Busy, busy, busy

Here are all the things I have done since we got in from Amarillo late Sunday night:

‘Shopped a bunch of photos and posted them; folded five loads of laundry; harvested and extracted honey; cleaned the freezer; rendered beeswax; cleaned the kitchen; picked up the dogs and cat from the vet clinic; cleaned the kitchen again; canned three quarts of salsa; replaced the showerhead in the bathroom; worked on my Lorax mural, which I started several years ago but never finished; packed for vacation; learned some new joint locks in kempo; made quesadillas; ran errands; and started training Walter to walk on a leash. (As you can imagine, Walter did not like that one little bit, but I think he’ll be fine once he gets past his fear of the outdoors.)

Grace tells me that Jamie is very interested in the fact that “Aunt Emmy” is a beekeeper, as he has decided he loves honey and all things related to its production. During a trip to the grocery store, he wanted to know whether Aunt Emmy’s bees knew how to make “bear honey.” I had a few bear jars left from our 2008 harvest, so I fixed up a special bottle for Jamie:

The honey looks dark because it’s been heated — this was part of the leftovers after I rendered beeswax. Heat breaks down the flavor, which is why local honey always tastes better than the storebought kind, but that’s probably a good thing in this case; raw honey is a little intense for a preschooler’s palate. This should taste just fine on a peanut-butter sandwich.

Here are a couple of closer shots of the mural: