BEES!

Let's see... I'm not sure where to begin.

Before the kids and I left for Salt Lake in late July I had found several dead bees in our house. Not a big deal, since they were dead and all. While we were gone for two weeks the number of dead bees escalated, reaching a dozen or two a day by the time we got back Monday night (Aug. 9).

On Tuesday there were live bees. Not too many, maybe ten, but enough for me to call pest control. They advised me to recon the perimeter of the house, as they couldn't do anything unless they knew where the bees were coming in. Saw a mess of them Tuesday night swarming around the awning outside of my bedroom window; called pest control back first thing Wednesday morning.

By the time the bug guy arrived that afternoon there were so many bees that I was walking around like Tony Montana only with a vacuum cleaner instead of an M16.

He had to spray some toxic stuff into the wall void where apparently the hive was located, so I packed up the kids and our newly arrived company (Mel, Grammy & Makenna) and headed out to the movies (I highly recommend Despicable Me, or as Weston called it, Despicable Mimi).

We returned home a few hours later to literally HUNDREDS of bees swarming throughout our house. Ryan and Mel spent at least half an hour in there, each armed with a vacuum cleaner, just to make it safe enough for me to take the kids upstairs to their bedrooms (where, thankfully, the bees have mostly avoided).

Over the next few days we sucked up roughly one to two hundred bees a day. From inside our house. It became sort of a game:

Makenna: "Ang, how many did you get upstairs?"

Me: "36,  you?"

Makenna: "I got 42 and Grammy got 21. Oh look, there's more (grabbing the dyson like it's an assault rifle)... I'm up to 45!"

Could it get any worse? Of course it could. Up to this past weekend the bees had been very lethargic, but Saturday they became aggressive. Weston got stung, Ryan was stung twice, and one got Mel yesterday morning. I called the pest control company back and told them to bring out the heavy ammo. After the kids and I packed a bag and left the house, they sprayed inside and out. We spent the night in a hotel.

We came home mid-morning to around a dozen bees in the house. We were thrilled! (Now imagine for a moment the situation that would have to occur for you to be thrilled that there were only a dozen bees flying around your house.) I sucked those up and have only seen one or two new ones an hour since then.

Pray for us.