Don't Worry, Bee Happy

August 22, 2012

My Facebook status earlier tonight:  

Fun at the Fox's.... 13 stings, 5 victims, 3 or 4 hysterical children, about 1,000 bees, 1 cop and 1 mad-as-a-hornet(!) grandpa (Norman D Fox). Maybe I should head back to Idaho.

Junelle Fox Steiner- 6 stings

Ellie Steiner- 3 stings

Levi Nebeker- 2 stings

Rebecca Rae Nebeker- 1 sting

Jim Nebeker- 1 sting

Hysterical children- Ellie and Levi, of course, and Abby and Gabe. Abby was laughing (nervously) Gabe was distressed and over-wrought with the ambient screaming and telling Abby it wasn't funny!

I'm so rattled I almost dated this 19-something or other!! 

My family arrived at my parents' home today for a visit.  My sister Junelle and her family are here too.  After dinner the kids were outside playing.  A couple of the kids were up in the tree house.  We've noticed that there were some bees* around that tree but it didn't seem too bad.  "Don't bother them and they won't bother you."  Yeah, right.

Junelle heard her 4-year-old daughter, Ellie, scream.  She figured, "Great, she got stung." So she went out to help her.  Ellie was up in the tree house accompanied by my four-year-old Levi.  Ellie was SCREAMING and stamping and flailing her arms around.  June climbed up the ladder to coax her down and realized that there were bees swarming all around her head.  She didn't want to climb all the way up and into the tree house and then have to climb all the way down holding Ellie.  (It's a steep ladder)  Somehow, she got Ellie out of the tree house and the two of them ran screaming (both of them) for the patio.  June had bees in her shirt and ended up with 6 stings on her torso, head, and ear.  Ellie had 3 stings on her arms.  Meanwhile, my Levi was at the other exit, a fire pole.  Jim was at the base and told Levi to just jump.  He did.  Right into his daddy's arms.  Levi ended up with a sting on the inside of his upper arm and one on his scalp.

While this was in progress, I was in the house with baby Sarah.  I knew that Ellie had been stung and I was hollering directions to someone to get the Benedryl that I had brought along.  I saw that eight-year-old Gabe, Ellie's older brother, was pretty much hysterical with worry over his mom and sister.  I stepped outside to see what was going on and found my six-year-old Abby nervously laughing and Gabe hollering that THIS ISN'T FUNNY!!  I felt kind of stuck with Sarah sleeping in my arms and I asked Rebecca to go to him.  She brought him into the house and sat down with him on her lap.  Pretty quickly she realized that she had a couple of hitchhikers on her and she unseated Gabe as she stood up.  She brushed off the two bees and sent them flying around the INSIDE of the house.  I didn't even realize that she had been stung at first.  She controlled herself very well.  She didn't want to upset Gabe even more.  Jim and I grabbed flyswatters and went bee hunting.  I got one and the other one disappeared.  I think it may have flown out the open screen door.

Pretty quickly it was calm again.  I think the entire episode lasted about five minutes.  My dad looked like he wanted to throttle some bees.  Rick, June's husband, went to the store in search of bee spray.  I doled out Benadryl and pain reliever.  Mom got the Bactine.  It was fun.

Rick came back later with some spray that he got from a neighbor because the store he went to was all out.  In the dark Jim and Rick went out with a flashlight and a can of spray to kill bees.  They returned. Rick with an empty can and Jim with a sting on his back.  Total sting count 13.

Junelle- 6

Ellie- 3

Levi- 2

Rebecca- 1

Jim- 1

The cop I mentioned in my status is completely unrelated to this incident.  I just included it because it did happen tonight as well and including it sounded more exciting. :)  The story there is that one of the houses next to my parents' is vacant so Jim parked ClifFORD the big red van in the driveway of the empty house.  At one point tonight Jim went out to the van to get something and noticed that someone was taking down our license plate number and then went up to the front door and appeared to be keying in information on a cell phone.  Jim decided to move the van.  A half-hour later or so, a cop showed up at the door saying that someone called and reported suspicious activity at that house.  The caller said that he'd seen the van parked there a number of times.  Whatever.  We parked there when we visited here a month ago and we parked here tonight.  The cop seemed like he thought it was pretty silly and he left.

