Tennessee pride

Watching Grant march was a blast, having fun with Chelsea and Eva at the game was great.

July Finishes with a Flourish

Emmie decided this was her car and she spent a lot of time relaxing in it during her visit with us.

 Flies are a problem on the Smiley Farm, Maddie teaches Emmie how to swat them.

 July was truly special because Grandpa and Grandma came all the way from Tennessee to visit everyone.

Jack & Maddie are preparing for their swimming lessons.

The LadyBug nesting boxes that Jack, Maddie & Emmie built are doing fine and attacting lots of ladybugs in grandma's garden.

July Fun

 Rock climbing at Morro Beach with Uncle Ryan.

 Emmie wants to look pretty like Auntie Katie

 The best part of camping is roasting marshmellos for S'mores.

Maddie is trying to find the ocean but might be looking through the wrong end of the binoculars.

Other Interesting June Events

 Fun at Pixie Play Land, even though Maddie looks a little apprehensive on the train ride, she enjoyed it.

 Jack & Maddie love flying the airplane, Jack is really good at the controls, getting the plan to go up and down.

 Auntie Katie and Maddie go for a very fast car ride by the candy house.

 GrandBob loves to take everyone out for frozen yogurt, our favorite.

And, of course, we have to play some fun games.

June on the Smiley Farm

The blueberries are ripe in our backyard. Christie shows Emmie what to do and she joins in the fun of eating big, fresh berries.

Our early apricot tree is also ripe. Jack figures out how to pick the beautiful fresh fruit, next year perhaps he will be able to climb the tree.

The sweet cherries are ready for picking, they're a little hard to reach.

GrandBob and Uncle Ryan build Lady Bug houses to hang in the garden.

Newest additions on the Smiley Farm

Whatever can be in this box on Grandma's table?  Little chirping sounds are coming out of the box. Grandma better check the box before Zoey knocks it off the table. Zoey gets overly excited when she hears interesting sounds and she will want to see what is in the box.

 Four little baby chicks! It looks like there are Aracauna chickens in the box. They will lay green eggs when they get to be about a year old. Right now they are about one week old.

The new babies don't have a chicken mother, so grandma will have to take good care of them and give them food and water. Grandma doesn't have wings for the baby chickens to huddle under and keep warm, so she put a infrared warming light in their coop to help them stay warm in the cold nights. The baby chickens have their own coop outside in the chicken house with the big girls. The big girls are very interested in the peeping noises coming from the baby chicken coop, but Grandma cannot let them get near the baby chicks because they are not the mother and they will scare the babies and sometimes will squash them accidentally.

Now the baby chicks need names, who is going to name them?

Grandma the dentist

Did you know Grandma used to work for a Dentist? yep, she did, and she learned the secret about checking loose teeth to see if they are ready to pop out. Grandma just happened to be visiting Jack when his tooth was loose. She had a look and goodness sakes, the tooth just jumped right out of his mouth. Jack was so surprised, he didn't really know his tooth was gone until his tongue felt the big hole.

Jack & Maddie really wanted to make donuts. So, grandma figured out a way to make sugar donuts, they sure were good. Jack ate a few and Maddie ate the frosting, but we had lots of fun.

Events in our yard

Katie helped Grandma harvest the honey from the hive that had died. It was pretty dirty honey, I don't know what was going on with the bees but the honeycombs were filled with bee bread and big hunks of pollen. It took a while for the honey to get strained out.

 Katie was a little afraid of the garbage can bees, the bees were pretty riled up. But she suited up for a picture and then ran down the hill.

The Bee Saga Continues

Well last week a friend of ours gave us a garbage can full of bees. Lucky for us Eric and Katie were visiting because Eric likes bees!  Eric helped GrandBob to open up a garbage can. Quite the excitement, as millions of bees poured out of the can and then flew around our yard quite confusedly. There was a lot of honeycomb in the can but not really too much honey. Eric was pretty lucky because he only got stung one time, a bee snuck up his pants.

 This morning I was up on the hill checking the bees and I noticed that bees were pouring out like liquid from their hive and congregating in front of it. They were flying around in a pretty distinct pattern, which I recognized as a swarm getting ready to fly off. I told GrandBob, but there was nothing we could do to stop our bees from leaving their hive. Luckily we spotted them congregating in a tree behind our fence. We'll keep checking on them to see what they're doing.

Bees

Last week Uncle Ryan and Grandma opened up the beehive, removed the old honey and put a bee phermone into the upper hive. The smell attracts bees to hives, so we are hoping to catch a swarm and have another active hive.

 Well guess what? The phermone did attract a new queen and we got a small swarm inside the hive. Eric shows the bees surrounding the queen on the frame.

 Grandma tells Eric how to remove the clump of bees from the frame and put them into the top of the honey super. It worked, so hopefully the bees will be happy and not leave their new home.

Discovery in the lemon tree

 Grandma decided to prune her lemon tree today. Guess what she discovered hiding way up in the top of the tree? Yes, there was a blue jay's nest.

 She took the nest out of the tree because blue jays are very aggressive, mean birds and they chase all the other birds out out their territory. She doesn't want blue jays in her yard. The blue jays were squawking loudly today telling her not to take away their nest. Inside the nest was 4 beautiful brown/blue eggs.

Zoey had a great day today chasing the chickens. She wishes she could come up to the top of the hill where they were hiding from her.

favorites

Sisters a long time ago have fun together, grow up and more sisters arrive to continue to have fun. One of the sisters used to be a princess when she was little.

Some favorites

 Jack helps grandma feed Zoey.

 Maddie wants to know why grandma is taking her picture.

My goodness, is this Uncle Ryan and Jack and Maddie's mommy? Looks like someone is having a birthday.

Oh the babies

 I wonder which baby is this? GrandBob sure looks young in this picture. What a tiny little baby, the baby looks like a peanut.

 Who is Auntie Katie holding? Someone sure likes to chew their fingers, is this Maddie chewing on her fingers?

 I wonder who is jumping in the jumpie swing? Do you think it is Emily?

Someone does not look happy, I wonder who it is?