Moving to a new home....

Did I scare you? I'm not referring to us moving. Just my horses! My sister, however, did move to Idaho recently. We have been keeping our horses out at her house in Lakepoint, (near Tooele), for the past couple of years. When she moved, we had to find a new place for them. Now they are a lot closer, just off of 5600 West and 3500 South. It only takes me 5 minutes to get there as opposed to 25. My dad drove out to Lakepoint twice a day most days to feed them! I wonder how much he spent on gas these past couple of years.
Here's a picture of one of the last days they spent in Lakepoint. Honeybear is the sorrell on the left, she's lost a lot of weight this past winter, we're trying to get her weight back up before we sell her.

One of the last evenings spent there:

Here are the kids playing in the hay shed.


Dad loading Brandy in the trailer:



Dad & Asia:


Me & Rosey:



The girls and their cousin on Asia at the new place!


They even have baby goats there, SO cute!


And this is what Ryker was doing when I was helping my dad string some barbed wire up:



I'm excited about this new place. There's LOTS of trees to shade the horses, and it will be easier to get over there and ride more often. At my sister's we could just saddle them up and ride up the mountain, so we'll miss that, but you can't always have your cake and eat it too, I guess.

Bee update....

So here's an update on the bee thing. I called the bee guy Sunday morning since he apparently never made it over to get them Saturday evening. He told me he drove around on Saturday for 4 hours looking for my house and couldn't find it. Poor guy! I felt bad. So I met him at Harmons and guided him to my house.
The first thing he did was spray the bees with sugar water to keep them "busy". He didn't even put his protective stuff on to do that! Crazy.

Then he put the box under the bees (after he put on his bee hat & gloves of course), and shook it off the branch. You should have heard the buzzing! It was creepy. I have a video of it, but I couldn't post it on blogger for some reason. It's not working!


After he shook it off, he stood here for a while with the lid propped open. The bees go in the box to be with the queen. Isn't he a cute old man? He was so nice. :)


Then he safely got to the ground, set the box down, swept some of the bees into the box, then propped the lid open with his broom, and we watched for about 10 or 15 minutes as most of the bees went into the box. It was pretty cool. At this time I was outside with him, asking him all kinds of questions, like "where do I get a hat like that?" and "what's the purpose of yellowjackets, hornets, and wasps?" He said they do pollinate, but that's about it. He owns beehives and lives in Magna. This hive only weighed 4 pounds or so, but he said he once got one that weighed 17 pounds!

Most of the bees went in the box, but he said not all of them will. He said the remainders would hang out for a while, then go back to where they came from. I said "If they don't, I'll be calling you again!" Now the remaining stragglers are clinging to the branch again, and I'm hoping they'll leave soon. I went out there earlier today to check them out. Then I was in my car driving someone home, and there was a bee crawling on my skirt! I freaked out a little bit. I still feel like they're crawling all over me.

Bye bye Beeezzzz!

Buzz Buzz Buzzzzzz

So, I'm in the kitchen this afternoon, minding my own, when I notice a little girl looking out her window in the house behind mine. Then I see a WHOLE bunch of something flying around in the air in their yard. My first thought was grasshoppers, since I heard about an invasion of them down in Lehi recently. Then I remembered grasshoppers don't fly. I looked around, and they were only flying in that one yard, but there were THOUSANDS of them. I realized they were bees, and then I thought, "KILLER BEES! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" Check out this picture:

There were so many, I almost started to panic. What was going on? I called Kevin upstairs to see this strange phenomenon. He, of course, was pretty calm about the whole thing, but I was kinda freaking out. Asking him, "Well, what are they doing? Why are they here? What are they going to do next?"
He just said, "I don't know, that's wierd" and went back downstairs to do whatever it is he was doing.


I tried to just get back to baking my cookies, but couldn't stop thinking they were going to break down the door and kill us all. I kept my eye out the window. But pretty soon, the numbers seemed to dwindle. I thought, "Oh good, they're going away to the next yard." But I noticed the remaining bees were just hovering around a certain tree in our back yard.


Then, I noticed a big black spot in the tree:




I finally was brave enough to go outside and take a closer look to whatever the heck they were doing. What in the world?



I called Kevin back upstairs and what does he do? He decides to take the super-zoom lens and get right at the base of the tree for some close ups. Eeewww! I get the heebie-jeebies just looking at this.




