kim through
   the looking glass

Yep, you read that right!

As a community, we decided a while ago to purchase a hive so that we can begin to harvest our own honey. I’ve been busy reading bee books and looking up bee keepers’ associations and generally learning about bees.

Yesterday, we got news that the bees would be here Wednesday or Thursday. Today, we hurried along and set up the hive, doing some last-minute research.

And then we got a call that the bees were here and they suggested picking them up tonight.

So Crystle and I took off to Better Bee Supplies in Cambridge to pick up some supplies and our “nuc” - beekeeping language for a nucleus of bees, which contains 3 lbs of bees (around 10 000 bees).

We drove them home (in the trunk - Gil was in the back!) and once here decided to hive them right away instead of waiting until morning. Graham and I suited up an armed with our hive tool and a spray bottle of sugar-water headed to the hive with a cardboard box full of 10 000 bees.

It was more than a little nerve-wracking!

Graham was great - he placed the full frames into the hive like a pro - he used to have bees as a kid - with only work gloves. He was stung only once - the sugar-water was very effective at calming the bees!

So - success! Our colony can now grow and begin to produce honey! I’ll check on the hive in a week (hopefully with a bee-keeping friend!) and make sure the queen is laying eggs and that the foragers are bringing in honey.

Exciting! And a little bit terrifying!

My friend Tammy is hosting a Mom 2 Mom Carnival on encouraging our kids’ relationship with Jesus.

If I’m going to be brutally honest, I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to go about helping our kids build a relationship with God!

One thing we currently do is pray before dinner each night. We try to pray for specific things and for specific people instead of saying a generic prayer. One thing I remember about growing up is that we generally only saud prayers by rote (ie. “Now I lay me down to sleep …”) so I was very uncomfortable actually praying out loud around other people since I’d had so little practice. I want to give Gwen the opportunity to pray out loud her own prayers in our home so that she becomes used to using her own words to express herself to God.

Another thing we hope to do is family Bible reading. I don’t yet know how best to do this and not make it a chore and boring, though, as that was most of Brad’s experience regarding family devotions as a kid!

I hope, also, to expose our kids to other Christian adults. Living in an intentional community in which we have deep relationships and intentional get-togethers (ie. weekly potlucks and weekly morning prayer) is a wonderful way to show our children the love of God through others. I think having positive adult role models who talk about their faith, their relationship with God and their walk with God is an awesome thing for kids to have!

All in all, I think the number one thing to do to encourage kids to have a relationship with God is walk with God yourself. Kids learn the most from what they see, and if all they ever see is a ‘Sunday Christian’, how can we ever expect them to move beyond that? That means that both Brad and I have a lot of work to do in how we live our lives and ‘walk the walk’. I hope, and pray, that we can rise to the occasion.

This summer, we’ve done a lot of planning for ways to grow our own fruits and veggies and taken many steps toward becoming much more self-sustaining. Our housemates have a large vegetable garden in the back and although they have offered for us to partake of the veggies/fruits grown therein, I didn’t feel up to doing that much gardening just yet … I don’t really know much about it and when the planning was happening, I didn’t feel up to helping even with that, since it was at a rough Gwen-time.

Read the rest of this entry »

On January 5, the Kirkendall Cluster - as we affectionately call ourselves - had our first commitment ceremony. After a lovely meal, we shared a liturgy and committed ourselves to the community and to one another with vows (and the lighting of candles!). Read the rest of this entry »

… said I to my husband last night as we went for a walk. “Slow down!”

(Yes. I call myself ‘waddles’. ‘Preggo’ and ‘preggers’ are also often used. Most often when talking about food, for example, “Preggers wants cake!” or “Preggo wants a hamburger!” I’m classy.) Read the rest of this entry »

** Warning: Photo heavy post **

Well, my dad came up today to finish up the sanding on June Bug’s room, so other than priming that wall (which should take no time at all and I might do tomorrow), it’s done!! Here’s our photo journey of the past week of renovations. Read the rest of this entry »

A local reporter contacted Crystle and asked if she could come and interview us. We set up a potluck last month and she came and we had a blast eating together and chatting about what we’re doing as a community of believers and why.

Turns out she has submitted a synopsis of the story to our local newspaper and they are VERY interested in covering the story! So, in all likelihood, we’re going to be in the paper! So. Cool. =)

Oh!!! And I thought I should update on this, as well. Our community numbers have been expanding! Jan, a 25-year missionary veteran who has been back in Canada only two years, co-worker of Crystle, Crystle’s ride to work, and member of our church, has been joining us for morning prayer (we meet together Wednesday mornings to pray) and coming to our potlucks for some time now. She has been looking and praying for a house, and whaddya know? That’s right, people. She recently (last week!) bought the house on the OTHER side of Graham and Emma? Two houses beside one another for intentional community? You could argue coincidence. Three houses in a row? There’s no mistaking that for anything but God moving. It’s amazing. And encouraging. And exhilarating! She’ll hopefully be moving in sometime in late July or August. Welcome to the neighbourhood, Jan!

Well, I haven’t updated in a long, long time because I have been super busy. This past week looked like this for me:

• Monday - 12 hour clinical
• Tuesday - school in afternoon, homework at night
• Wednesday - 8 hour day at work
• Thursday - 12 hour clinical
• Friday -12 hour clinical
• Saturday - 12 hour clinical

Yeah. That’s how fun it was. This week I have three 12 hour clinical shifts,  the next week I have NONE, the week after I have one and the week of April 1 I have two. And then I’m FINISHED! Read the rest of this entry »

Crystle and I were talking the other night about how one goes about training up children in the faith. We were talking about how there’s two schools of thought on the subject:

1. “Age-appropriate” children’s messages based on Biblical truths, like devotional books.
2. The Bible is plenty age-appropriate and doesn’t need anything to “translate” it for kids - you just need to talk about the Scriptures as you read.

There may be other methods, or a combination of the two, but these were the two we were discussing. Read the rest of this entry »

I know that doesn’t sound all that impressive … but I did it from scratch and I did it ALL BY MYSELF!!!!! We had some friends over yesterday to help with some electrical work, so I offered to make dinner for everyone. WELL, it ended up being 8 people, and Emma ended up bringing over a delicious pizza to round out the meal (lol - mine alone could not have happily fed the 8 of us!) but regardless … for the first time ever I baked something from scratch BY MYSELF! Read the rest of this entry »