Just Ducky

If you need an idea for a charming, harmless prank to do on a family member or friend, I can loan you one. An idea, that is, not a relative or friend. If you're like me, you don't exactly loan out the latter.  

Here's how I know about a good pranking idea to suggest: 

A few hours after we came home from Maranatha Bible School, I got my first clue of a mystery in our house. As I was showering, I noticed a tiny yellow duck sitting on the shower caddy shelf. 

"Hmm," I thought, "that's cute. I wonder how that got there. I'll bet Kerra put it there as a little welcome-home token." Minutes later, I noticed another mini duck, an identical twin to the first one, in my Q-tip cup.

"As soon as Kerra gets home from her singing practice," I told myself, "I'll have to thank her for the fun gift items she placed for us."

Meanwhile, I found a few more duckies about the house, equal in size to the first two I had discovered but in new colors. Pink and purple ones nestled in a set of glass candle holders on the banister above the entry stairs. Blue and white ones perched on the upper portion of doorways and window trim. Clearly someone had been up to some sort of ducky welcome home.

"Oh, it wasn't me," declared Kerra when I thanked her for the fun finds. "Someone got permission from me to come to our house last night while I was gone and place some items for you to find. But the person who messaged me about it wasn't the one who came here, so I don't know who actually did the hiding."

Hmm, interesting. My thoughts began paddling. A bigger deal than just a couple of ducks, then. Who knows what prankster(s) entered the house and who knows how many ducks they hid? This should be a fun mystery to solve. 

For the next week, we kept finding ducks both by surprise and by intentional hunting. I started lining them up in a circle on the kitchen counter as we discovered them. When the total number hit the 20's mark, I googled "hiding ducks" to see if duck pranking is really a thing. Turns out it is! Amazon is on board with the scheme, as well, offering for purchase multi-colored flocks of tiny resin ducks in packages of 100. 

"One hundred! Well. We have a long way to go," I thought. 

Ken got in on the hunt, too. When he discovered a duck in each of his work shoes, and another ducky pair on the window sill high above the entry door, he started thinking that maybe a man was involved in the duck-hiding scheme. Perhaps a husband and wife made up the pranking team, he proposed.

 I thought he had a point. I started shifting my ideas about youth girls being the culprits (because they had hung out with Kerra one night shortly before we came home from MBS) and employed my sleuthing skills to further investigation among our church family. 

I messaged numerous friends, prying into their whereabouts on a certain Friday night by asking if they knew anything about a duck prank in our house. Some said they knew absolutely nothing about it, but they wished they did, because it sounded like such a neat idea. Others said they had heard someone say it should be done, but they didn't know any more details than that, and they weren't going to say who had made the suggestion. A few knew that it was done, but they were quick to insist that they didn't do it. 

The vague answers and cryptic messages deepened our puzzlement while we continued collecting ducks. Maybe we would reach one hundred! The duck circles on the counter expanded as the tiny, colorful creatures showed up in flowerpots, egg cartons, jacket pockets, the spice cupboard, and of all places, in the fridge freezer - frozen into ice cubes! 

Not only did we collect tiny ducks by the dozens, but we also accumulated some duck puns in our ongoing hunt for the pranksters. "Did you have to duck the last time you came to our house?" or "Did you add to the "duckerations" in our house?" I might ask a suspect.

"I must have ducked the joke, because I'm swimming in confusion, but it could be I'm just a few quackers short." might be the reply. "I'm trying to keep my feet out of this web" or "I'm not trying to duck your question, but I could take you on a wild goose chase, if you'd like" were some other punny answers to my inquiries. One friend asked if we had discovered who broke in, so we could know whom to "bill" for any damage.😊

Our children were also interested in becoming mystery detective workers. Ricky got the brilliant idea to check video footage from one of Martin's Family Fruit Farm's security cameras, the one mounted on the side of the apple storage building that faces our house. 

That particular move is what led to the revelation: The duck-hiders were indeed a husband and wife team, and none other than our minister and his wife! Some other friends of ours were in on the scheme as well, arranging the different aspects to the prank in such a way that it was hard to pin down who actually did it. In the end, they just wanted Ken and me to come home to a surprise conveying the message that we were missed and we are loved. I'd say they chose a unique and creative way to do it!

So there you have it - a welcome home idea for showing your friends you care. Order your Amazon package today, and get started. Let me know if you need some suggestions for good hiding places. 

Also, here's some advice for you, if you're ever on the receiving end of a duck prank: 

1. Make sure your house is clean and in good order before you leave it for three weeks. (I shudder to think of the dust and spider webs our pranksters encountered while they hid ducks in ours...) 

2. Put aside your qualms about people pulling open your desk drawers and cupboard doors to find hiding places and just pull out the stops on your enjoyment in finding the ducks hidden in those places.

3. If you suspect someone duck-pranked you and you confront them about it and they say neither nay nor yea, but something about trying to stay neutral in this sort of situation, count on it - they are the culprit. 

And there's one more thing. When it comes to pranking, never put it past your pastor and his wife to pull off a good one.

P.S. We still come across a duck hiding spot now and then. The other day, I found the 100th duck! But is that the last one? According to the hiders, no one knows for sure how many ducks were placed. Now the question is What to do with 100 ducks? Playing Hide the Duck with the grandson and using them as conversation starters or accessories in fairy gardens uses only so many. What do you suggest? 

