Go Bananas!

The new things that Isaac comes up with every day never cease to amaze me. Daddy had to work late one day this week, so Isaac decided he'd do the talking at dinner so it wouldn't be so quiet. He told me every time that he ate a grape and he also informed me that he was only going to eat the cracker topping off the casserole. The fun started when I decided to give him a banana to top off his meal. I cut a small piece off of a banana from the fridge and handed it to him. He first informed me, "mama, banana cold!". Then he went on to tell me that it was "ice cream" and he began to lick the top of the banana like an ice cream cone! He's got an imagination already! I'm SO excited!! He then decided he'd use his fork to "open it" and eat it in two pieces. At this point, I said "Isaac, are you silly or what?" He proceeded to inform me "or what mama!". Here he is working on his banana. I sure do love my little boy!

Putt Putt Golf

For my birthday this weekend, we took Isaac to play putt putt for the first time at Adventure Landing. He was all too excited to get out of the truck to go see the giant giraffes and elephants that lined the course. We got him his own special little plastic club and he seemed pretty interested in the game right from the start. He watched me putt my ball down to the first hole and then into the cup. Then he came running down to the hole with his club in hand, reached into the hole and pulled out the ball, stopped to smile at me, and then turned and threw my ball right into the pond! Then he looked back at Brian and I like "what next?" It was too funny. He did eventually get to the point of understanding that you were supposed to putt the balls before you throw them, but Brian and I spent most of the game chasing after golf balls bouncing along the pathways and into the bushes. I have to say though that it was pretty fun.

I can't upload videos with this computer, and I really wish I could for this picture. It took him about 5 throws to get the ball to stay in this hole. He just kept throwing it too hard and it would bounce out. He was so annoyed, but it was so funny!

Isaac loves playing sports, but his first love is still the animals. He loved visiting with Mr. Elephant.

Fun in the Tub

Isaac's favorite place in the house to play is in the garden tub in our bedroom. This works out well when Brian and I are trying to get ready to go somewhere, but on other days we have to keep the bathroom door shut to keep him out of there. This weekend was no exception. Isaac was in the bathtub playing with his ducks and a ball. Then he climbed out to get my hairbrushes off the counter. I was busy taking the laundry between the bedroom and the closet (walking through the bathroom to do so) and happened to walk through just as he dropped his screwdriver over the side of the tub. He says "uh-oh mama!" and of course wanting to save the day "I say don't worry, I'll get it." And that's when it happened! I leaned over to reach into the tub to get the screwdriver, lost my balance and fell in. I'm laughing hysterically, Isaac is looking at me like I'm nuts, and in comes Brian to see what's going on. He of course, grabs the camera as soon as he realizes I fell. So, here is a picture of Isaac and I playing in Isaac's favorite place to play!

A Tribute to the Bees of 2009

As I mentioned in my earlier post, my honey bees did not make it through the cold weather in January. We aren't exactly sure if they froze or starved to death first. My feeling is that they got so cold they couldn't think clearly enough to make it up to the feeder tray full of sugar water at the top of the box, but who really knows. They were alive the day that I fed them, and dead the day I went back to check them. Stubborn little bees. While Mark (my brother-in-law) and I cleaned out the hive, I thought it would be appropriate to use this tragedy as a learning experience. So here's a little lesson in beekeeping for all of you.

Here's the setup...1 hive stand (table looking thing in the back), one brood box with 10 frames (taller box on the left with the taller frame), and then supers with 10 frames (smaller boxes on the right).

The way it works is that you get your bees, they come in a small box container 3 pounds or so of bees (about 12,000 bees), you shake your bees out of the shipping container and into the brood (big) box. You put a queen excluder (basically a special screen) on top of the brood (big) box to keep the queen from going up into the supers (small boxes). This ensures that the queen only lays eggs in the big box at the bottom and all the supers should, in theory, be filled up with honey. I'll have to post this spring about the process of putting it all together when I get my new bees. That should make for a good video.

Bee hives are composed of one queen bee (large female), a couple thousand or so drones (males), and then tens of thousands of worker bees (females). The exact numbers all depend on the size of your hive, but a healthy hive will have in upwards of 60,000 bees. Here is a picture of a worker bee on the left and the queen bee (marked with a green dot on her head) on the right. The queen is substantially larger than all the other bees.

So, let's skip forward to the winter part. In the winter, the worker bees which are female kick out the drones which are male. Ha, that part makes me laugh. So, it's just the queen bee and all her worker bees in the hive for the winter. They clump together in the middle and should eat from the feeder box that the beekeeper fills with sugar water on top of the hive and any honey that they've stored up in the supers. Here are my bees all clumped together like they should be (we all know the problem with this picture is that they are already dead. :( my poor bees.)

