Honey.

 

All the honey has been bottled. We had over 50 lbs!

Merry Christmas! From our family to yours.

Honey Jars

Our honey jars have arrived! Nick has been hard at work extracting honey from a few boxes. So far we've harvested 7 gallons of honey. Now it's time to bottle the honey and share the hard work of our Sys bees. :)

Christmas time is near!

We have been slowly collecting some icicle lights to hang on our house and this year we had enough to put up. We will continue to look for more light sales to fill up our bushes with Christmas spirit! :)

ThanksGiving 2013

We were blessed with the chance to spend Thanksgiving with family. Grandpa and Grandma Johnson came down this year and we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at the Moorings Country Club. It was a delicious meal filled with great conversations and company.

Greens, beans, and more

We have had a great growing season and we've been enjoying fresh greens. Also, after many years of attempting to grow yellow squash and green beans we finally got some to grow.  :)

Feeling Fallish

Fall has arrived and the whole Sys clan is enjoying some cool mornings. We wake up to the temperature of about 65 degrees and can't help but open the door and take advantage of the cool breeze. The cooler weather usually causes chicken to molt but due to our abnormal seasons are girls have already molted and are nice a fluffy again.

We are hoping this cooler weather will stay a while to help our fruit trees continue to grow and produce fruit next year. Surprisingly, our little pear is still growing so we are excited to try out of first Sys pear in the next few months or so.

The Golden Years

We took a trip to Texas for the celebration of my Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary! We gathered with the family and held a little ceremony in honor of their milestone. It was so great to see the family and we are so blessed to be able to witness the example of what true love is really all about.

Walkway project- Check!

Here is our final picture of our completed walkway project. The grill is now outside and our expanded patio has allowed us to have move sitting room for hosting. We will eventually add some rocks where you see dirt, but in the meantime we have put away our shovels and bags of concrete. ;)

Our garden is back!

Lettuce

Asparagus

Squash

Due to schedules and projects, our garden withered away. Nick did a late planting in hope of getting our garden back on track.We have noticed many blooming leaves coming up and can't wait to start eating our own veggies again. 

The Pink Ladies

My running ladies and I participated in the "We Care to Wear Pink" 5k. It was a great race and a lot of fun (once we finished running).  Both Paula and Monica met their time goals of running 10 min miles. They both crossed the finish line right at 30 mins. It was my race 5k since middle school and my goal was to run under 25 mins. I didn't make my time but ended up running hard and coming in at around 26 placing me 4th in my age group and 67th overall. It was great to see over 170 people wearing pink in support of breast cancer and we look forward to our next running adventure. Great job Pink Ladies! :)

There is a Pear in Our Future

We are excited to announce that we have a baby pear growing on one of our pear trees! As we move toward our Fall season, our fruit trees seem to be blossoming and even producing fruit. Right now there is only one pear growing, so we are not sure if this is a fluke or if it will be a regular occurrence this time of year. Stay tuned! :)

MACNA

We got the opportunity to go to MACNA (Marine Aquarium Conference of North America) in Miami Florida with Proaquatix, the company Nick works for. This type of conference brings vendors and customers together from all over the US for fish products. It was really neat to be a part of and a huge success.

Apple Blossoms

Interestingly, we discovered that our apple trees are blossoming. It is very surprising because this isn't the time of year for apple trees to be blooming. Usually they bloom in the spring before they set leaves. The FL weather must have them confused, lol. We are excited to see the flowers but are unsure what the outcome will be so stay tuned...

5 Years!

Praise God with us as we celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary! We have been so blessed to be able to walk hand in hand through these past 5 years. We have had lots of adventure and look forward to see what God has in store for us. As we mentioned, we decided to have a Gatsby style party to celebrate. We had a wonderful time dressing up and enjoyed our finished backyard.

Cool Runnings

One of my best friends has decided to challenge herself and run a half marathon.  She has asked me to be her running and support coach since she has never done anything like this before. Along with Monica, this will be a challenge for me as I learn to not only coach her, but learn how to train for a half marathon. Even though I will not be running in the race I am very excited to join her through this journey and look forward to seeing her cross the finish line. As a way for you to join in the running adventure, she has started a running blog where she will use this as a way to keep herself accountable and provide some motivation to those thinking about doing something like this. Below is the hyperlink where you will find her blog and can help cheer her along the way! :-)

Monica's Running blog

Well, hello there!

Hey guys!

Sorry we have been MIA. I can't believe it's already August! We've been enjoying a nice relaxing summer visiting with friends and getting ready for our upcoming  anniversary party. We have decided to throw a little "Gatsby in the Garden" party to celebrate our 5 years of marriage. It is 1920's themed and with the help from my new friend (pintrest), I have been working on lots of creative things. To prepare for our social event, we are finishing up our yard projects and home renovations.

We installed a porch fan to help keep the bugs and heat under control.

 We found this 3 pendant fixture about a year ago at the Lowes clearance department. A year later we finally found 3 pendants that matched in the clearance department for only $3 each! Normally this project would cost about $150 but the Sys' did it for under $20! :)

The west side of our porch is being expanded so we can have some room to move and host friends. Nick has been hard at work making pathways.

To help make our porch roomier, we will be moving our grill outside to this area.

The Garza's are back in town

We had a wonderful visit from our Texas family. Our family came down for the 4th and we got the opportunity to take a little trip to the Keys and do some snorkeling, offshore fishing, and relaxing. We were able to visit the Everglades Alligator farm and even take an airboat ride. The time spent with family was very special.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

We went to Lowes this weekend to get some items to finish the rock garden area and came upon a huge clearance. We ended up getting over $400 worth of plants and garden accessories for only $100! We enjoyed the rest of the weekend working on our projects.

The jeep literally couldn't fit anymore things, lol.

We went with some purple grass plants to add some subtle fun to our rock area.

To bring the rest of the garden area together we decided to add a gardenia tree.

The Keys

Nick and I took a 3 day trip to the Keys. We took advantage of the beautiful weather and spent our time snorkeling and sightseeing. It was a nice little weekend getaway and we look forward to making more trip to the Keys in the future.

We visited the Shipwreck museum in Key West

Took a snorkeling trip while in Key West

The famous "Mile 0" signifying we have made it to Key West.

Went on a glass bottom tour in Key Largo.

We stayed in Marathon Key and this was our view very morning.