Birthday, birthday, goose

I mean duck.  I guess it actually should be duck, duck, duck, duck, duck - no goose.  The ducks hatched over the weekend.  Although I had no part in it and didn't even see the event I still felt like a worried mama when I checked the nest around 9 am on Saturday and it was empty.  Much to my shock.  Nothing except a few grey feathers hanging around.  I was upset, but did think maybe they had hatched and were already heading for the pond.  The weird thing, not one egg shell.

I got a phone call later that day from my neighbor congratulating me on the ducklings!  Yay!  So as a family we went to the pond to see if we could find them swimming happily around.  No luck.  I kept watch out for them until around 7pm, no ducks.  Then I thought maybe they made a different nest and weren't coming back to our yard, which made me a little sad. 

It stormed really bad all day on Saturday.  It definitely wasn't the best day to hatch and learn how to swim.  On Sunday, I was working on dinner when Trucker went berserk.  I glanced up, because random squirrels will make him sound like that and usually it isn't anything to get excited about.  Except this time!  There was mama duck with her 5 ducklings splashing and playing in a puddle right out on our patio.  They got scared and high tailed it out of the yard.  So, we do have ducks.  It seems that either some didn't hatch or some of them didn't make it through the first day which was a torrential downpour and high winds.  But there are five and they are cute!  I really am going to try and get some pictures, but those little suckers are really fast.

On another note, it is birthday season.  A lot of Jac's friends have birthdays right around his.  Which is a nice little build up to his big day.  I think five is a pretty big birthday and definitely one that he will remember.  He is going to have a space themed party and I hope that I can make it fun.  He has been invited to a lot of the destination birthday spots - gymnastics places, bouncy places.  We aren't quite ready to do something like that in the Carey household, hopefully his little party at the house will hold up to all those.  If you have any great space ideas, let me know.  I am toying with the idea of doing the cake myself, which I haven't done in a couple of years.  We'll see, it is a lot of work.