For Michelle’s fourth birthday, we decided to take the day off and take her to Chattanooga, about 2 hours drive away.
Here are some photographs from the Tennessee Aquarium. We have been to the Georgia Aquarium lots of times and that is huge. Tennessee aquarium is smaller, nothing on the scale of the one in Atlanta, but I think children like it better. Michelle was running from one display to another and showing us all the marine life.
We also cruised the Tennessee River Gorge aboard a boat.
When we got off the boat, it had started raining. So we went to Hennen’s for dinner. Michelle was tired, but we had a nice dinner, followed by a chocolate cake and ice cream complete with candle on top to celebrate Michelle turning four.
Categories: Food and Cooking, Parenthood, Photography, Travel Tags: aquarium, birds, birthday, butterfly, chattanooga, fish, river, tennessee
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, said that about today. The question is how did he know about three decades in advance that the date was going to be so important. Coincidentally, the small event that led FDR to make that speech also happened a little after 11, Pakistan Standard Time. Of course, there’s the issue of AM and PM there. The minor incident happened at 11pm of what would years later become Pakistan time (8am Hawaii time) while the infamous incident 3 decades later happened at 11:15am Pakistan time, which is about the same time as right now.
That fateful day was an election day in Pakistan, elections which had been postponed due to floods; elections that were the first real and proper elections in the 23 year old Pakistan; elections which led to an army operation, massacres and the creation of Bangladesh, but more on that later in 9 days. Right now, we must focus on today’s date because even those historic elections were not the reason for the date’s infamy.
No, it wasn’t even the Indonesian invasion of East Timor or the birth of Leopold Kronecker or Noam Chomsky or the death of Wolfgang Paul.
It was closer to home and much more important. And today, in honor of that date that will live in infamy, the Kid wants me to have lots of toys to play with.
یہ سال درجنوں کا سال ہے۔ ابھی پچھلے ہفتے ہم نے شادی کے 12 سال منائے تھے اور آج میری سالگرہ ہے۔ میری عمر اب تین درجن سال ہے۔ آج ہمارا سالگرہ گھر میں کیک کاٹ کر اور مومبتی بجھا کر منانے کا ہے کیونکہ مشیل ایک مہینے سے کیک اور مومبتی کے انتظار میں ہے۔
Last week we celebrated a dozen years of marriage and today is my 36th birthday.
This year we are going to celebrate at home with a cake. Michelle has been excited about my birthdya for some time now. She wants a cake and even more than that, she wants to “blow a wish” i.e. a candle. This year, Michelle has been very much into birthdays. She likes the ones of other kids at her preschool as well as the ones of our friends’ kids. She was really happy about her own and has been mentioning her grandparents’, Amber’s and now mine for some time.
It is Amber’s birthday today. She turns …, oops I am not supposed to say.
Right now, Michelle and I are waiting for her to return home from work so that we can celebrate.
Michelle has been saying for many days that “mommy’s birthday coming” and is fully focused on the cake and blowing out the candle.
Happy Birthday, Amber! May you have many more!
ڈفر Duffer
