A more perfect union

As Pete looks forward towards our weekend plans (or lack of plans, or confusion over plans, or whatever it is he's doing), I'm going to look back several weeks to the celebration of our anniversary.

Way back on the 10th of September, we celebrated four years of being husband and wife. (*waits for a smattering of applause*)

It's a long-standing tradition (or four-year tradition now) to make an anniversary activity out of the traditional gift for that year. (Does that make sense?) For example, we both agree that the best was the second year, when we bought each other t-shirts at a Bob Dylan concert. (Cotton is the traditional gift for year 2.) This was the fruit and/or flower anniversary.

For a year, we tried to come up with something creative to do, without much success.

Finally, we had the idea of going to the National Arboretum. We figured, it's not exactly flowers, but trees are plants, and that kind of works.

After a thoroughly fantastic lunch at The Diner in Adams Morgan, which might be among the greatest places on earth, we changed our plans. Realizing that we didn't really know how to get to the Arboretum, and that I still wasn't really sure how to pronounce it, Pete suggested we take a detour to the National Zoo instead. I gladly agreed.

Here's a quick background on me and zoos. When I was a very small child, we lived near the zoo in Birmingham. Close enough that we could hear the lions roaring and the sea lions barking (which made for some interesting dinner parties). The peacocks would sometimes leave the zoo and hang out on our street, which was not so fun when they built nests and screamed, but was very cool when one decided he'd rather become the neighborhood pet than stay at the zoo. (His name was Henry. He ate cat food. Yes, really.) We didn't really live near a park, but because the zoo was so close and my parents had a membership, we went all the time. Probably once a week, at least in the summer. I'd been to the National Zoo once, when we came to Washington on a family trip when I was about 11. I loved it then and had been dying to go back ever since we moved.

Something you may not know about the National Zoo: it's part of the Smithsonian, which means it's completely free! It's also not a bad walk from our apartment, so we've been back several more times since this first trip. I'm only going to post pictures from the anniversary outing, as that's my subject for the day, but I'm sure there will be many more zoo stories in our future.

Without further ado, here are a few shots from our day:

My sandwich at The Diner. Plymouth Rock grilled cheese-- roast turkey, swiss, and cranberry sauce. Mmmmm.

Pete's lunch. Barbecue chicken sandwich and sweet potato fries.

One of the Giant Pandas! We got there right at nap time, it seems.

In the bird house. This bird had some cool feathers!

We stalked one of the peacocks, who seemed to enjoy posing.

Me with one of the elephants. No, he doesn't live in that cage-- this is inside the elephant house, and he was eating. They're in the process of building a huge new elephant habitat, so their space is a little limited just at the moment, but they do have a nice big outdoor area as well.

We took the obligatory self-portrait before heading home. See, there are flowers in the background! The way we see it, that's good enough. Plus, there's not a panda anniversary.