Marching in the Company Of

                                                  📷- Jenn Jantzi

A whole month (and a bit more) has gone by since we returned home from our stint at Bible School. When I look back over our March schedule - the places we went, the activities we did, and the people we encountered in the past several weeks - I realize that we live a full, rich life. 

Recently I heard a speaker on the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast quoting an "old anabaptist" on the topic of brotherhood when he said, "No man is in Christ apart from his brother." The speaker went on to explain that we all need to have some kind of group of people to love, someone to have to get along with. "You can't submit to yourself," he said, "You've got to have real people in your life to interact with", in order to fully live out the teachings of Jesus.

I can't say I've thought of it exactly like that before. Viewing our experience from this perspective, I feel like we are a blessed couple with lots of opportunity for living out Christianity in community. We have so many friends, relatives, and acquaintances as our "real people to interact with" - people who help to shape us, as well as people in whom we have a chance to help form character. I'm grateful that we get to do life in the varied company of these beautiful souls.

In the month of March, we were in the company of the following people, some pictured, and some not:

Pictured: 

Luci Martin from northern Alberta was the guest speaker at a seminar for us ladies at Oasis. I had the special privilege of hosting Luci in our home for several days over that time. (you can read more about the weekend in the series she posted weeks ago, being the perfect kind of prompt and prolific blogger that she is)

Carlin & Kayleen and the twins hosted us for a brief time at their place when we were on our way back home from a meeting in Lancaster, PA. I helped Kayleen prepare food for a friend's baby shower she was attending that evening. And we doted on those sweet little girls, of course!

The planning committee for our Sunday evening services at Oasis put together a memorable event for our church family on Palm Sunday - a Christian Passover Seder. I signed up to make multiple batches of unleavened bread (lotsa matzah, as my friend worded it) ahead of time. As "father of the household" at our table, Ken was the one to pour the water for handwashing before we shared the meal together. The committee did such a good job of explaining the symbology (I learned a new word that evening) of the different aspects of a Seder.

Val, Sharon, and Tina are smart, helpful, and fun editors in my writing world. I thoroughly enjoyed my day with them and other writers at the Authors' Book Signing Event that Living Waters, a local Christian bookstore, put on. I didn't have my own signing booth, since the book I'm working on isn't to the signable stage yet, so I visited other authors at their stations, and sat in on Topic and Q & A sessions in the main assembly. It was a special highlight of the day to rendezvous with the abovementioned members of my Writers' Group. 

                                                     📷- Tori Martin

Norm & Sharon and daughters blessed us with their music and their words at an annual fundraiser dinner for NYP one evening at an area church. I'm always so encouraged to see families who enjoy singing together. 

Darrel & Cathy visited our church one Sunday morning and graced us with their presence in our home for Sunday lunch and an afternoon visit. There's nothing quite like getting together with old friends we haven't been with for awhile, to make the hours zip by. 

                                                                   📷- Kerra Martin

The Waterloo Kenites came here last Saturday evening to celebrate Kerra, who had just become a quarter century years old earlier in the week. The gathering was also a catch-up party for Joy, Rolin, and Jasmine, whose birthdays we missed celebrating right while they happened during the past year. As usual, the triplets provided a good portion of the entertainment that evening. It was their first time to be here since Jude and Piper are walking, so they had great fun exploring Grandpa and Grandma's house!   

Our church family shared a preparatory service, a Communion service, an Easter Sunday morning service, and a potluck meal together in recent weeks. What a privilege to get to know my brothers and sisters better as we sing together, listen to each other's testimonies and stories, hear sermons and study the Word together, wash each other's feet literally and figuratively, eat each other's good food, laugh and cry together, encourage one another, learn from each other's mistakes, and follow Jesus together.

Not pictured:

~ Nephew Nick married his sweetheart Alisha on the day that we got home from Bible School, and we were pleased to attend the wedding as the groom's aunt & uncle. A meaningful part of the ceremony was witnessing the couple read the vows they had written to each other, and a special touch at the close of the reception was the gathering of guests around the couple for a send-off prayer of blessing.

~ Seth came here after school one afternoon and stayed for a few hours, long enough to eat supper with us, listen to some stories, play house (which included caring for triplet babies, of course), play Hide the Duck, and go fishing (for Grandma's pool noodle fish).

~ A pleasant and helpful policewoman showed up when Ken and I were parked on the shoulder of I-90 somewhere in Pennsylvania, changing a tire on our van after dark. She informed us that we weren't the only travelers with a flat tire dilemma, that she'd gotten reports of a nail spill in the vicinity (Ohh, so that debris we had hit earlier wasn't a dead deer after all!) and that there were two more similarly disabled vehicles ahead of us. After our spare tire was on, she drove behind us, lights flashing, until we were well out into traffic again. In the next ten-mile stretch, we counted 13 vehicles pulled off to the side of the road with a flat tire!

~ My writer friend Elaine from Parry Sound treated me to lunch and a chat with her at Kitchen Kuttings when she came to Elmira to attend a visitation one afternoon.

~ And then the following day, my walking buddy and Tiny Group friend Rose shared lunch and a catch up visit with me at Covenant Cafe in Waterloo.

~ A pranking mystery couple visited us one evening...well, technically we weren't in the company of the sneaky pair, we were only in the company of the dozens of tiny ducks they hid all over our house, to welcome us home from MBS. I'll give more details of this in my next episode, oops, I mean in my next blog post.