Levi's Birthday

ALL,
Here on this grand day of Saturday 14 June 2008, Levi Dale Williams has turned 5 years old!
I would like to share a few pics w/ you & tell a little story about my day.
We spent the day in the Nairobi Game Park a short 15 min drive from our house. We celebrated w/ a breakfast/birthday cake
& hot Kenyan tea that my mom made. My dad parked the van w/ zebras on one side & cape buffalo on the other side.
We had a great birthday party. I was so brave & excited, I even chased the zebras. After our cake & tea, we drove a short 2km.
down the road & came open 6 lions! They were resting in the tall grass on the edge of the road, my dad almost ran one over!
We spent about 30mins watching them from about 10ft away! We also saw hippos, eland, gazelle, heartabeast, ostrich, warthogs, & baboons.
We drove up to a giraffe that was so close I could almost touch its tail.
Now that's a Birthday treat you can't get anywhere else.
Thanks for your Birthday wishes!
Love Levi.

Caleb's Eggs

About three weeks ago, Caleb told us he was going to have eggs. I had no idea what he was talking about. But he recently made a new friend of our neighbor’s cook. The next day, she knocked on our door with 2 eggs wrapped protectively in newspaper. Caleb was talking non-stop about chicks, these were 2 fertilized eggs. I don’t know how to incubate eggs. We filled up a hot water bottle and wrapped them in a towel and tucked them in on top of the water bottle.

That night, Ryan had a good laugh and googled about home incubation. We found some good sites. The best, written by a 1st grade teacher who did this every year. Ryan built our home incubator from an empty ice-cream tub, old kitchen towel, thermometer, lid, and a small cup of water. He spent an hour putting our desk lamp different heights above the eggs and taking readings on my thermometer. We wanted between 99 and 101 F. Ryan taped a line on the wall and labeled it lamp height. The water was for humidity which we had very little control over. Caleb was in charge of turning the eggs 3 times a day, he never forgot. The teacher from the blog shared good ideas on teaching kids used to instant rewards, that patience is worth it. Ryan labeled 21 days later on our calendar and helped Caleb count down the days.

21 days came and went and no chicks. We weren’t too surprised. Caleb wanted to crack them open and see what happened. Another suprise, neither stunk. The first wasn’t fertilized. The second yolk was dark gray, so something had grown but not much.

When those eggs first showed up on our door, I thought, this is suppose to happened to other moms. Other moms have incubators on their desks and teach their kids this stuff. Is it already my turn? I think we will try it again. This time we will be ready, no hot water bottles!