Dinosaurs!

One of the charming things about having very young children is the hilarious remark that will often pop out of their mouth.

Take today, for instance.

We were at a Christmas-type store, looking to purchase a Department 56 piece for our Christmas village. (I almost wrote "holiday" village - shame on me!)

We were looking to purchase a new building to add to our collection, which has been a tradition each year. We'll usually purchase an accessory, little figurine people, or a building. This year, in honor of our son, Ethan, who loves fire stations and anything involving emergencies or sirens, we were looking specifically for a fire station.

As we surveyed the display of tiny villages and buildings, suddenly Ethan says, "Look! Dinosaurs!"

Confused, I turned to see what he was pointing to. (Surely, there are no dinosaurs in the Dickens village...)

A camel. Ethan was looking at a camel in a nativity scene.

A classic. He thought the camel was a dinosaur.

This ranks up there with the comment he made the first time we brought him to the beach.

"Look!" he said. "Chickens!"

And of course what he saw were seagulls.

I wonder what a seagull would taste like in my sandwich.

James Taylor at Tanglewood

There is nothing quite like seeing JT perform at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass, framed by towering spruce trees, the Berkshire Mountains and Stockbridge Bowl, the local lake.

And next summer, in August, he will put on four shows - two mainstream concerts, an "Evening" with his band, in which he plans to talk about his songs and play them, kind of like VH1 Storytellers, I presume, and then a final performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which I think I'll skip. But two of the four are definitely warranted, especially the "evening" with the band, which will be in Ozawa Hall, not the main shed.

Another bit of good news: Garrison Keillor leads the Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood again, in late June 2009.

Unfortunately, the July 4 performer is Diana Krall, whom we've seen there before and is a bit too low-key for an Independence Day party. And Wilco, who we saw play Tanglewood last year, is not on the schedule. Would love to see Cake perform at Tanglewood, but I'm afraid they wouldn't draw the kind of crowd Tanglewood normally targets.

Here's the Tanglewood link:

http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/perf_detail.jsp;jsessionid=KGRRFFKMAYZPQCTFQMGCFEQ?pid=prod2880038