Ducks, dodgems, pancakes and gamelan

It's no secret that Craig has wanted ducks for a long time. I eventually relented upon the basis we were to get Indian Runners which have a low food to egg ratio and don't need much water. We ran into difficulties straight away in so far as we couldn't find any for sale within the county. Eventually we came across somewhere that had some eggs incubating and our names were put down for some of the ducklings. Sadly none of the eggs hatched. The upshot was that I spent ages online trawling through Bird Trader and other such places, (gone are the days of Cosmopolitan) trying o find more Indian Runners. By last weekend I felt I had spent enough time trying to source ducks, called a local place with a variety (all except Indian Runners) for sale, and off we went. We returned with these two beauties above - Olga and Jemima - our very own Puddle Ducks a la Beatrix Potter!

Actually they're Aylesburies - very large, very messy eating machines who lay relatively few eggs. Their saving grace is that they're incredibly cute and the one egg we have had so far was huge. It was like nothing I had seen before outside of a museum. We weighed a large hen egg but the duck egg weighed three times more than that! Miles had it as a dippy egg and I could scarcely find an egg cup to put it in. It was bigger than a large lemon!

Aww, I think they like those snowdrops! Craig loves them and brought one up to say goodnight to Miles when I was getting him ready for bed the other evening. I think she wanted to get in the bath too!

I didn't get in to our usual home ed gathering on Monday as Miles had guests. My mum went with Hermione and brought home a very interesting poultry magazine. Helen, if you are reading this I would like to say a big 'thank you'. There are lots of handy tips in there. I'm really looking forward to meeting you and perhaps we can get together to talk home ed and hens some day?

We've also been ten pin bowling and playing on dodgem cars of late. The children love that sort of thing but I find it all too noisy - another sign of growing old I suspect!

We've also been to a family workshop to learn to play the gamelan. That was a very interesting experience but sadly one which I think the adults appreciated slightly more than the children. The children enjoyed it but aren't so keen as us to repeat it. Ho hum, it's irritating when your children won't tag along to enable you to go to interesting 'family' things.

We celebrated pancake day in style with our Forest School friends. We cut long strips of crepe paper to draw upon and then tied them to a tree with our spring messages blowing in the breeze. We paddled in the stream and then built a wood fire on which to cook our pancakes. It took a wee while to get the fire under way, but once it was away, the pancakes just kept coming. They were delicious, out in the breeze, a far way from anywhere, sun beating down and great company. Wonderful. The only downside was arriving home to discover I had had a bit of a diary malfunction and was, by that time, supposed to be in two different places, arrrghhh! I must start to embrace technology and carry my mobile phone. I struggle with all that sort of thing. I don't even have a watch. Time to invest I guess.