Calvin's first voting experience

Well, not really, since he went with me to vote in the primaries last spring, but he really seemed to take an interest in what we were doing today in a way that obviously didn't happen those several months ago.  Of course, that's likely because we made it a sort of holiday.  Our polling place is a little less than a mile away and, since there is a Koney Island en route and the weather was beautiful, we packed up early and headed out.  We started Calvin's day with a Mickey Mouse pancake, then walked the rest of the way to the polling place in a deliciously warm autumn sun.  Our wait was about 1.5 hours and my only complaint is that half of it was inside; what a waste on such a delightful day!  But Calvin was incredibly well behaved and the process was a very smooth one; we were voters number 1,003 and 1,004 (oh if only we'd been three people earlier!), which I took as a sign of great voter turnout since the population (total) of our district is only 3,500 and it was only 11am when we signed in.  On the way out Calvin was delighted to have earned his "I voted" sticker, and a cup of apple cider from the tent outside, and spent most of the walk home calling out "hurray, I voted!" to everyone we passed.  It seems an auspicious beginning to his relationship with this civic duty.

More pictures in the November 2008 album (yes, it really is November).

Tomorrow can change our world

Bear hugs

Having a play-room picnic with his bears.  It's the small moments caught on camera, just like this one, that fill out the gaps in the stories of our lives.  Years from now we will look back at these pictures and we won't remember the moment, or even the day, but hopefully we will remember his tenderness, and that's what I hope to preserve even just a smidgen of.

Goodnight

Five years of fun

Actually it's been more like seven years, but yesterday, on our fifth anniversary, we spent some time looking back at all the experiences of our five years of married life and decided that it really has been a lot of fun.  We started this blog over three years ago (can you imagine?  Three years!  I mean, whatever did we write about before Calvin was born?  Ourselves?) and looking back through the site archives is a bit like perusing a family photo album.  It's true what they say about the road map of life, though;  just like a road map, which highlights only the most interesting stops, twists, and turns, the blog (and our photo albums, for that matter) shares mostly the amusing stops along our life route,  but not much of the road itself.  So what of the road?  Forty years from now, when we sit on our front porch rockers and reminisce about the good old days, will we remember only those recorded moments?  Or will we remember just as well sharing coffee over the newspaper on Saturday mornings, taking family walks to the mailbox in the evening, or taking turns washing the dishes while the other lords over bath, book, and bed time?  Really we already know the answer to this;  it is already hard to remember how we filled our time when we were just a family of two, the day to day of that era, gone only two years ago, has already slipped gradually from our memories.  But every once in a while something will remind us of late nights playing Trivial  Pursuit, or of luxurious weekends spent reading aloud by the pool at our old apartment.   Whether we remember them as vividly or not, really it's the every day, the small moments, that make up the meat of our lives, and we are going to make a conscious effort to enjoy, photograph, and record those moments as often as we do the more momentous occasions, so that we can remember what these days were all about.

We were behind, but now we're caught up.  Lots of new pictures in the July 2008 Album!