National Donald Duck Day

Today is National Donald Duck Day, which is a great day to celebrate of course.  We were pretty busy in different directions today, but I helped Camille with small groups tonight by creating this trivia slide set for the girls, one filled with different questions and images like what you see above.  The answer is "B," by the way.  Donald's middle name is "Fauntleroy."  I've got a few DVD sets of Disney Treasures, a pretty massive collection of Donald Duck cartoons.  We watched one tonight, "The Wise Little Hen."  That's the first appearance of Donald Duck - also one of the trivia questions.  Donald's appearance changed over time, and his behavior has certainly evolved.  One little side note about "The Wise Little Hen" is Donald's companion, Peter Pig.  Peter has about the same exact role and screen time as Donald, and in fact is asked first each time the Wise Little Hen needs help.  But for some reason, he didn't have that same star quality as Donald.  He shows up in "The Band Concert," and from that point on, makes largely cameos in all future releases.  He's actually in "Mickey's Christmas Carol," or so I've just read, and that means I'll have to be on the lookout for him there in December.  Anyway, Peter Pig never made big like his co-star Donald Duck, who is the stuff of legend now, with statues and topiaries, a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and of course his own day in June.  

Madison had a nice, relaxing day today, playing piano and playing games.  No taekwondo tonight or piano lessons either.  But she did spend a little time on the piano this afternoon.  Mom and Nana were out and about, grocery shopping and picking up a few items at Goodwill, including a few more ornaments for our patriotic tree.  It's still up for the Fourth of July.  I don't know when we take it down, but I really like it there now.  

We've had a lot of rain lately, and that's good.  The ground is soaked, and the flowers and plants are thriving.  The birds are loving our feeders, as are the squirrels and chipmunks.  We have a little plate out for the chipmunks, and a feeder in the front yard for the birds.  We've seen all kinds of birds out there, but the most common is a pair of cardinals.  In the back, our hummingbird feeder has been up, and there is a hummingbird or two that come by, but they aren't as frequent as we'd like to see them yet.  I'm hoping to get a picture of them.  I was at the back deck today, and one flew right up to my face as I was super still.  It flew around my head one lap, and then flitted off into the trees out back.  They're using the feeder, taking a sip from it.  But last year I remember the hummingbirds fighting one another for a sip, making all that noise that these birds tend to do.

Tonight was the premiere of "Loki," another new Marvel series.  Maddie was excited to see this one, and it was pretty good.  As one of the stars of it would say, "Wow."  It was good, and here we go again with another Marvel series.  This one seems to hint at some huge multi-universe implications for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, but we'll see as time goes on, as so did "WandaVision."  We'll see as things roll along, but it's a good start.

Tonight we read from our book, "Kingdom Keepers III."  We've encountered this large snake before, but the character of "Gigabyte" is still roaming about the grounds at EPCOT, which makes me want to watch "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" again, as I don't remember the snake at all.  I can't remember why exactly the bad characters are the ones that are so prevalent in these books.  I kind of remember good characters popping in from time to time, but it's mostly villainous pirates, snakes, jesters, crash test dummies, monkeys, and an army of Small World dolls.  Tonight the characters are entering an old abandoned pavilion, "The Wonders of Life."  As I'm reading this to Madison, I'm thinking back to my experiences on all of these attractions that no longer exist at the parks.  I was there at EPCOT the opening year, and I remember all of it.  I remember the dinosaurs, Figment, the futuristic city, the smell of Rome burning, and choosing which future we could race through in Horizons.  Living Seas wasn't there yet, and there was talk of a new Israel pavilion that never made it.  I'll have to look, but I think I have a book with that listed in the "upcoming attractions" area, along with concept art for "Living Seas."  Many of the rides have changed dramatically.  We lost Horizons and I think it's Mission Space now.  The car ride into the past and future is now Test Track, and the dinosaurs are gone for the time being.  EPCOT has changed a lot.  I was doing the cardio walk the other day at home, and while doing that I have the POV videos on of different locations, and I chose EPCOT.  Someone had filmed it recently, walking POV style through the park for 45 minutes.  There's a lot of construction going on there in Future World.  It'll be interesting to see what they do next.  But I do reminisce about the old stuff.  They had music to go with it too - I remember all the soundtracks to these rides that no longer exist, and can even sing along with some of it, just because I loved it so much as a kid.

ANYWAY, we read from that story a bit, and are approaching the end.  No doubt, we'll move on to book four after this.  There are a lot of these books.  And it appears a few more on the way, perhaps.  We might actually wrap up this book series right about the time the new one comes out.  Several of these books that I have were signed by the author, so Maddie might like to see that.  In fact, if he comes around again, maybe Maddie and I can go down and stand in line to meet him and have him sign the next book.  That would be fun.

We said our prayers tonight, and were off to sleep pretty quickly.  I tire easily at night, but I think that's due to the medication.  And it's not a bad thing to be tired at 10pm.  I feel great.  A few creaks and groans in the chest from time to time, but overall, I'm doing great.  That's one thing I'm grateful for when praying.