Tractors

I don't understand the allure of tractor pulls. Must be a country thing.  But the kids liked it.  Lots of neat older tractors at least.

Home Depot Workshop

If you have never taken your kids to one of the Kids Workshops at Home Depot, you really need to change that.  These wonderful program provide young children with a chance to build a real wood project all on their own.  Or with minimal help from an adult or older sibling.  Even better, they are totally free.

Today I took Katie, Kieran and Liam and they all built their own pencil holders.  When you show up alone with 3 kids, they even send over one of the folks who works at the store to help out which is rather nice. The projects are easy enough for these three kids to honestly do them on their own with a little guidance and some help every so often pulling out nails that went in crooked.  We have taken younger kids but they require a bit more help so unless both parents are going, we tend to stick with the 5 and up crew.  I believe the workshops are aimed at kids from ages 5 to 10 or so but I've never seen them turn away a child who was slightly older or younger.   Everyone had a blast and is looking forward to going again next month.

Bee Hive

Upon further inspection, we believe these pesky suckers are hornets. Someone will be by tomorrow to remove them for us.  At least the nest is on the back half of the property and not too close to the house.


While taking a walk this evening I discovered a rather large bee hive nestled in one of our pine trees.   Thankfully it does not appear to be a wasp nest which was my first thought since we have those all over the yard.  Not quite as prevalent this year as in the past but the kids have been stung often because the wasps like to make nests under the swingset slide.

Now we have the question of what to do about it. With wasps the answer is easy.  With what might be honey bees, the answer is a tad more complicated.  This may be the answer to why our fruit crop seems so abundant this year.  We should be able to teach our kids to avoid it but not guaranteed since boys are curious creatures.

One or two stings is not really a big deal.  But more would be.  And we do have other kids over often enough to be concerned just in case.  I imagine I'll likely be calling a bee keeper to come remove the hive.  Hopefully that can done without disturbing the bees too much.

Robert

He loves the water table but hates the bathtub.

He's old enough to enjoy his own ice cream cone.

He loves to explore the yard.

He loves to read books.