Easter morning

On this zoo visit, we saw one of my old friends—the peacock who maintains a territory near the Education office. He was prancing proudly, as usual, his tail feathers held high. After he decided to close up shop, I made sure he couldn’t see my mouth and then made a peacock call. He immediately called back and began to display again. (I had found, while working at the zoo, that the peacocks would mistake me for a peacock as long as they heard me, without seeing me.) My success prompted a small gathering of onlookers, many of whom tried to duplicate my calls. The peacock was not duped, so as we walked away, I gave one more call to set him off once more, for their benefit.
Isaac is doing much better, and has even felt up to practicing his sword fighting. In fact the other day I looked out the window and he was instructing Gwen on a few points of sword play. After that he would hide behind a pole and then jump out pretending to be the troll in the game. He would, of course, like the wonderful big brother he is, let her cream him thoroughly.
Xander came up with this theory for Easter:
“The Easter Bunny is a professional in behavior, and he just tells the parents if the kids have been good, and then they give them treats.” Hmmmm….
Laurelin is older all of a sudden again today. It’s amazing how they do that. Between one minute and the next they grow up just a little bit more. She looked older and so beautiful the way her hair was framing her face this morning…we definitely need to teach her some jiujitsu…
She is also having a great time practicing her dance for her upcoming recital.
Gwen continually cracks us up with the crazy things she says. I wrote just a couple down this week to share. One morning at breakfast Xander was pontificating on various types of creatures, and whether or not they can come on land. Gwen, thinking he was making a mistake said to him in a correctional tone, “Xander, things that live in water are AQUATIC!”
Then the other day she and Laurelin were having bananas (which Gwen says as “be-nanas”) for snacks. Laurelin’s had a mushy part to which Gwen exclaimed, “Nobody wants mushy be-nanas! Then how would you feel? YUCK-E! Yucky!!”
We all went to Jon’ parents house in Lehi to color eggs with Jon, Chastity and kids yesterday. His parents found a place with about an acre on it, with lots of out buildings and old barns to explore. Isaac brought his practice swords so after we had dyed eggs the kids set to questing about the property, jumping off things, visiting the chickens, and in Xander’s case seeing how high onto the roof he could climb, Jon showed the kids his trick of “hypnotizing” a chicken, which they all thought was pretty cool, and a good time was had by all.

A nudibranch that showed up in our marine aquarium a few days ago, likely a hitchhiker on the new corals.

All of us at the zoo, near the gorilla enclosure. (Gwen was unwilling to show her face, as you can see)

Xander being a tiger

Easter morning

Gwen "Hatching"--this is one of her favorite imaginary activities. "Pretend I was a baby penguin hatching!"

A mourning dove that seemed unusually unfraid.

The gullible peacock in action

The other night, I dreamt twice that Hiro the frog was singing. (Being a young frog, we hadn’t yet heard him do so.) The next day, to our great delight, he sang briefly, and now he has begun to manifest his vocal talents frequently…especially if I put my face near his aquarium. I’m including a short audio clip of one of his early performances for the curious.

Click here for Hiro's performance.