World Penguin Day

Today is World Penguin Day, which of course needed to be celebrated.

Evidently, on this very day - April 25th - every single year, a certain type of penguin begins a migration north by swimming. They all dive into the freezing cold water and swim hundreds of miles to hang around a bunch of icebergs where they eat krill, sardines and meat loaf. Then, they go back home to beautiful Antarctica. So it isn't really migrating. But there is a method to their madness: they have to swim north because it gets darker in Antarctica, and these birds can't see so well in the dark. Therefore, they have to leave so they can see - and eat!

So, how did we celebrate World Penguin Day? Firstly, Mommy has Opus in the kitchen right now. He's a stuffed animal - yes, a penguin. He was the star of Daddy's favorite comic book series, "Bloom County." And of course, we had penguin for dinner. Just kidding. This afternoon, we couldn't make it to the zoo or the aquarium, as it was a Sunday - but we did manage to pick up a copy of "Happy Feet" to watch, and of course that leads us to...

MADISON'S BOOK CLUB

This is a simple book that exploits penguins for mathematical purposes, and that's just fine by me. Basically, the title of the book is as descriptive as they come: you count penguins. Still, it's a fun little book for Madison to see the penguins, and yes, count them. She does like penguins, of course. What child doesn't? You may remember that her favorite toy is this one here:

Playful penguins indeed! Madison can sit and watch these penguins go up - and slide down - for over an hour. She'll interact with them, and even take them to other places with her. These penguins are her friends!

She didn't take the penguins with her today when we went for a ride to town. While there, we picked up some items for the backyard area. Daddy will play the part of Handy Manny tomorrow as he tries to assemble a gliding chair for he and Mommy to sit on. We also got more pea-sized stones for an area in the back yard, and new deck chairs for our balcony. We've been getting a lot of rain lately - a lot of rain. Yesterday we were under a tornado watch, and our weather radio was going off at 1:00 in the morning!

One other thing we picked up while we were out was a copy of "Happy Feet." We wanted to continue our theme of penguins, so we popped some popcorn and watched penguins dance for an hour and a half. I think they did more than dance, but seriously, if you cut out the dancing and the far away shots where the camera zooms forward to a penguin (usually dancing), then the movie would be about ten minutes long. Seriously, this was the movie that beat "Cars" for Best Animated Picture of 2006? Someone was apparently bribed, or under the influence of some sort of mind-altering substance.

Don't get me wrong: It wasn't a terrible movie. It's just as far as penguin movies go, we could have been better off with "Surf's Up." I guess that one will wait until tomorrow!

Anyway, it's time to head to bed now. It's been a long day: we had a great service this morning, the seventh in our "Exodus" series. We even squeezed in a walk down to the park with Ye-Ye and Nana, which was fantastic with the nice weather and all. But now, we're all tired. It's time to head off to sleep, where we'll dream of beautiful Antarctic landscapes filled with dancing flightless waterfowl.

"I don't go for fancy cars, for diamond rings or movie stars. I go for penguins."

- Lyle Lovett