So, I called animal services, and they're closed on Saturdays. Their message says, "for an animal emergency, call police dispatch at this number" so I called the number and said I had a bee problem, then they referred me to some bee specialist. The bee man sounded like a sweet old man, and he said he's been dealing with bees for years. He said he'd come later after it cools off, and shake them off into a box. I failed to ask him where he was going to take the bees. But he said they were honey bees, so I'm assuming he won't kill them. We were gone all evening and I told him he was more than welcome to just let himself into the back yard and get them. He said he'd come over. But I just went outside, (it's close to midnight), and the bees are still there! It's so creepy! But kinda cool at the same time. I figured it's too late to call him now. Maybe in the morning they'll fly away, maybe into one of your yards! He said they'd just be there for the night, then fly away the next day. It's just normal honey-bee behavior. I've never seen anything like this before.

Happy Birthday Kevin!

Well, this post is 4 days late, but on June 19, Kevin turned 32! We were at a friends cabin for the weekend. This is his FAVORITE dessert: the "Better Than You-Know-What" cake, with walnut crust, pudding, whip cream, coconut, etc.
Happy Birthday, honey! I love you! And you only get better-looking every year that you get older :)

FREE Online Class!

I am SO excited about this! I'm spreading the word to anyone who wants to learn more about digital scrapbooking. Click here to go to her website!

Bee-A-Reader

At Bailee's school, they have a program called Bee-A-Reader. Throughout the year, she has read 20 minutes a day (or more) to earn a prize each month. Today was the end-of-year assembly, where she earned her certificate and medal for reading the required minutes each month. She's SUCH a great reader now!! I can't believe she's finishing Kindergarten and going on to First Grade. I'm so glad she loves to read as much as she does. She is such a smart little cookie!
Congrats, Bailee!!

Dance Recital

The girls had their Spring Dance Recital a couple of weeks ago. Bailee danced to "Under the Sea", and Trinidee danced to "Good Morning". They both did so good! They both want to take a break from dance now, so we're not going to put them back in this next year. It will be a nice break for me too! Wednesdays were getting so crazy running them back and forth, with Kev having scouts, and me having Young Womens.
It will also be nice to save that money each month. I'm sure I'll put them back into something later, whether it be dancing, gymnastics, piano, karate, soccer, or whatever they seem to want to do. For now, we'll take a break.

Tickets, anyone??

Okay, I've learned my lesson. This year, Kevin & I bought tickets to the Jonas Brothers/Stadium of Fire/SheDaisy concert, with no intention of going. My niece and her friends are going, so Kevin, his brother, and I all bought tickets at the same time, and they'd just take the best seats out of all the tickets we purchased. I thought the concert would sell out quickly, and I could sell my remaining unused tickets for a profit.

Well, that's not happening. For some reason, it didn't sell out quickly, and the demand for tickets is really low. What's going on? Must be the economy.

So I've got a total of 12 tickets sitting here, and I won't even be in Utah for the 4th of July.
I've got a set of 8 tickets: Section 23, Row 34, Seats 9-16.
I've got a set of 4 tickets: Section 136, Row 15, Seats 17-20.

I'm selling them for $50 a piece, which is less than I paid for them. Again, I've learned my lesson and won't ever try to scalp tickets again! I just want to get at least some of our money back. If you are interested in any of these tickets, leave me a comment, or e-mail me at tiachap@yahoo.com. It should be a spectacular night!

Why socialism won't work.....

My cousin put the following on our family website recently. I liked it so much that I thought I'd share it on my blog:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Pre-trek

Last weekend, Kevin & I were able to go on a "pre-trek" with all of the ma's and pa's, and some of the other leaders that will be going on our real trek July 8. I decided to only post one picture, because I don't want to spoil any of the surprises for the youth! We had a fun time, despite the wind. It did rain at night, but it was after we were all snug in our sleeping bags, so we didn't get wet. I'm really looking forward to the trek in July, it's going to be a wonderful experience!

Oquirrh Temple

We were able to take the youth in our ward to the Oquirrh Temple open house yesterday. It's such a BEAUTIFUL temple! I'm so thankful to live close to so many beautiful temples!


And afterwards we saw these cute little duckies! They were adorable.

My New Niece, Maci Kate Chapman-

My sister Brianne and her husband, Kyle (Kevin's brother), had their 3rd child 10 days ago. They have 2 boys, and now they have a cute little girl!! They let me take her pictures today. She's a doll!