Our Artist

Kilynn is a very creative girl. She is an artist who works in many mediums. The following are just a few examples that happened to be in my most recent pictures that I just uploaded.

As Kilynn waited for everyone to sit down to dinner, our salad took on new life.

Last year we read a book from the library about making houses for fairies out of things found in nature. Ever since then, she builds fairy houses or fairy gardens wherever we go.

Kilynn and Kiley working hard on a fairy house

Kilynn has always loved to collect flowers, leaves, rocks and petals while on our walks. These treasures are usually passed on to me to hold for her, but lately my hands have been quite full with a baby. Therefore, I started having her carry a basket on our walks to put her things in. When we get home, she likes to dump them out and create something with them. She will often use her treasures to work on her fairy houses, but a couple days ago she made a doll by using one of those balls that grow on Oak Trees for the head, moss for the hair and rose petals for the dress. She laid it out how she wanted it and then directed me on hot gluing it together. Yesterday she decided to decorate our apple tree with Rose petals, Petunias, Cosmos, Dandelions, and Morning Glory. It was beautiful!

That's the other thing she is always doing. Kilynn loves to decorate. Recently she "decorated" the bathroom for me and was very proud of herself. She dumped out everything in two drawers and carefully arranged the contense artfully throughout the bathroom. Headbands hung from the doorknob, the faucets and the light switch. The toilet seat was beautifully lined with flower and bow hairclips, and even the floor was adorned in creatively arranged shampoo bottles and toothpaste tubes. I'm sorry I don't have a picture, but unfortunately it had to be quickly undecorated when visitors showed up at the house so that the bathroom could be functional.

I love this girl and I love how quick she is to notice and appreciate beauty in simple things around her.

Spring Honey Harvest!

Bees are the greatest thing! The more I learn about them the more I think that next to humans, they are the greatest creatures on Earth. They are so sophisticated and complex, AND they make HONEY!
We are starting our third year keeping bees. This first picture was a picture taken last year. I often find Joseph sitting there watching his pet bees. Kilynn counts them as pets, and lately she has been counting her pets as family. There are about 60,000 bees in a healthy hive and we have two of them, so we have a very large family!

We harvested our first honey off the hive last fall and got two gallons. A couple weekends ago, Joseph took eight full frames of Spring honey out of the hive so that we could harvest it and do a taste test to see if it would taste different from the Fall honey. We were able to get two more gallons!

It's amazing to me that the bees can make honey as well as the wax to put over the cells to seal it. Last year Joseph made candles out of the wax. I did not help him because he accidentally burned the wax, the smell of which caused pregnant me to throw up over and over until he finished the project. We will try it again this year.

Frame of capped honey

We use an electric knife that heats so that the wax comes off easily. 

Joseph makes this look easy. It does not look as pretty when I do it.

Next, the frames go into the honey extractor. The frames go in three at a time, get spun around, the honey flips out of the frames and goes down into the barrel. 

Kilynn had the camera from here on out. There were a lot of interesting pictures I had to syphon through, but the whole process was documented pretty well.

I'm not sure what I was doing here, but I thought it was kind of a funny picture. It looks like I'm longing for a taste, but I'm probably trying to smell the honey. To me it had a distinct floral smell! Go figure.

After we have finished spinning all the frames in the extractor, we open up the valve at the bottom and let the honey flow into a strainer over a bucket. The bucket has a valve just like the extractor in the bottom of it.

The strainer catches any pieces of wax, bee parts, etc. 

Open the valve at the bottom of the bucket, and Presto! We have beautiful honey!

Think of all the work the bees put into this honey! One bee produces only about 1/16 of a teaspoon of honey in it's lifetime. We got four of these half gallon jars full.

Back to Blogging

I have decided to get my blog up and running again. I've already done several new posts, so keep scrolling down so you can adore all the pictures of my adorable kids!

The main reason I'm blogging again is for my parent's sake. They are on a two year mission for our church in Vanuatu. Ever Heard of it? It's right here:

Photo taken in the Provo, UT Missionary Training Center

Anyway, I've been pretty good about emailing a weekly letter to them (they have very poor postal service), but emailing pictures, especially large volumes of them (and I like to share lots of pictures) is a pain. It's much easier to share them on a blog.

Here's a quick sampling of the sort of pictures I like to share. Enjoy!

Ezra's Blessing Day

As long as we were going to be in La Grande for Memorial Day weekend, we thought we might as well do Ezra's baby blessing where we'd be around family. Ezra was given a beautiful blessing and then all the family met at the Waite's for a potluck dinner. It was the perfect afternoon sitting in the backyard laughing and talking with family. My brother-in-law Kevin took these pictures for us.

Ezra and Spencer Bradford

Spencer Bradford (2 1/2 mos), Thomas Kerns (3 mos), Ezra Waite (2 mos)
There is one more cousin (Levi Frewing, 4 mos) who is missing in this picture. Ezra is going to have lots of buddies!

Memorial Day Weekend

We took advantage of our longer weekend to travel to La Grande. On Saturday the Fire Department did a "Burn to Learn" on my in-laws old house across the street. Joseph's parents had four children in that little house and then built the house they live in now on the other side of the road. We set up lawn chairs on the other side of the street and watched it go.

It was getting really hot by this point! I had to move because it was too warm where I was across the road.

Kilynn and Kiley holding Ezra and Thomas

These girls dissapeared all day on Sunday playing outside together

Do you think they ever fell asleep?

On Memorial Day we went to Haines for a BBQ with my side of the family. Afterward many of us walked over to the pond to fish.