Mother's Day Tea

In 1999, Stephanie, Amy and Tracy took their mothers too tea for Mother's Day. We had such a good time, that we have carried on the tradition for many years. This year was our 10th tea. Several years ago we went to a tea flower shop in Glendora, that had a little tea room in the back. They had a tea journal on the shelf that we bought and wrote in that year which has become part of the tradition. It is such a blessing to go back and see who was at each tea, and all the wonderful things everyone has to say each year.

Stephanie and Ellie (Tracy's sister-in-law and niece). Ellie finished sewing this purse just moments before we left for the tea. She told her mommy where she wanted the Eiffel Tower and the clouds on the handle. Sh behaved like such a little lady.

What's this you ask? I love how they are so creative. This is a little piece of watermelon cut out to look like a tea pot.

Happy May Day!

On May Day, the Holladay's have a tradition. Early in the morning, someone places flowers on the front porch, rings the doorbell and then goes and hides. This year, Lacey and Rob came out from Missouri with John David and placed him on the porch with the flowers, as a surprise for mom. Peter and I had the privilege of going out with them the night before, but we had to keep it a secret from mom until the next day. Isn't he a cutie!!!

Rob, Lacey and John David at Outback.

I love this one!

Here we all are. I wish we had the waitress clear the plates before she took the picture.

Sunday, we all got together at mom and pop's for dinner. Gregory is having fun, but I'm not so sure about John David. We all had a great time, got some family pictures taken too.

Work Day

We decided to turn our bee removal day into a work day. Since Peter was already on the roof, he decided to go ahead and remove some of the branches that were hanging over the house too. The fire martial always reminds us to keep the house clear, so that's what we did for the rest of the day.

Branches beside the front porch.

Peter on the roof cutting down branches.

Branches in front of the porch. Too bad I didn't get an after shot so you could see how much better it looks with all of them gone. ;)

Honey and branches. The side of the house looks much better now...trust me. We also did a lot of work in the back of the house, pulling weeds, etc. Peter had the weeder on the hill and cleared away most of the stuff there.
Whew!!! That wore us out!

Bee Gone! I Say!!!!!

The bee guy was gonna charge us an arm and a leg to remove the hive, so we decided to do it ourselves. Here is the place where the panel was that you could see the honeycomb behind. Peter took off that panel and started to remove the honey from there. He soon realized there was much more than we thought so he went up on the roof.

Peter attempted to scrape the honeycomb off the roof here, but decided he would have more success if he took off that part of the rood instead...so that's what he did.

WOW!!! Can you bee-lieve all that?!
I love how the honeycomb is lined up in rows like that. I had no idea it would look like that. I guess i don't know enough about bees and their hives. Towards the right, you can see where they built some new comb, but hadn't started to use it yet. This is such a beauty, and a wonder, that I almost hate to see it go. But we were warned that if we didn't remove it, we would get all kinds of critters looking to get at that honey.

This is the after shot...hive removed.

Can you believe all the bees here? WOW!

Here's what's left of the hive. But the bee guy said we needed to remove all the honey and the hive. The bees can smell the pheromones so bees from another hive may come and work on it here it we don't get rid of in all and seal up the holes.
Here's a piece of the new stuff that we kept for a souvenir.

Now that it's all piled up on the floor, it doesn't look so impressive. Kinda sad really.

Couple's Retreat

Here is the one and only picture we got from the couple's retreat. We had thought about going on the men's and women's retreats with our church, but when we heard they had one for couple's...

We left for Venture on Friday and came home on Sunday. Behind us there is the pier, and the restaurant is Eric Erickson's. On our way out on Sunday we went to the harbor to Andria's. This is a really good little fish and chips place...very popular. It's the type of place where you wait in line to order and they call out your number...I guess that sounds like fast food, but it didn't seem like that. It was very good.

We learned a lot at the retreat and had a blast. The speaker was pastor Philip DeCourcey, the former pastor of PBC. He talked about the roles we have as husband and wife, the importance of communication, and things to watch for that can break it down, and many other very helpful subjects. Peter and I were volunteered for a game called the shoe game. The couples sit back to back and swap a shoe so you each have one of your shoes and one of you spouses shoes in each hand. Then they ask questions and you have to guess how your spouse will respond. "who is the better driver" for example. You hold up the shoe of the person you think is the better driver and hope they agree. It was a blast! We actually got pretty far being newlyweds. We had a great time all weekend and met several new people. It was great to be back in church the following Sunday and see many of the couples we met at the retreat.

Bee Gone!

This may be a bit morbid, but we were glad to see that the bee spray was working. He did say to give it 5 days, so we will see how things are when we get back. We are going on a couple's retreat with our church this weekend. We are so looking forward to it.