she cares about critters

Yesterday Eric came over to see Anna and said, as he walked into the house, "Your house is turning into a zoo!" We have on our kitchen counter at the moment a 5 gallon tank with a tad-pole in it (which Anna caught from the pond at a local plant nursery on Saturday), a beta-fish, and some sort of plastic terrarium housing a worm and snail experiment. Plus another 20 gallon tank with 18 fish in it. And that's just the kitchen/dining room. The tad-pole is actually pretty cool; he's got two teeeeeny little back legs sprouting already.

So yes, my kiddo is an animal nut. And now her summer nanny has introduced her to a group (flock? pack? herd?) of Yellow-bellied Marmots living along the river in Riverfront Park. Pretty much every day now they go and feed them; Anna was very worried that they would starve if we didn't feed them at least once over the weekend. As you can see, they are very malnourished! That one, I swear, must weigh at least 25 pounds!

Here she is wearing her "I care about critters" t-shirt, which is her new absolute favorite thing to wear. For those of you who don't know, this shirt has a drawing done by my father, who was a talented artist and animal lover. Just like Anna. Unfortunately, she never met him; he died in 1981. My sister Jodi took one of his drawings and had it put on to t-shirts for all of us a few years ago. It's a pen and ink drawing of a tough-looking cowboy, hand-feeding a grasshopper to a baby bird, and it says "I care about critters". I love that she loves this shirt, drawn by her grandpa. And it certainly pertains to her! I wish we had it in every color; she'd wear it every day if she could.

In other weekend news, David put up my window flower baskets. It's looking pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself. (click on the photo to get to see the ORANGE flowers I put in there.) We spend so much time on the front porch that yesterday a neighbor kidded us about hauling our bed out there. That's not a bad idea. It's just such a nice way to connect with the neighbors; practically everyone who comes by stops to chat about the amount of work we've done. Yesterday alone we took 3 different people through the house for a tour. Anna, the little entrepeneur, suggested we start selling lemonade and cookies when people stop by for a look! She is, afterall, saving up for a horse someday.


And now for something completely random:

This morning, on my way to work, I saw that there is a new Presidential Library in the tiny reservation town of Worley! Look! According to the sign on the back, CIA Headquarters is located in the basement of this building.