Ta da! 
I made this with iMovie today. 
Forgive the couple errors, I had already finalized the project and didn’t want to do it again! 
Collapse of the Tunnel (A Movie)
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Category Archives: Daily Life
Rearranging
We rearranged the house over the weekend and yesterday! 
The living room is now the exercise room, the dining room is Mom’s office, and the family room is the dining room/library/study/and family room. Everything looks very nice.
Photo Shoot with Siblings
On Sunday, Naomi and I took the camera outside. We needed to take Areli up on the hill to be with the goats, and brought the camera to amuse ourselves. Enjoy.
To view more of the photo shoot, visit my Facebook album.
Toy Story 3
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We watched Toy Story 3 today — in 3D! Totally awesome. It made me cry in some parts and made me laugh (really hard) at others.
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And above are more pictures from my ear piercing. My ears are doing good. The earrings twist really easily and aren’t sore at all. YAY!
I’m almost done with Fable Weaver! Now to get it signed…
Pictures from the Last Week
So I guess I should give you an update on the ducklings first. Bug and Timmy are recovering from their injuries nicely. Bug started walking around last night so we returned him to the outdoors. Addy seems to be okay, but we’re guessing she’s lonely without Seedy. 
As for me, I’m emotionally drained.
I went out to morning milking today to find a dead Khaki Campbell duckling. We’re not sure what the cause was, but the duckling was right by the door of the inner coop — away from the heat lamps. 9 Khaki Campbell ducklings are very tipsy. When walking, they tip over and lay there without moving, legs limp. We’ve got them in Mom and Baba’s unused bathtub right now. And 1 of the ducklings is missing. They were unattended for a minute and when we counted them again, we were 1 short.
We’ve been prepping for dirt work over the last week. Baba cut down several trees. That’s him below (or above, in reality! I really had to crane my neck to see him!), posing for the camera! 
The guy we hired to move the dirt arrived yesterday. Yesterday he moved some stumps and trees out of the way and then today he moved dirt. He’s been working since 8:15 this morning. I’ll get you more pictures later, but here’s one:
That’s in front of the house.
We’ve been taking the Khaki Campbell/Indian Runner ducklings swimming every day. They really enjoy it, though at some point a bunch of them head off down the driveway to explore!
And here’s Naomi, with Bug the Muscovy duckling. How cute, right?
Time to eat dinner! Burritos and cake! Yum.
Emma (2009)
We watched the new Emma movie this past week! There are two discs with two episodes each. It is sooo good.
We watched one of the one-hour episodes one night and then stayed up till 10 o’clock or so watching the next three the following night! Mikah wasn’t too happy about watching one of “the girls’ movies,” as he calls them, but Mom, Naomi, and I were thrilled! Baba was out of town the second night we watched it, so he didn’t really have any input.
As for my opinion, it was utterly awesome. Romola Garai, the actress who played the character Emma, did a great job. I won’t tell you anything more in case you haven’t watched it yet.
I have one piece of advice for you: Go and rent the movie for yourself! You might end up buying it so you can watch it over and over again.
Our First Plucking
Well, the drake is dead. To be honest, it’s a bit of a relief, though I feel a little sick from the whole ordeal. We found proof of his murderous nature in his belly, where we found one duckling. I’ll spare you all the gory details of the beginning, but here are some pictures from the plucking…
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In order, from picture one to eight:
- Carrying his body to the plucking station.
- Naomi insisted on helping Baba pluck the drake.
- Stew, anyone?
- Quills up for grabs! I’m starting at 5¢ apiece! Any bids? *pause* Thank you, sir! 10¢ each!
- The feathers are mounting up.
- What a mess!
- Look at those claws!
- Just for fun, Angel.
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Pregnant or Not?
Above is our wonderful, sweet, cuddly (oh, yes!) Nubian dairy goat, Pegs. She is the subject of this post because…. Her milk yield is going down! You’re probably thinking,
“Uh…yeah…isn’t that bad?”
Yes, well, normally that wouldn’t be too good! But right now, when we just came out of the breeding season, that’s super! She’s approaching the 3 month mark in the goat gestation period (the gestation period for goats is 5 months), when her milk yield will go down as she puts all her energy into raising that baby. So…pregnant or not? Probably pregnant! YAY!
The rest of the girls (Gingham, Paisley, Daisy, and Buttercup) should be pregnant. They sure are getting fat! But maybe that’s because of all that grass/madrone bark/madrone leaves out there at the moment!
Gingham won’t be giving birth till August because she only just got pregnant (hopefully…it’s still too early to tell). Daisy and Buttercup are about 3 months into their gestation period and Paisley is about 2 1/2 months. Get going, girls!
We are all sooo excited about the little Nubian babies that’ll be running around in a few months. We haven’t seen really young Nubian babies yet! Buttercup and Daisy were already 1 month old when we bought them. Apparently their ears hang almost to the ground!
