Beez - Save The Pollinators

Armed with a sweatshirt and epi-pen, My sis-in-law, Julie, and I drove up to Whittier last night to pick me up a beehive. With all of the bottle brush bushes and pepper tree in the back yard, I have a ton of bees anyways. They always mind their own business and stay up in the trees, occasionally dipping in the pool for a drink. So I figured, why should I not benefit from the fruits of their labor and get a beehive of my own? Bees are dying in alarming numbers and are essential to our food production. So being a responsible citizen... I am doing all I can.... for all of you.....so you can continue to eat your strawberries and oranges....You're Welcome!
Julie has had 2 hives for a year. Her first swarms ran away and she is now on her second set. She attends beekeeping meetings and has all of the gear to handle them. So, lucky me, she is going to look after them for me and teach me all I need to know about bees. I look forward to lots of honey in the fall....with alot of luck and no problems from the nudist neighbors whose side of the house the hive is on.

Grunion Run

Last week we decided to re-arrange the house and switch Reed & Ashley's bedrooms. So after a full day of painting, shopping and moving furniture to the point of exhaustion, I couldn't think of anything more I wanted to do than go down to the beach and wait for 3 hours to see fish mating on the sand. Allegedly, the fish only come up at certain points in the lunar cycle. And they are quite smart because they send "scouts" to go up on the beach and check things out to see if it is safe to come ashore to lay/fertilize their eggs. If the scouts get "spooked" or don't come back.... the whole group waits off shore until it is safe. So we arrived around 10:00 on Saturday night, going on the notion that the rangers said the fish should "run" around 10:30. Welllllll..... everyone else showed up too. And if you shine your flashlight on a scout fish or pick one up, the rest of the fish won't come until it is safe. So we had to wait for all of the idiots with flashlights to get impatient and leave before the groups of fish started to come ashore....this was about 3 long, freezing hours. Around 12:15 am the larger groups started coming in. The kids made it perfectly clear that they were tired, cold and could care less about all of the fish so we went home around 12:20. I can't help but think if we waited another 1/2 hour we would have seen millions of fish on shore. But you know what they say....."once you've seen one fish have sex, you've seen them all".

Dana Point Pictures

We took the kids to Dana Point in April and took a few pictures while we were down there. I think they all came out really cute. It goes to show, when you plan outfits, and do hair and make preparations and fret about pictures, it makes no difference. Just go somewhere and take some pictures and they will come out better than if you planned it.

Tanaka Farms 2010

Heidi made her annual preschool pilgrimage to the strawberry farm this week. She was fed vegetables that were pulled from the ground as she sat on a wagon pulled by a tractor. She was given a plastic container to put strawberries in that she picked and she filled it so full, she couldn't fit the lid on. And since she could eat all that she wanted while she picked, every time I looked at her, she had a strawberry stem sticking out of her mouth.

California Homework

This is no joke. Emily came home with homework yesterday that had the following questions on it:

1. If Meg smokes 4 cigarettes a day, and has 3 packs of cigarettes, how long will it be before she runs out.
2. Joe needs to buy 6 cartons of cigarettes. If a carton is $24.59, how much money will he need?

I couldn't believe it! I tried to change the homework to refer to pieces of gum, but then gave up and told her she did not have to do it, despite her need to work on math.

I called Dan and started reading off the homework and he thought I was joking. Now the point of the homework at the top was that "Smoking is bad for your health and expensive". Dan said why don't our schools take it further? If they want to get the point across they could have the children figure out the following questions:

1. Joey wants to kill 7 of his classmates, how many clips will he need if his gun holds 20 rounds each?
2. Juanita wants to get an abortion. She has $156 dollars saved and can borrow $200. How much total will she have?
3. Jerome needs 7 grams of herion. He has $80. How much more will he need?

NO WONDER OUR SCHOOLS ARE FAILING!

Accident on our street II

Monday Reed called us on his phone on the way to school and told us there was an accident 2 houses up the street. Sure enough, there was a "little yellow bus" ;) that had been rear-ended by a teenager. 15 minutes later the Highway Patrol showed up (don' t know why it wasn't the city police... maybe the speeds that people go up and down the street qualify us for "highway patrol status".) and 5 minutes after that the Firemen and Ambulance came. I don't think anyone was hurt, but if someone can't stop for a bright yellow/orange bus that is stopped at the end of the street, I think we still have a speeding problem on our street. Gee....the big white numbers 2-5- that were sprayed in the street by the city council hasn't helped......

TLC for Ruckus

Sometimes, after the kids have gone to school and the house is quiet, I will go into the kitchen to clean up after breakfast and see Ruckus in this position. I don't think he can tuck himself in...so I figure he must like it because he will be there hours after everyone has left.

Easter Weekend 2010

Easter weekend was really fun this year. Our friends, Mike, Erin, Kayla & Brooke Johnson. Came south for the week from Sacramento. The weather was nice so we hit the beach the day before Easter. We then came back to our clubhouse to wash off all the sand in their pool since it was heated, and ours wasn't. We had a little BBQ and came home to dye Easter eggs. The Johnsons had to take off early in the morning so we spent Easter morning eating candy and searching for eggs by ourselves. The bunny lives!