catching up- an anniversary, bees SOS and a new car

so much has happened this week i've just been running to keep up. so here's a quick run-down.

first, sunday was mine and baldman's 6th wedding anniversary. we were fortunate to be invited to a little lady's first year birthday party in greenville. so we got to share our anniversary with the dells who were celebrating their 12th wedding anniversary.

this is pretty much what we did most of that day.

though, baldman, dogwood dell, brian and sean did get up for a little to play a good round of redneck golf. brian and sean were the victors by a close margin.

then, of course, the bee problem. i left my readers hanging on this one. so last week i had a few folks from midstate beekeeping association come out and look at the hive. we're still not really sure exactly what happened. but we do know that we do not have a queen and that we have a few egg-laying workers. this is a problem for many reasons, one of which is that a worker can only lay unfertilized eggs, which produce only male bees (drones). so the population will decline and eventually just die off.

so wednesday night, mr. frank, my teacher from the class, came to pick up my hive and bring it back to his house. now the problem is to get the egg-laying workers to get out of my hive. if he introduces a new queen into the hive the workers would kill her. so he has taken all of my bees and frames out of the hive. he is going to put some of his bees and frames with larvae into my hive and introduce a new queen. once he knows that the queen is accepted and laying eggs, he will then try to get some of my old bees into my hive. the hope is that the egg-laying workers will not return. so he will keep my hive at his place for about a week to watch it and make sure that everything goes okay.

i feel so badly that we've had to get someone else to bail us out. but on the other hand, i'm just not at the skill level yet to work all this out. so i'm treating it like i've called a doctor to fix it and hopefully i will be able to take it over from here. i owe so much to the folks at MBA. they're the best!!

and lastly, we bought a car! a new car! what what?!! after the wreck a month ago we've been borrowing a car from some very generous friends. that, of course, couldn't be a permanent solution. so once baldman lightened his workload* we could concentrate on researching and test-driving several cars. it was a really tough choice. we knew we wanted a 4-door hatch-back. and there are a lot of really good, inexpensive cars out there right now. in the end is was a choice between the 2009 vw rabbit or the 2009 subaru impreza. wednesday night we ended up purchasing the impreza. the decision-maker was that there were very few 4-door rabbits left in the country, let alone our area, and their financing deals weren't really great. so wednesday we signed the paperwork and then thursday we were able to pick up our car and drive it home (the one we wanted had to be shipped from charlotte). here she is:







ain't she a beauty!!?


*i know i should do a whole post on this and not just an aside at the bottom of another post. (bad wifey!) but baldman has officially finished all of his coursework and internship to complete his masters! he'll be graduating in about a week. i'm so proud of him! he has worked so hard and has been so diligent. he's truly an inspiration. plus, he's already gotten a job. did i mention that? hence, the ability to buy the new car!