We hope you all had a safe and festive Fourth of July!
At our house we learned that, although Calvin is deathly afraid of the siren on the firetruck, he has absolutely no concerns about fireworks and the noises they make. More on that note later.
Happy Fathers' Day!
Yes, we know we are a day late, but what with the dance recital and spending an afternoon on house improvements (for the house we have 
on the market), we christened today Fathers' Day Observed and spent the morning at our favorite zoo. It has been a highly unusual year for us, the early part of the spring having been filled with the move, and this was actually our first 2008 Detroit Zoo trip. We have become very attached to that zoo, having spent so much time there over the years, and feel, in some ways, like it is home for us, so it was a wonderful feeling to return and visit our animals. It's a lot more fun, 
too, now that Calvin is older. He knows the names of all the animals, even if he doesn't always get them right (no, the Guanaco is not a llama), and according to him they all have an accompanying sound (ever heard a kangaroo? They apparently say "boing boing"). We were even fortunate enough to be visited by a swimming polar bear while in the underwater tunnel, an occasion that left Calvin straddling the line between fear and curiosity. He was brave enough, 
though, to reach up and touch that big, black polar bear foot, something not every two year old can lay claim to having done. We should also give mention to the aardvark, who was not only awake, but busily digging holes wherever the ground was undisturbed. He was Calvin's favorite sighting of the day, and likely ours, too, since we've never seen him do anything but sleep (a pastime we have come to respect more and more over the last two years).
Zoo pictures are in the June 2008, too album.
family, holidays, humor, photography Calvin's birthday is just around the corner - only two days away - 
but since this year it happens to fall on a Monday, and since a two year old doesn't care about dates, we celebrated today instead. As with most things that are new to him, we spent the week preparing by reading books about birthdays and talking about our plans for the day. Although he did have a solid opinion on what he wanted for dinner, that being "pizza, artichokes, strawberries, happy birthday 
cake" (honestly, in his words), two year olds are, thankfully, blissfully unaware of the usual birthday hullabaloo, and our party planning consisted of buying ingredients for a carrot cake, digging the last year's leftover decorations out of the basement, and deciding whether to pick up the pizza or have it delivered. Calvin With the recent heat-wave we decided to bake the cake (carrot) early, before it 
got too hot to use the oven (another great reason to order pizza for dinner) and then walk into town for the Dexter Ice Cream Social in order to get out of the house for the morning. That turned out to be a great choice - the breeze and cloud cover made it more comfortable to be out of doors than in, and Calvin enjoyed the Social like it was one big birthday party. He got a balloon, he got to feed llamas and goats, and he 
even got to take part in the all essential birthday pony ride. Twice. And he wasn't particularly shy about telling everyone that it was his birthday ("oh, and how old are you?" "two!"). Then, following a much needed afternoon nap, he woke up ready to have a party all over again, which was a good thing, since the kitchen was already filled with one. And, what the family party lacked in pony 
rides, it made up for tenfold with good company (his four favorite grandparents, his favorite aunt, and his favorite mom and favorite dad), food, and presents (of which his favorites happen to be a helicopter, a dollhouse, and condiments - yes condiments. Who knew they made wooden condiments???). We just hope he doesn't expect pony rides and a petting zoo every year.
The usual picture overkill can be found in the June 2008 album.
activities, family, holidays, parenting Sooooo.... raise your hand if you need a long week to recover from your long weekend. 
And now, if you're raising your hand, you can put it down because you look silly - we can't see you. But if we could, we'd be all for commiserating. We fully understand that the long Memorial Day weekend is a time to commemorate and remember, and we spent Monday morning doing just that while sitting at the side of the local parade route and watching young children maul each other over thrown pieces of candy, 
but the rest of the weekend we used to get started on the plans we have for our new yard. We started this task at ten in the morning on Saturday, armed with a couple of shovels, and finished our work just before dinner on Monday after putting away the pick ax and sledge hammer that we'd added to our selection of handy tools. If we've learned one thing this weekend it's that clay, especially bone dry clay, is not a digging friendly medium. 
But even taking into account such breaks as the pizza party with Jon's family on Saturday, the BBQ ribs party with my family for Sunday dinner, the bonfire with the neighbors on Sunday night (have we mentioned how much we love our new neighborhood?), and the parade on Monday morning, we have a long list of accomplishments to tack on our refrigerator door before bed tonight. 
We ripped out two to three feet of sod all the way around the house, and improved the grading where needed; we extended our sump pump pipe by five feet, dug a trench, hauled in a trunk full of free rocks from a local farm, and installed a dry creek to disperse the flow of water; we removed a large area of sod from the SE corner of our backyard, added a property defining garden, then transplanted two bushes and one tree from our 
overcrowded front garden to populate it and hauled in ten 40lb bags of topsoil to mix into it; and we removed two rather large and rather dead bushes from by the front walk way. It may not sound like much, but ask our muscles and I'm guessing they'll disagree.
And what about the above mentioned irony? We spent hours upon aching hours chopping at the sod with such inefficient tools as shovels, 
trowels, and even the aforementioned pick ax. Then the very last thing we did on Monday night was ask our neighbor if we could borrow his lawn mower again (since ours is still at the old house that we are still mowing), only to have him ask if we might also want to borrow his sod ripper. Say what? At least the parade was fun.
Garden pictures in the Yard Transformation album.
Parade and other new pictures in the May 2008 album.
activities, community, family, gardening 
