Well....

We've had a small setback in the department of chicken hatching....specifically the case of the missing chicken eggs.

My contact at the farmer's market sold both dozen to someone else before I got there. The feed store where we are renting the incubator did not have the eggs either. So we've got the incubator, but no eggs. It's not a big deal since school is almost out, they'll let me keep the incubator for a little longer than just the 21 days. They say 5 days after hatching they'd like it back.

So plan B is to get the incubator warming up tomorrow, go pick up the eggs from the feed store and meet up with my farmer's market gal on Saturday in Orange.

Let's hope things work out well. I've got someone who would like to keep a chick or two, and of course that got me thinking. Maybe I could sell them and recoup my costs. Hmmmm.... we'll see....

Exciting Days Ahead!

Tomorrow is the day that we pick up our fertile chicken eggs and our incubator (or Eggy Baker as my sweet girl calls it). We are off on a little adventure of hatching chicken eggs.

I'm excited because I'm only slightly obsessed with chickens right now. My sister was able to talk her husband into getting chickens and a coop, so why haven't I? I can't blame him totally, but since I know he's an animal lover, I'm hoping that seeing these adorable little chicks in about 21 days will help him change his mind.

Of course, there's the issue of sex. Now stop that! I'm talking about a hen or a rooster. We can't have a rooster where we live, and I'm ok with that. The only problem is that, not being an expert, I'll have no idea if we've hatched a hen or a roo until about 4 months down the road.

So if I can convince him, we'll most likely have to order some. I've got my heart set on a particular breed - the Delaware. It's supposed to be a quiet, friendly, docile bird and they lay brown eggs. As a plus, they are somewhat rare.

My father-in-law suggested that the kids raise a bird and show them in the Orange County Fair. I thought that was a great idea, but one thing at a time. This whole conversation started me into a flurry of research on how to do something like this. Though I've never been in 4-H, I might look into it for my kids.

We'll see how it goes. We are almost done with our homeschool year at Spirit Academy and we really enjoy it there. There are things about it that I wouldn't choose, but the benefits far outweigh the downsides. We plan to return next year as well.

I've got some light lesson plans for the summer, mostly focused on improving reading skills, handwriting, and math (this is to get us caught up for the next year in Singapore Math - the whole elementary is doing this).

I'm also going to be focusing on trying to cull through things in our house that we no longer use. Tonight we spent sometime in the garage and that was great. Lots of stuff to drop off at our local christian thrift store. It feels good, though there's a long way to go.

On a less exciting note, we are about to enter the month that our 4th baby was due to be born. We lost our baby at 17 weeks gestation and have grieved this for some time. Some days are good, others not so much. I thought that it would be just around the due date that would be difficult, but being as we are almost a month away and I'm thinking of our loss so often, I can see it will be a challenge to keep my thoughts captive and focused on Christ.

So we'll just keep moving forward. We've got a busy day tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to watching the kids'response to all of this!