More than just tulips.

Tulips are in full bloom everywhere that they've been planted that the squirrels haven't found.  Though the bulbs we planted at our old house never really did us the favor of growing buds, our new garden surprised us with several different kinds and colors of tulips this spring.  But if we can see tulips anywhere, then why do we have a tradition of driving two hours to the city of Holland, Michigan, to attend the annual tulip time festival?  Well, there is the fact that there are few places closer to us where one can find so many tulips in one place.  And part of the answer has to be the annual offer of a free place to stay right on beautiful Lake Michigan, which makes for a great mini vacation.  But to get to the heart of the matter, you'd have to know that Calvin is about as Dutch as a little (over half) Dutch Boy can be.  Heritage, genealogy, tradition - all of these things are very important to us, and the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan is more than just a celebration of those pretty flowers;  it is a celebration of the Dutch heritage that is still strong in the area.  On Monday we visited Dutch Village where we fed goats, tried on wooden shoes, watched a Klompen Dancing demonstration, then tried our own feat at it, and enjoyed a traditional Dutch meal.  Monday evening, after walking the beach, we spent in Centennial Park enjoying not only the beautiful flowers but also another Klompen Dancing performance, this one by high school dancers from the area who filled the streets surrounding the park.  Calvin loved the dancing, and we loved seeing so many young men and women involved in keeping this part of the heritage alive.  And today we spent in Windmill Island Park where we climbed to the top of and learned all about the country's oldest working authentic Dutch windmill, De Zwaan, tiptoed through rows and rows of beautiful tulips, ate another authentic Dutch meal, and listened to the street organ while playing on the wide lawns of a replica Dutch village.  The weather was fabulous, and the crowds low thanks to it being mid-week, all adding up to a great mini-vacation.  The only downside?  Our garden of tulips looked suddenly quite modest upon our return home.

A profusion of Tulip Time pictures can be found in that album. 

Three cheers for summer weather

We went out for one jog, two walks, and one bike ride today, worked in the garden, met two sets of new neighbors, played in the neighborhood park, grilled and ate on the deck, and went out to say goodnight to the spring peepers before story time.  We love it.

Pictures, pictures as always:  April Album.

You know you live in a small town when...

This move has taken us into a whole new world, really.  We both have always lived in a city big enough to have "household mail delivery," or mail delivered directly to your home, and that is why we failed to ask about how we might be getting our mail in our new house, and that is why we spent an entire week trying to figure out where our mail was going.  There are no boxes on the houses here, not even curbside boxes, and the banks of boxes the entryways to the subdivision didn't have house numbers on them (and we had no box key).  We finally gave over to the embarrassment of not knowing such a thing and called our local post office where the nice postman replied "oh yeah, the first owners left their key here at the desk in an envelope marked with a C."  And if that isn't small town enough for you, then how about this:  when we went to the post office to pick up the key there was only one person working, not because the others were on break, but because there's only room for one person to work behind the desk (or in the whole building for that matter), AND... there was no line.  That quick visit left us with not only a key to our box but also with a hand drawn map complete with instructions, and a coloring book for Calvin.  So after naptime we embarked on a journey, hand drawn map in hand, to locate our box.  It has a nice location nestled between a neighborhood pond and the grocery store, and after a little additional exploring we stopped in to pick up fresh ingredients for dinner.  How very European of us.  This could become a habit.

And how about one more small town anecdote?  Before our actual move we called what we thought was the listed number to put the waterbill in our name and were gently told that in order to take care of such a thing she would need to "call Brenda, down at the town hall" or some such a thing.  And when she did call "down to some such a thing," Brenda turned out to be a real person with no automated answering system and didn't' even put us on hold.  And she also turned out to be a wealth of friendly, if unsolicited, additional information.  Before hanging up the phone (five minutes later), not only was the water bill put in our name, but we also knew when and how our garbage would be picked up, when and how to do recycling (although they are out of containers and don't know when they'll get more in), and the best route to get to several choice parks in the village.  Thank you Brenda, for reminding us what real personal customer service is all about.  We love it here already.

Ha Ha Ha

Did we say spring???
 

Welcome to Spring

We are celebrating this momentous occasion with a county wide weather advisory, complete with several inches of snow expected over the next 48 hours.  We're doing our best to hope for rain instead, since we are also celebrating by closing on, and moving into, our new house during the same time span.  Perhaps a more appropriate celebration (of the season turning) would have been the near 60 degree weather we enjoyed at this time last week, topped off with the relaxing walk we took through our neighborhood.  At the time we'd been assuming there would be more of those, but with the recent weather changes and the move looming large before us, the odds aren't for it.  The nature in our neighborhood is likely to be the one thing we miss after we leave: the rabbits, muskrats, foxes, coyotes, ducks, cranes, geese, and abundant avifauna.  There is a small pond in our new neighborhood, and we border a large expanse of farmland where we are sure to see deer at the right time of day or year, but we had come to look forward to our nightly walks when we visited with the ducks and the muskrats in the well developed (drainage) waterways of our large neighborhood planting.  We plan to make at least one trip back this way to visit the baby ducks after the first hatching of the year.