Now with more Ultimate

Remember the summer trips to Minnesota for the big youth club championship tournament?

The highlight video is up.







What amazes me now, watching this, is that both Sarafina and Adam have gotten exponentially better in just a few short months, and they look pretty good in this clip. It's going to be an interesting next few years.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

. . . Ultimate time!! The high school season is slowly beginning, despite record low temperatures. The two younger kids and I  may never warm up after watching three games in a row.

But it was wicked fun.

The team even did my two favorite cheers. I love the intensity and fun the kids bring to the game -- "Eat the babies!"
 

And, you know,  as an almost-50 year old woman, I don't often think to myself, "I wish I could trade bodies with a 17 year old for. . . just a couple of hours," but when I do, it's during Frisbee games.

They fly.

And when they fling themselves on the ground, as they did repeatedly during the second game? (I would have bet good money they were just messing with us at that point.) They bounce right back up and do wonderful things.

My second girl can throw on a hard mark.

But she was a little winded. I had to laugh when I saw that after a terrifically long point, with many turns, she was taking breaks bent in half with her hands on her knees, a position I know very well from my own forays into running around.

After one long series, she staggered off the field and collapsed. This was just before she pathetically asked me to throw her a Gatorade. . .

I love this sport. I love to play, I love to watch, I love the kids, I love the coaches, I love the other parents.

I do not love the cold. Fortunately it's supposed to get a little better after tomorrow.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know everyone everywhere else has it worse than we do. But for me, and where I am? I'm cold. Brrrrr.

The Big One

Our sadly neglected front yard apple trees put on a lovely show this year. I've been eating apples almost every day.

Sometimes it's been difficult to see them because they're hidden by volunteer Sun Gold vines, but the other day I was picking some tomatoes to force them on offer them to neighbors, and saw the apple of the season.

Yum.

The other Big One?

She seems to be having a lot of fun and studying hard at college. We were lucky enough to get to see her play in a casual tournament last week.

Watching my kids play remains one of the very most enjoyable things I do.

Now we are three

It's really spring here.

I can tell because trees are blooming and I'm taking lots of pictures like this

 The first of a less-welcome spring sign happened when I walked into the house yesterday, and a child said, "You really need to see this."

"What?"

"Outside."

"Man! Did they swarm?"

You see, when I had checked out the hives in the early afternoon, making sure that all was well in the newspaper-combined one, I noticed that the other hive, the one with only one brood box, was looking significantly busy. I filed it under "give that hive more room," and just hoped it would work.

Hoping apparently doesn't deal with spring build-up. They had thrown off a rather nice-sized swarm.

Fortunately, we have the Most Attractive Apricot Tree Ever, or something like that. They landed where every swarm landed last year.

I deputized a photographer and got to work. First, I humped out a new brood box and honey super, plus an inner and outer cover.

Nice-looking bunch, eh? They were about 12-14" long, plus a small sub-swarm on a lower branch. I figured the queen was in the big bunch, so that was where the effort would be concentrated.

 

 

I set up the new hive box (right where the collapsed one was yesterday, of course) and got to work. One good shake while holding the bucket underneath.

And the bulk of the bees "fwumped" right into the bucket.

Easily poured into the waiting box.

They just flow down in. I went back and did a secondary shake, and got the stragglers set up to walk into the front of the covered hive.

When I went out in the evening, happy sounds were coming from the hive, and since it's rainy this morning, that's probably a nicer place for them to be than the tree. I don't know now if one swarm means the original hive is happier and less likely to swarm, or if they have the proverbial bits in their little teeth and will spend all spring splitting. It will be a good test of my beekeeping chops to see if I can manage them well.

This is what we came for. . .

Every time we sing that part of the chant while running at boot camp, I think, "No it isn't. . .  well, okay, it is. Sort of. . . how much longer?" and by then, the run is nearing an end.

But today -- this really is why I did this crazy cross-country thing:

The team was outplayed by a good number of the other teams. If you go here, you can see the brackets, and poking around on the site will give you rosters. The team our team lost to by one point on a hotly contested call had primarily 17 and 18 year olds.

I only wish I had a series of pictures of my 12 year old on the series where she either threw a key point or caught it. Her coach tackled her in joy on the field. Twelve years old and playing her heart out and making a contribution. I love this sport.

In fact, it was hard for me to watch BMX racing as an Olympic event last night without muttering about an unfair world. . .

Read. The. Pattern.

Cheerfully resurrected Odelia by Julie Weisenberger to simply finish off the sleeves and voila, have a sweater for summer.

Except, eight inches ago, I neglected to continue the edge decreases.

Guess I'll just rip that puppy right out to the point where I left the pattern to wander in the wilderness and redo it the right way.

Grrrrr.

Thank goodness the high school team won States again! Seven years of domination sort of make up for redoing eight inches of sweater.

Sort of.