Where have all the duck eggs gone?

Our duck, who we had always assumed was a boy, laid her first egg the morning Leif was born. She produced an egg every day for a week or so and then she ceased to produce. Was it the cold weather? Was a wild animal or the free ranging rooster eating them? It was a mystery.

This morning Taylor solved the mystery!
Aflac had found a soft warm nesting place by the pump shed and had accumulated 17 eggs! It was a jackpot morning for Taylor! :-)

Sewing

I've been sewing a few little projects during my free moments. It is scrap buster month at Sew Mama Sew so they've been featuring fun ideas for using up small amounts of fabric. (By the way, I love that website. It always gets my creative juices flowing again.)

Here is a binkie holder that fits 2 binkies. I can throw this in the diaper bag and keep the binkies lint and crumb free. It was so fun to make that I'm making a few more for baby gifts. So don't look Mandy! :-)
Here's the view of the inside. I sandwiched a stiff iron-on lining between the fabrics to give it more shape.

And these headbands have been totally addictive to make. I've made about 20 of them. They'll probably be showing up as Christmas gifts.....

I planned to sew one of these Moby style baby slings but I couldn't find the right kind of fabric for a decent price. I found this on Etsy for cheaper than I could have made it! It is very comfortable and snuggles Leif quite nicely.

Working Together

Remember the bridge frame that Torsten fabricated this summer? A few weekends ago, Torsten, Hailey and Taylor completed the project by screwing on all the wood decking.

It included getting into the canal to get the job done. They really didn't mind that part one little bit!

Wahoo! The bridge is done and now Grandma has a place to shuck corn with the grand kids again! (Shucking corn is fun enough- but even better when you can throw the husks in the canal and watch them float away.)


The day after Leif was born the boys spent the afternoon splitting wood with Dad. I'm glad the kids have so many opportunities to learn how to work.

Zzzzzz.....

Leif Smilebox

I wanted to share this smilebox that my mom made using pictures of the days before and after Leif was born. It makes me cry when I watch it- actually it makes me cry typing about it! (am I a bit hormonal still....?) I'm a little embarrassed about the pictures with wet hair and no make-up, but that's okay. :-)
It was so nice to have my mom here for a whole week! She cooked and did laundry and drove the kids places and played games with them. I was very sad to see her go home.....but as you may have noticed, I did survive.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Baby Leif Pictures

Baby's here!

Hello!! I had a moment today to post the exciting news! :-) Joel and I had a big healthy baby boy born to us October 7th! Leif (we pronounce it Layfe) arrived in the world around 3 in the afternoon, born at home, and weighed a whopping 9lbs. 1 oz. What a fat little cutie he is! The kids are constantly hovering around him to hold and touch and laugh at his funny faces- grandma says she's hardly even got a chance at him because he is always surrounded! I am so sorry for the lack of pictures- we have redone and redone and REDONE our computer so much in the last 3 weeks that I am completely lost again as to where pictures are at. But I had to at least get the news out and I'll add photos later! (Maybe tonight when everyone comes home again someone with techno smarts can help me out....) But I'll just say for now that Leif was a completely different birth than any of my others- very slow and spaced out contractions. Usually I have my babies in a matter of a few hours- this time it was more like 13 hours! I woke up at 2:00 in the morning feeling like "this is it", so I cleaned the house and puttered around a bit, getting things ready for the birth. But contractions stayed very mild and 20 minutes apart and I decided to try and get a little more sleep. Morning came and I listened to the kids practicing their piano, got out their school stuff for my mom to do with them in the basement and I worked on some sewing projects until my midwife came at 12:00. Connie found I was at dilated to a 6 but contractions were still almost 15 minutes apart! Finally, we (Leif and I) decided to get down to business and he was born at 2:58 on a beautiful fall day. Yay!!! I think I hear him trying to wake up now, so I'll end this ramble and go feed my little man. :-)