Bathroom Crashers

For the Christmas and New Year holiday, Nick and I decided to take advantage of our days off and work on renovating our guest bathroom. For 4 years, we have been slowly gathering the necessary components for our renovation. We are still working toward our ending goal but we are excited to finally get the opportunity to participate in our very own holiday edition of bathroom crashers! 

Merry Christmas!

                         We hope you have a wonderful Christmas celebrating and 
                                                rejoicing the birth of our Savior.
Love,
The Vander Sys' 

Fuego

 From the very beginning of our backyard renovation, Nick and I wanted to include a place to gather around a fire.We have been patient and are now proud owners of a chiminea.We are still working on getting our backyard looking like we want it to, but in the meantime we have begun to enjoy coming home and spending a little time around our fire. :)

Christmas time is here!

 May the Christmas season and fun family photo shoots begin! lol :)

Queen Bee

Bees are doing well. They are eating the sugar water Nick set out for them.

Our bees and the queen building honeycomb

This is a zoomed picture showing the Queenbee

Thanksgiving 2012

Our plate of delicious sides from our neighborhood friend.

We had quite the change of events this Thanksgiving. We had planned to have multiple thanksgiving meals with friends but I fell ill with a virus much like strep throat right before the holiday. This made us change our plans to staying home and having a thanksgiving dinner for two. Nick took charge of our meal and decided to smoke a turkey. Our neighbor kindly, brought over some sides for us to help complete our Thanksgiving meal. Even though our plans changed we had a wonderful Thanksgiving day and were even able to enjoy some time skyping with our family. :)

Bees of Grace

We have been wanting to get bees for a few months but have been waiting to find the right bees to come occupy our beehives. My intentions were to get Nick bees for Christmas, but as it turns out Christmas came a month early. While serving at church, I got word that there was a bee swarm problem on a palm tree located in the parking lot. The church had tried to get the bees removed but the bees kept coming back. I mentioned to our pastor about our beehives and our interest in bees and he lit up and said," If you want to take them, they are yours". I told Nick about the situation and Nick happily took on the challenge. Before you know it, we were driving home with bees. Below are the pics and transporting details.  Thanks Grace Church! :)

The swarm looked like this one. It was the size of two softballs. Nick cut the palm frond down and placed it in a bucket he found at church.  FYI: A swarm is when a group of worker bees surround the queen bee in hope of finding a new home. Perfect opportunity for beekeepers! Plus, our bees are Italian bees which are the kind we were looking to get. 

Thanks to Dad Vander Sys, Nick had all the bee equipment needed. 

Once Nick got the smoker going  he removed the palm frond still covered with bees and placed it inside the beehive. 

The bees have begun to learn where the entrance is and are doing well. Nick was able to see the queen bee so we are hoping they will make our beehive their permanent home. Nick says it will be a few days till we know if they are staying or not. 

The bees were already starting to make honeycombs. lol

This is not the "norm"when getting and transporting bees, but it worked and Nick is one happy bee keeper!

Bahston

We took advantage of an amazing opportunity and took a 3 day trip to Boston. We planned out our days and got to see and do many great things in Boston. We want to send a special thanks to the Schneider family that opened up their condo to us! :)

Faneuil Hall

Our favorite part of the trip was going to the Boston Tea Party Museum

I had to take a picture underneath the Mija Resturant sign.( Mija is spanish for my daughter. Mija has always been a nickname of mine. )

Paul Revere's house

Behind us is Paul Reveres statue

We visited the Museum of Science and the Museum of Arts

The Great Gatsby

This year for Halloween we were Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby from the book The Great Gatsby. We went to the Hall's annual Halloween party and enjoyed getting all "dolled up" and putting our dancing shoes to good use!

Michigan 2012

We got the chance to visit our Michigan family during the Columbus day weekend. It was the perfect time to visit as the trees were at their peak of color. We had a great time seeing everyone and enjoyed the cold weather! :)

Cheese!

I am officially brace free!

Shake your tailfeathers

Our chicks are almost a month old now.

These were the chicks about a week or 2 old.

These were the chicks about a day or 2 old.

Our chicks are quickly growing. They are no longer fuzzy and have begun growing their new feathers. We are slowing shrinking our group down to 3 but in the mean time we are enjoying having all of them around.