This picture shows a few cells filled with pollen. The bees collect nectar, pollen, and honey in these cells to keep the hive going.

This picture is rather odd, and you'll need to click and enlarge it to get the full effect, this is one frame of a super completely filled with honey bees. I'm not sure if they were looking for food or trying to get warm. All you see in the picture is striped honey bee tails.

Here are the beekeepers, taking one last look at all the dead bees trying to figure out what might have happened. You can see the one with the ball is really concerned!

Here is my little beekeeper looking over his hive one last time before we pack it away for the winter. We're planning to have two hives this spring, a ton of honey this summer, and hopefully a lot better luck with making it through the winter next year.

The Curse of 2010

2010 has started out with a little string of bad luck for the Raynor's. It all started the week that it was SO cold when the downstairs heat decided to go out. Thankfully, we have a separate unit for upstairs where the spare bedroom is (also known as Aunta, Mark & Madeline's apartment) and I have a friend at work who is willing to come out at crazy hours to work on the heat/air for a reasonable rate. We spent a couple nights upstairs, but all in all it was a fun adventure. Well, everyone knows that things happen in 3s. So, after the heat went out, Brian's car decided to be a little crazy. One welded exhaust manifold later, we had made it through incident #2. But then, yes you knew it was coming, our computer broke exactly one month post warranty. Woohoo!! Now we're talking fun, right!?! So, for the next little while we're back to no videos on the blog (sorry Madeline).

So that makes 3, we should be done right....not so fast. We discovered shortly after the computer died that my honey bees didn't survive the cold snap. Then the wii remote went on the fritz. The garage lights burned out. That's another 3...we're in the clear right?

Not so fast, last week at work the zipper on my favorite khakis decides to fall apart....at work! Brian, thank goodness, was still at the house and was able to bring me a pair of jeans on his way to work. He also thought I'd be really embarrassed if he told people that he was late because I'd busted my pants, so he told the people at his work that he was a little late because I'd spilled coffee on myself. I wasn't embarrassed, I actually just looked up toward heaven and said "seriously? at work?" and then just started to laugh. What else can you do? So moving along, yesterday I was drying my hair and sparks shot out of the back of the hair dryer...it's dead now too. So, I'm thinking it's going to be 3 sets of 3. There was a time I would have stressed, thrown a small fit, and cried over all this. But what good would that do, it's all out of my control. So, I'm trying to maintain a good attitude, so I'm sharing the story of the curse with you as I sit here and chuckle. If I were you though, I'd steer clear of the Raynor's for a while!! We're still due one more!

Dog Agility Competition

Sunday's adventure took us to the Hunt Horse Complex at the State Fairgrounds for the dog agility competition. We'd all seen it on television, but it was pretty cool to see it in person. Plus it was free!! They had three different courses set up in the arena, so there were dogs running constantly. Isaac and Madeline love animals, so they really enjoyed watching all the dogs. Plus Oma and Opa were there to spoil them with their first taste of popcorn!

While the competition itself was pretty cool. We all got the biggest kick out of dog trainers who practice the course without the dogs prior to running in the competition. They wander around like a bunch of crazy people. Here's a video so you can enjoy too.

After the competition we enjoyed an early dinner at Noodles in Cameron Village, then a stroll through the Fresh Market, and finally a stop at Krispy Kreme before heading home. Isaac was absolutely worn out and fell asleep on the changing table while I was putting on his pajamas. We all had another great day. Thanks Aunta!!

Downtown Raleigh

My family is visiting for the weekend, and Aunta made sure to come equipped with a schedule of activities! I absolutely love it when she plans outings for us...she finds some of the neatest things for us to do. Then to top it off, she's kept the activities a secret. I love surprises!! So this weekend is going to be a lot of fun.

Today, Aunta the tour guide took us all downtown. We started the morning with breakfast at Big Ed's. For those of you who've never been to Big Ed's in City Market, you're missing out. The food is great and the atmosphere has a nostalgic kind of vibe to it. It's just a cool place to go. Isaac and Madeline both enjoyed the special breakfast. Isaac was very interested in Opa's hot coffee, and found that jelly and creamer containers make really awesome building blocks. He wasn't too sure about the guys in the band out front, but he eventually warmed up to the guy with the drums.

