What's Goin' On?

As summer starts to draw to a close, I've found myself really focusing on getting things prepared for the fall. Heavy duty house cleaning, organizing, school shopping, yard maintenance... it's all part of what I do in preparation for the changing seasons, which I love. The other motivator is that my aunt and uncle are usually here for a visit this time of year and this weekend was no exception. It was a nice visit with my parents and my aunt and uncle but getting ready for a house full of people always pushes me into a cleaning frenzy. It's nice though to have it done! It is pretty funny though because it's so not a necessary frenzy. Here's Karleigh learning how to play uno with my aunt...Oh! But Jim has been on bee patrol like nobodies business. It has to be a horrible bee year as most of our local stores are totally sold out of the spray so he's been frequenting the local farm supply store... which we should be doing anyway! Plus, my uncle is allergic so Jim went around last week and made sure to knock down and spray every nest that he was able to find and then put up a bee trap. The bee trap got really full, really fast so we kept looking. We found one nest in the ground near the driveway and he sprayed and dug that one up. Then we found another one in the field right on the edge of the yard... he sprayed and dug that one up. Then my dad spotted a hornet's nest essentially right in the lilac bushes in the yard... he sprayed and knocked that one down. That nest was about the size of a soccer ball, plus there was a paper wasp nest basically built on the top of grass stalks in the upper field that he sprayed. He has gone through 10 cans of bee spray in the last week. Insane. My dad, my uncle and I all got stung but none of us seriously. We all got a sharp poke but it's like the bees were just being annoying and not really serious about it. Strange, I know. Not sure what the point of that even was other than just some more, what's going on here! :)

Life with Max, Maxwell, Max-a-doodle, Maximilian, Maxamoose is getting so much better. He is such a great puppy, well behaved, calms down easily, listens, is a fast learner... he's really great. He had so much fun with Jacksi, my parents' lab, over the weekend. It was good for him to be around her and get a bit nippy with her because she was quick to let him know when enough was enough and his puppy nippy is even less than it was before! He's such a good addition to the family and we're so glad that we got him.

What else? Karleigh will, for sure, be in afternoon kindergarten in a few weeks. She'll be able to catch the bus right at the driveway and will only have to be on it for about 20 minutes as opposed to last years route where it would have been closer to 55 minutes. I'm getting a little bit nervous about it but she's so excited and that's great. Her assessment is on Wednesday and our school shopping is almost all done, just need to get shoes for her crazy, little skinny feet!

So, that's pretty much what we've been up to over the last couple weeks while I've been a total blog slacker. :)