The ducks are all good. Naomi and Mikah took them for a swim in the big water tub this morning. They really wanted to get out! Won’t be long and the ducklings will be big enough to withstand their daddy’s pecking.
Yesterday was town day and Naomi picked up a chest of drawers! She needed one for her clothes. Before she was using wire storage cubes, but she found that very hard to maintain. So Naomi picked one out yesterday at this newer furniture store in town and we brought it home! It’s in a corner, right next to her bookcase and fish tank. I’ll post pictures of it later.
Spring cleaning is coming along well! Today I’m cleaning the bathroom. Only the shower to do now! I’m glad — bathrooms are NOT fun to clean. Anyone else share that opinion? Mom’s going to reward all of us for all the work we’ve been doing. (Her idea…but, seeing as she told me what she’s getting me…I’m not complaining! 
)
And now, off to finish that bathroom. Bye!
Ducklings in the Swimming Pool!
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Yes, they sure did swim in the freezing cold water tub! Just plunk, plunk, plunk, in after their mamas! Seedy and Addy were splashing around, making a roller coaster ride for the ducklings. Several of them almost flew out of the tub because of all the “tidal waves” (not really for us, but for a teeny little duckling? The name fits!).
Angel, the tiny yellow duckling, definitely needs more attention than all the other ducklings. She’s twice as small as the largest duckling (who is pretty big!). We’re just calling Angel a she, though we don’t really know! You can’t tell the gender of ducklings till the 4 to 6 week mark (and even then it’s hard for the untrained eye!), which is when the drakelets start out-growing the ducklings (ducklings meaning “girls”). There are other characteristics, like the different quacks, and the feather coloring, and the time that each gender will get its flight feathers, etc.
Addy is the “in charge” mom. She keeps pushing Seedy away from the ducklings. But that’s good because there are 3 ducklings, stuck in eggs, about a WEEK AWAY FROM HATCHING! Isn’t that awesome? So Seedy better get busy!
The drake, when the ducklings and moms entered the barn again wasn’t happy. He’s got to be jealous because he does not like the babies! When Seedy and Addy led the ducklings out of the barn to the water tub, he pecked at two of them. We’ve got to be extra diligent if the ducklings are going to be outside their fenced-in, drake-free area.
We burned yesterday. All the madrone trees we cut down several weeks ago we sawed into pieces and burned! Madrones have got to be the hardest tree to burn, because the branches are all wiggly shaped and don’t fit together well. We got out the loppers and then chopped the branches into small segments. The fire got to be super hot, and it wasn’t very big either (well, in diameter — you should see the ash pile that’s sitting out there now! Boy is it big!).
And that was our Sunday. How was yours?
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P.S. Oh, and by the way, we are spring cleaning this week!
Mikah’s Room Rules
Look what I found on Mikah’s door:
Don’t enter without the express permission of M.D. (Mikah Daniel).
- Phone me for my permission (on my intercom)
- Knock 3 times and I will know that you will be phoning me for my permission
- When gaining my permission, stat your name and your purpose for disturbing me, then you will be admitted or…you won’t
- If you are admitted, follow the rules listed below:
- Always listen to M.D. in his room
- Do not yell in M.D.s room
- Do not make a mess in M.D.s room
- Do not dig through M.D.s stuff, for it is his property, not yours
A Note of Significance from M.D.:
Thank you for reading the above rules, please follow them, and you will be rewarded (let’s leave the reward-placement to me). Don’t ask to be rewarded just because you want a prize, it’s not gonna happen that way.
Signed,
M.D.P.S. Oh, and by the way, please don’t bother me on little matters (such as, “Mikah’s radio is on too high!”), phone me for those type of little matters, please. Thank you for your time in reading this.
I must say, VERY nice job, Mikah! (And you too, Naomi. )
New Page: Lianne Staide
I’ve got a page for this year’s novel now! You might just want to (don’t worry, you do) go over there and check it out! I’ll be updating it every so often. Right now I don’t have a synopsis up there because I can’t find it! I emailed it to my friend, but didn’t save it in my documents, and now I can’t find the email where I sent it to her. 
Anyway, she should email it back to me soon! So I’ll get it up there ASAP.
No ducklings yet. We’re wondering if the first eggs weren’t fertilized. If that’s the case, we won’t have ducklings till the newer eggs hatch (if they ever do!). It’s turning out to be a mess.
Cuttin’ Down Madrones
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We ended a wonderful 3-day weekend with felling madrone trees! Baba and Mikah spent Sunday and half of Saturday outside figuring out which trees to cut and then cutting them.
The goats were in heaven. All that *hmmm* juicy *ahhh* tender *yummm* DELICIOUS MADRONE LEAVES!!! You get the picture. Mikah and Baba also pulled down a douglas fir tree, which they absolutely loooved.
Yesterday I mentioned we had gorgeous weather. Well, the sun packed up her bags this morning and hit the road. If you see her, would you mind sending her right back here? Thanks.
I’d better get off and go unload the dishwasher! See you!
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