Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day! I have the best Mom in the world! I didn't get to hug her yesterday, but we talked on the phone for a few minutes. I love her more every year! You're The Best mom! I love you!

Mother's Day was really wonderful for me this year! Each of my children made me a thoughtful card! I loved their words of gratitude and admiration. And Zach and Ry each made me service coupons, Ry's had a little twist that was the BEST EVER! Every time I use the service card he will replace it with another identical card, and they are "do my chores as soon as you ask" and "help you in the garden for 15 minutes"...the boy knows his mother:). Also, last week the kids worked hard to help with cleaning our home, even more than normal, as my mother's day gifts. Ryon worked his tail off doing odd jobs around the house on Saturday. He even re-plumbed my garden water, so I can water the far corners of the garden with grey water, now! :) What a great gift! I heard in an insightful talk at church, a grown daughter said her mother always told her kids, I want a clean house and no fighting for my mother's day gift. What a universal desire for mothers! Although, I didn't think about the no fighting part, I sure thought a lot about the clean house part! But next year I know exactly what my request will be:).

Yesterday, our honey bees arrived. Andrew and I dawned our bee keepers' suits and rubber gloves and boots and helped with the installation. It was exciting to see everything that was going on (a fun Mother's Day activity). It was a lot hotter here than where they came from, so we lost a lot (probably about 100,000 bees). You can see the huge PILE of dead bees in the bottom middle picture. That was reproduced in front of all six hives. We are hopeful that at least a few of the hives will take, but there are no guarantees. The queens all lived threw the ordeal, so that's very hopeful! I went out to check on them this morning and there are bees going in and out of one hive, it's so hard for me to not be able to see what is going on inside the hive! I will learn to be patient one of these days. The queen cages will be removed on Wednesday, and then we'll get to see what each hive has been up to.