All in all, it's been a weird night.  Thankfully everyone seems okay.  Don't worry, bee happy!!

Link to original post and comments: 
https://www.facebook.com/notes/10220640048564166

Time is Relative

12-year-old Abby while shopping for new shoes today (completely seriously): "These look like they're from the olden days....like the 90s."

Me: "Ummm, Rebecca and Micah [older siblings] were both BORN in the 90s..."

Abby: "Okay, 80s."

FIFO in the Bible?

Adam just came to me tonight with some biblical support for my FIFO rule. Then he walked away quoting me under his breath, "Put the new milk in the back of the fridge and make sure the older stuff is in front of it."

"You shall eat old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new."
Leviticus 26:10 ESV

What I Found Was LOST

The postman left a package on my doorstep. When I went out to see what it was, what I found was LOST.

Bustin' his britches

My husband, Jim, works really hard so I was happy to accomodate him this morning when he called from work and asked for a special delivery. The kids and I went to his workplace this morning to take him a pair of pants. He had a wardrobe malfunction! He has had a small rip by his back pocket and at work this morning he bent over and the pants gave way! When I showed up, he was wearing his t-shirt and jeans with a flannel shirt tied around his waist which was exactly how I envisioned I would find him!! :-)

Thanks, honey, for working so hard for our family.

Adam-isms

Tonight while I was gone at a church function, Jim was home with the kids. He heard Abby screaming and hollering in the living room. When he went in there to see what was happening he saw Adam lying on his back on the couch with Abby lying on her back on top of him. Adam had his arms and legs wrapped around her, restraining her. Jim asked what in the world was going on and Adam replied, "Abby was doing bad stuff and I am taking her sin away."

Apparently Abby didn't want her sin taken away. Sometimes it's hard to let go of our sin, isn't it?!

There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. Prov. 16:25

(Near as Jim could reconstruct, Abby's sin was standing up on the arm of the couch and turning the light off and on. Thanks, Adam, for keeping her from hurtling to the ground!)

peanut butter, paws, & predicaments

Updated*

Okay, Internet, I've got a question for you.

First I have to tell you that I've been doing a pretty good job of transforming my life into a frugal lifestyle. Okay...I've made a few positive changes. Not a major transformation, yet. But it's happening. It's mostly in my head but a frugal lifestyle IS mostly about attitude and how you view life. To quote the DeputyHeadmistress in her latest article on the new Frugal Hacks website,

"the most important frugal tool you have is the way you think about things. All the frugal buys in the world won’t help us live within our means until we change the way we think about what we need and what we want."

So, to get to the point, I bought a new jar of peanut butter. We had used it once. It was left on the table after breakfast (we gotta have peanut butter on our pancakes!), and the @#^!%$& cute, loveable cat got to it.

Here's the question: What would you do? Go ahead and vote. I've already made my decision. I'll tell you what I did later.




*For some reason when I posted this voting thingie, a strange color bar appeared at the top and bottom of my blog. I don't like that color! It doesn't belong but I can only make it disappear when I remove this post. Strange! I guess it will just have to stay there until this post is archived unless someone out there can tell me how I can fix it....

Psalm 23 - Surely??

Hat tip to KimC @ Life In A Shoe.

What it did after we put up our pool

The day after. Of course!

It's the last day of school

The last day of homeschool IS rather anti-climactic! But we're all glad it's here. Micah is finished with the 3rd grade and Rebecca is finished with the 5th grade. Seems amazing to me. I can still remember her first day of kindergarten... "Mom, this is more fun than I hoped it would be!" Her attitude has changed since then but she is still a delight and I couldn't ask for a better student in my sweet son, Micah. It's been a rough, but great year. I'm looking forward to the next one.