Sweet

Believe it or not this is the 400th post of this little blog.

Our first post was on November 8th, 2005.

Nolan was 3 and Connor was 6 months old!

We didn't post much the first five years.

In 2011 we started making a better effort to make more posts.

To celebrate the 400th post I'm going to do absolutely nothing.

:)

This is one of those mix-and-match posts.

A little story about sugar:

Last week Dwayne and I challenged each other to see who could

eat the fewest grams of sugar in a week.

We went all out and rewarded the winner with $5.

This was my effort to get us to eat less sugar.

It worked.

Daily amounts of sugar:

Far left: 25 grams (for women); middle: 35 grams (for men); right 100 grams.

There are many conflicting numbers on how much an average American consumes.

So we went with 100... even if it's 75, that's still a lot of sugar!

We are continuing our effort of eating less sugar.

We have felt better and had more energy.

Oh, and in case you were wondering who won the challenge, Dwayne did.

I was most assuredly stomped.

My average daily amount was less than the daily allowance... just not as good as Dwayne's.

I still count that as a win.

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We're still plugging away at school.

Now that the boys are older there's not as many cool photo worthy things that they do with school.

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Since we had a nice sunny day, I laid all my quilt challenge blocks on the porch.

I have officially started quilting the last row!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Quack - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Couldn't leave out the ducks.

We still have all of our ducks, the fourth one is behind the window frame.

I posted a video on facebook of a duck embryo moving.

Only two more weeks and we should have ducklings!

The Crane

The boys were gifted a three month subscription for Tinker Crate.

A box of goodies will be delivered once a month.

The box has everything you need to complete a STEM project.

The builder in the family practically ran off with it.

The non-builder said, "Let me know when you're done and I'll check it out."

(He thought it was cool, but didn't want to build it.)

So the builder built.

Then I had to remind him we weren't done with school yet.

He resumed construction when we finished our lessons for the day.

He did almost all of it entirely by himself.

It's fairly sturdy and it surprised us when he broke a vital piece.

There's a post that anchors the crane to the box.

That's what broke.

Here it is all finished.

The roll of electrical tape is acting like a counter weight keeping the crane on the box.

It's a pretty cool crane.

There were several booklets that came with the kit.

One was building instructions, one was activities to do with the crane,

and one was a brief science lesson on pulleys.

Overall they loved the box.

Thanks grandma!

Block #3

Today I did block #3 of the block challenge I'm participating in.

Yes, I multi-tasked.

I taught a geometry lesson and then took over the table. ;)

I had my pieces cut in no time and relinquished the table back to school tasks.

I sewed most of the block between lessons.

When we were done with school, I finished piecing it together.

It's just as busy as the egg material, but for some reason it's easier on the eyes.

I really like the clocks and wish I had more of it.

I think I'll have enough to do three of the nine blocks.

Day 1

We set nine duck eggs in the incubator last night.

Since we did this in the evening, today counts as day one of incubation.

We've been learning quite a bit.

Did you know that the baby chick/duckling won't start growing until it's warmed up?

You can set aside some eggs to hatch but keep them at 50 - 55 degrees for up to a week.

I started collecting and setting aside our eggs on Saturday.

It drove me crazy not to clean the eggs.

Washing them removes the protective coating God designed to be on the eggs.

So there they sit.

Not too exciting.

They are on an egg turner that turns very slowly.

So slow you can't see it.

It takes hours for it to lean from one side to the other.

I've read about several reasons for the turning.

One of the reasons is so the yolk doesn't settle in one spot.

It can also prevent the embryo from sticking to the membrane.

Another reason was so the embryo stays in the right position.

Moving it around to different places on the yolk allows for better nutrition absorption.

The only thing I know for sure is that if you do not turn the eggs you will not have a successful hatch!

If you have ever seen a hen on a nest, you've probably seen her moving the eggs.

I read that a broody hen will turn her eggs up to 52 times per day!

Pretty cool to think about the instincts God gave the hen.

Since I'm not a hen, I've had to do my research on how to hatch ducklings.

These are my notes of what to do when.

Found this cool calendar with useful information.

I don't plan on posting more incubator pictures until the hatching starts.

I will probably post some pictures when we candle the eggs next week.

We have to keep an eye on the temperature and humidity.

The temps seem to be OK.

It's the humidity that's been tricky.

Quilt Quack

First order of business: Connor's quilt.

I have indeed rolled it this week. Yay!

I started this on January 12th.

I have quilted 29 days with an average of 1:50 on those days.

Obviously I didn't get to quilt every day... otherwise the quilt would be done.

I didn't quilt for almost an entire month due to the back injury.

I'm hoping to make great progress this month.

This is the third row of four.

Getting closer to finishing!

Second order of business: block #2 of the quilt block challenge.

The new patterns come out on Thursdays.

I got mine finished Friday.

I think the eggs are a little busy.

The next block will have the clock/key background.

I'm hoping that tones it down a little.

If not, oh well. Live and learn.

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Now on to the ducks!

There's good news and bad news.

First, the bad news.

We had one of our hens disappear this week.

We have looked all over for her and have not seen her or evidence of her.

We figured one of two things happened.

She may have gotten broody and went somewhere to set on a nest.

This is wishful thinking on our part because Indian Runners are not good mothers.

It's more likely she was nabbed by a predator.

Since there wasn't any evidence of an animal attack, it was probably a hawk of some kind.

We're so bummed she disappeared.

Now we're down to one drake and three hens (2 Indian Runner, 1 Khaki Campbell).

Thankfully they're prolific egg layers (for ducks).

So what's the good news?

We're going to try to hatch our own ducklings!

And we're going to attempt to have them hatch on Connor's birthday.

We've borrowed an incubator and started setting aside eggs for hatching.

I've read some articles about a 50% hatch rate with ducks... we'll see.

This makes it hard to figure out how many eggs to set.

What if they all hatch!?

I'll keep y'all posted.

Should be fun!