A complimentary toad.

 Having a toad visit your garden can be a sign of a healthy, chemical free garden.  We take it as a compliment, then, that we found this toad, about the size of a silver dollar, hanigng out in our front garden after lights out tonight.  Come back anytime, Mr Toad!

Five years of fun redux

Five is the magic number this year.  Not only did we celebrate our fifth year of marriage this past weekend, last night we celebrated five years of Detroit Zoo membership with Member Night at the Zoo.   The zoo's way of saying thanks to their regular supporters, member night is exactly what it sounds like - an evening during which the zoo is open after hours to members only.  There's a little more to the story, too, and that includes free rides on the zoo train, special keeper talks, music, puppet shows (puppet shows at the zoo? We'd rather watch the real animals thanks), and special animal enrichment times.  Since it can also mean crowds at the popular spots (we  vividly remember waiting well over 30 minutes to take the train back to the front of the zoo at the end of the night several years ago), we tend to do things our own way to avoid the throngs.  This year we boarded the train as soon as we got into the park, waiting only about 15 minutes for our ride to the back (Calvin's first ride on the zoo train, nonetheless!) where, instead of rushing to the first enrichment exhibit with everyone else, we kicked back with a fresh homemade summer salad and enjoyed a leisurely dinner with the  zebras and the peafowl.  We missed the puppet show, the warthog feeding, and the wolverine keeper talk, but with all the people crowding those specific areas, we felt like we had all the room in the world to enjoy the aardvark (who was fast asleep not three feet from us, just over the railing), the kangaroos (who graced us with a hop by on the path), and the hippo (who actually got out of the water and wandered around for Calvin to enjoy).  Evening is a great time to view the animals and avoid the oppressive heat of summer.  Member night alone feels like reason enough to keep our membership in good standing.  We love our zoo.

More pictures.  Here.

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!

If you plant it, they will come

This beautiful black swallowtail visited our purple butterfly bush while I was watering the butterfly garden yesterday.  Somehow I feel rather triumphant about this.  Too bad Calvin was napping at the time...

The joy of reading

From the very beginning, we made reading an integral part of Calvin's daily routine. These days he has many "scheduled" book sessions—when he wakes up, just before nap, and just before bed—and he adores every minute of them. But there are also many "unscheduled" sessions, the times when he picks up a book of his own accord for the sheer pleasure of it, and those are the moments we treasure most. It is in these times when we see just how much attention Calvin has paid to the books as he retells the stories out loud, all by himself, page by page.

Calvin has become aware of the video camera these days, so we have to be more stealthy about capturing his spontaneous moments. Forgive the slight hidden camera approach as we present Calvin's interpretations of two current favorites: My Big Boy Potty by Joanna Cole and Moose Tracks by Karma Wilson. We've used subtitles to show the actual texts, but Calvin's version is pretty darn close!