Last Days of Summer

Forts

Entrance to the girls Forts.

The "Fire" Place

Rosie's Fort

The Boys' Fort is not on the good old Terra Firma but up in a tree.

Monkey Frodo

Galadriel on the Boys' Fort Ladder

Frodo up in the tree fort. The boys made this by criss crossing branches with the crooks in this double or triple grown tree. Pretty clever.
Bee Keeping

I bought Aragorn a new bee keeping outfit for his Birthday way back when. So, this day he convinced me to wear his old one and go check out the bees.

The Stay Puff Marshmallow Man and the Michelan Man at the beehives.

These bees go in and out of this hole. Interestingly, bees actually have guards at their doors.

Bees forming honey comb.

Not a great pictures but if you enlarge it you can see this layer nearly solid with busy bees.



As you can see some hives are much better than others. These have grown quite a bit already!

This hive was set out right on the path as that is where the swarm was. Since it's doing alright we just left it there.
Long Overdue Picture

Rosie's First Holy Communion was in May but I finally got a picture of her. The dress was made by a friend of mine, it was really beautiful.

I forgot to have her don the gloves though! Bummer!
Bilbo in a Basket

Thumbsucker! He likes to fiddle with a blanket while he sucks his thumbe. 7 out of 9 of our children were thumbsuckers, only Rosie and Merry never sucked a thumb. A note on Thumbsucking: with Pippin I had read that you can wean a baby from his thumb at 6 months so for funsies I tried it. The drawback was he stopped sleeping through the night. There has to be a fine line between being 6m and being 5 years old and stopping the thumb sucking... I always miss that line!

Bilbo really enjoys being utterly spoiled by his siblings, no one minds trying to keep this busy boy a little baby.
Bread, Butter and Jelly

We've been busy making jelly. So far we've done several batches of Apple Jelly and several batches of Plum. Not much beats fresh homemade bread, butter and newly made jelly.

Cider Press

Aragorn came up with the idea to try a cider press (tarnal fool contraption... if you have ever read "Fields of Home" *snicker*) this year since we have so many (ugly) apples.

Sam is really enjoying making cider. I thought it was alright but everyone else really liked it.

Hurricane Bilbo

After ransacking the ziplocs, plastic wrap and tin foil drawer, Bilbo heads for the next handy cupboard.

Babies

Even babies like babies, what is the matter with adults?

School begins full force on Tuesday September 2nd. It'll prove to be a very busy year.... what else is new? But I'd rather be busy with my two hands nearly full than live a dull life without the joy and humor of children!