weeks ago, this hen went broody. We figured we might as well let her sit on some eggs, so Stephen put her up in a separate pen and collected eggs from some of the other hens for her to sit on.

We’re not exactly sure when they hatched, but from looking at the chicks it was probably yesterday or the day before. They’re pretty fluffy to have hatched today, but they can’t be much more than 2 or 3 days old. Stephen checks on this hen daily when he feeds the other birds, but today was the first day he noticed the chicks.

The pictures I took really didn’t turn out very well. Those little chicks run so quickly that most of the pictures just have little blurs in them. Here’s a short video clip though. . . My favorite is the grey chick.

While we were outside, we decided to take advantage of the 70* weather. Stephen and I started digging up our strawberries to move them to raised beds. They multiply so quickly. We only got about three feet of one row dug up, but there were enough plants from that to plant two 8×4 raised beds. We’re hoping these raised beds will be better for the berries and will produce a better yield. We’ll see.

It was so beautiful today and it was so nice being outside. I just love this warmer weather we’ve been having!

It feels like I haven’t blogged in forever. Why is it that when you try to stay off the computer to get more done around the house, things like blogging get neglected? That’s ok. I don’t feel bad about that reason.

We’ve been making a few changes around our home. Not a ton, and most aren’t big changes, but changes nonetheless.

One of those changes is how we homeschool. The way we were doing it just wasn’t working. Don’t get me wrong – I love A Beka and the content of their curriculum (and PCC is my Alma Mater, after all). But honestly, I cannot get it to work well for us. The lesson plan books and I just do not get along. Even though it’s mid-year, we’re making some changes with how much we expect Samuel to be able to do in one day, and we’re approaching it in a more laid-back manner. We’ve been using My Father’s World as well this year, and we’ll be leaning more toward that style of schooling than what we’ve been trying to do with the A Beka.

I was so bothered about the way school was going that I ended up meeting with our homeschool association leader about it. Funny thing is, most of the problems causing the stress are my perfectionist nature and that my expectations were too high. It was a humbling discovery. So we’ve pulled back a little bit and so far, things have been going much more smoothly. Interestingly enough, Samuel is doing BETTER on schoolwork now and that is one of the things I wasn’t expecting to see so soon. I am thankful for it though.

Another thing I’m trying is changing how we do laundry. The lady I met with last week is a mom of 7. It was so nice to talk to her about household management – to talk with someone with a bigger family than I have. Wow. It was so nice to get the perspective of someone who is trying to balance most of the same things we are.

So about the laundry. . .we are usually hopelessly behind. I try, but just don’t keep up with it well enough. So now my goal is to do two loads every day. So far it seems to be working well. We’ll see if I can stay caught up, but I hope so!

That’s my boring update. LOL! Not a lot to really blog about, just everyday life and how I’m learning to make household management work better for our family.

Last week God sent an abundance of jewelry orders my way. What a blessing! I took the opportunity to stock up on some sterling silver supplies for new designs.

Yesterday the sterling stamping blanks arrived. I’ve been checking the mail every day for them to get here. They are beautiful, and I am absolutely thrilled to be adding some solid sterling silver layered designs to my shop.

Here’s my newest design – a triple layer sterling silver necklace called Adoption Gift of Love (as always, clicking the picture will take you to that page in the shop).

Adoption Gift of Love Sterling Silver Necklace

Oh – and I started a jewelry blog as well. I wanted to be able to post more updates about my jewelry but didn’t want my blog here to become too inundated with jewelry posts. That blog is at http://hopeofmyheart.com/blog/.