After breakfast, we went to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Isaac and Madeline (and all of the adults) really enjoyed the museum. Isaac's favorite part was watching the lady remove the brand new just hatched butterflies from the exhibit window. We had a close call when one of the butterflies on the glass (turns out he didn't see it there at first) opened it's wings and scared him to death. But have no fear, mommy was there (to catch the terrified little boy before he through himself off the bench and onto the floor)! We had a little talk about the butterflies and how that particular one didn't mean to scare him and he was good as new and had his face pressed back against the glass in no time.

We also visited the side of the museum that has all the live snakes. I am scared to death of snakes. I don't like them, I don't have a use for them, they give me the creeps, and yes they will make me scream and act like a little sissy girl. Unfortunately his daddy has the same fear, including the sissy girl scream. :) But when Isaac was born, I told myself that I'd teach him what is dangerous, I'd teach him to respect the dangers, but I'd do my best not to teach him to be afraid of things. So, mommy sucked it up today and marched right up to the that wall of snakes with Isaac and acted like they were the coolest thing ever. (For the record, he wasn't with me when I happened upon the large cage that I thought had cool frogs in it only to come face to face with a giant green snake. Here I jumped back and cussed under my breath to turn around to find Brian laughing at me. Ugh...snakes!) I didn't get any pictures of Isaac with the snakes....I was too busy being brave for my little man. Maybe next time!

The most entertaining place Isaac and Madeline found in the museum was the windows under/behind the exhibits, and they were happy to share it with Daddy and Uncle Mark!

We had a great day downtown, and we're looking forward to more adventures tomorrow.

Gingerbread Houses

During Christmas break, we ventured up to Asheville to check out the National Gingerbread Contest at the Grove Park Inn. I had only ever seen the Grove Park Inn on the commercials, and trust me when I say it's more elaborate in person. The inn itself was pretty amazing, and then you add in the scenery, the enormous fireplace, and the gingerbread houses...and wow! It made for a pretty fun day.

The gingerbread houses were divided into different categories - youth, teen, and adult. All of them were really impressive and took way more patience to make than I could ever possibly even fathom. I did find myself wondering though just how good one of these fancy schmancy houses would taste?

And here are two tuckered out tourists.

I highly recommend a visit to the Grove Park Inn for the Gingerbread houses for anyone looking for something different to do around the holidays next year!

Slivensky Photo Session

For as long as I can remember, Sunday's after church at the Slivensky house is photo session time. Everyone's already dressed up, so what better time to take pictures right? Christmas weekend was no exception. Here are some of the shots from our Sunday photo session.

Oma & Opa with the kids

Brian, Isaac and me

Isaac, Madeline, Aunta and me

Isaac & his best buddy Madeline

Resourceful or Just Plain Nuts?

Here's a fun fact for you....this Christmas, Brian bought me a meat mallet and an ice cream scoop. Why you ask? Because I broke my ice cream scoop using it as a meat mallet! Resourceful or just plain nuts? You decide! :)

Christmas 2009

They say that Christmas is so much better once you have kids. The part they forget to mention is that Christmas is so much better once you have kids that know what's going on. Don't get me wrong, last Christmas with 6 month old baby Isaac was great, but he really didn't unwrap any presents or get super excited over the fact that the Santa brought him gifts. He just kind of looked at us like we were nuts. This year though...this year was what they were talking about...this year's Christmas was so much fun!! But it still wasn't the presents that got Isaac all excited....it was the Christmas lights on people's houses, the ornaments on the tree in the living room, and the blow up penguin from Oma and Opa that grew into 2 penguins thanks to Aunt Rhonda and Aunt Cindy!!

We got into a daily routine this December. Pick Isaac up from school, drive home and admire every set of lights in the yards along the way (it's a 30 minute drive home, so there were plenty to see)..."mama look!! lights!!" became his favorite saying. Then once we got home it was straight into the living room..."mama, penguin, uh-oh" (that means please plug in the little blow up penguin that took up residence behind the couch). Then it was "mama/daddy - lights!!" (translated to please turn on the Christmas tree). He would then drag the chair from his little table through the kitchen into the living room and push it right up to the side of the tree so he could stand on the chair to see the ornaments that were a little higher. I swear that he would have stood there all night if we had let him. He loved his decorations!!

He did rack up in the present category though too, and he was much more active in the unwrapping phase this year. Here are some pics of some of the many things that he got for Christmas this year.

We had a wonderful Christmas surrounded by so many of our friends and family. And yes, they are right...Christmas really is so much more fun when you have kids!

Isaac the Entertainer

Isaac never ceases to amaze us in the things he does and says. He already has quite the personality and loves to entertain us! Here are a few random pictures I found on my camera when downloading the Christmas pictures.