Things to Do - Cherish This Day & Grateful List (January 2015)

January started off slow, but then came my birthday (39) and a great night downtown with Dan. Plus, by mid-month I was walking again. And we ended the month at Disney, so all in all, I have no room to complain.

If you have a chance, don't forget to click over and see today's post on Cherish This Day.

ARTS
* Reading This Is Where I Leave You
* Reading Amy Poehler's Yes Please
* Reading We Are Not Ourselves
* Watching The Grand Budapest Hotel
* Watching Y Tu Mama Tambien for the first time in years
* Watching Big Fish for family movie night
* Listening to Stars' new album, No One Is Lost
* Listening to The Body Electric, Small Town Heroes
* Josh Ritter singing Moon River
* Attending the play Trailer Park - The Musical

FOOD
* Dinner with Shannon at Zatinya (which I now think of as "our" restaurant)
* Cava with Lola
* Alaskan halibut with roasted tomatoes (via Cooking Light)
* Gwyneth's zucchini tacos (via Goop)
* Trader Joe's salted caramel chai
* Italian sausage with cabbage and potatoes (via Three Many Cooks)

PLACES
* Sunday night swim practice
* Family bowling
* The dog park with F
* A great night at the Park Hyatt with Dan for my birthday (thank you Margie & Bob for watching the kids!)

STUFF
* F's Science at Home kit

VACATION (Disney World, FL)
* Fast plass plus reservations
* No flight delays or illnesses
* Benihana (P - "This is the best restaurant I've ever been to")
* Epcot's German beer garden lunch buffet (for some reason I was always starving in Disney World)
* Everest & Dinosaur and T loving roller coasters

ETC.
* Playing Settlers of Catan, Forbidden Island, & Monopoly with the kids
* A wonderful extended family photo shoot (soup and stories on the couch), which helped get me out of my post-broken foot funk
* The first snow of winter (January 6) and the kids still have school
* T to his friend, "Do you know what's disgusting? When a dog licks you it's actually a kiss."
* F to P, "I'm telling you that reading this book will really strengthen the bond between you and me." (The book is Out of My Mind)
* Friends who bring you cake on your birthday (thank you Hector & Janeese!)
* After 6 weeks on the couch, finally returning to yoga and dog walks!
* Ben Sasso's lightroom editing class (through Define)


THE KIDS' LISTS:

F - my family, a nice house to live in and food to eat, that everything is so great, Laura and Elise, Girls Just Want To Have Fun (the movie), Garfield comic books, Coco, Odessa, Soarin', Everest

P - my sleepover with Paige, the indoor pool with Laney, our family, swim practice, snowdates, school delays, Big Fish (the movie), a lot of stuff, Everest, my family

T - a nice house to live in and food to eat, my family, Bad News Bears (the movie), watching the Civil War show with dad, more days off school, yogurt, Disney World

Things to Do - Around . . . (February 2015)

I feel like we have had the laziest winter ever. Now that the kids are older weekends seem to meander along - playdates, boardgames, family movies (by the way, have you watched How the States Got There Shapes on Netflix streaming? It's fantastic), dog walks, etc.

I keep making "big plans", but then the cold hits and we end up staying home. I have so many mixed feelings about this, almost as if I'm failing somehow, as I've always thought of myself as an on-the-move mom. But little kids required so much more attention than my (now) older kids, thus going somewhere always seemed easier to me than watching the children trash my living room (again and again and again). We also have more neighborhood friends than we used to, so nights are filled with happy hours and dinner parties.

When I broke my foot I took the kids out of ALL planned activities, as I couldn't easily drive them there. And I have to admit, we all are so much happier with free weeknights. Last week we made a pie (I know this isn't a big deal to most of you, but I have made VERY FEW pies in my life) and crafted like crazy (P is obsessed with going through all my old boredom buster/art/craft/mom books for ideas). P dominated the whole family at Setters of Catan. T beat Dan at Risk (craziness).

So maybe lazy isn't all bad, our maybe this winter is part of the ebb and flow. Though don't worry, even if we haven't left the house much, we still can't stop making bucket lists for spring and summer . . .













T always wins Uno, despite his lack of any sort of strategy. And then he jumps on the table to gloat.



We are in the process of updating our living room, F proved an excellent painter . .







Whereas P, T, and their cousins skipped the home improvement chores and, instead, moved into a box (granted, a rather large box, but still not meant for three).







Three kids, two dogs and one couch - you have to fight for a spot.



Sometimes little brothers attack, though we're never quite sure when or why this will happen.





Coco's doggie daycare kicked her out for bad behavior, but in our presence she remains the mellowest dog ever.



Oh, homework . . .







And then, right in the middle of the lazy, a snowday come along . .









Losing Monopoly is never very fun . . .









The girls started a dog walking business. I hired them. They then proceeded to ask me to walk the dog, so they could play on a swing.





After fighting for two solid months, P and T randomly decided to play No Stress Chess together. T won. Wait, I must rephrase that, P LET T win (or so we've been told, over and over again).





And finally, if there's a sunset - you best prepare for photographs.

Things to Make - Mustache T-Shirts

Winter is LONG. If you're looking for a fun project to keep the kids occupied during yet another cold front, head on over to Honest of Nod to learn how we spent a whole afternoon making freezer-paper stencil t-shirts. Click here for the link.

Things to Do - This Untamed Life (Silent)

This Untamed Life has a whole new look, if you have a chance click here and check it out.

HAPPY MONDAY EVERYONE!!!

Things to Do - Cherish This Day & Random Links

For the last few months, on Saturday afternoons when temps stay below freezing, F accompanies me at the dog park. Sometimes with three kids it feels difficult to carve out time for each one. So even if we just go for 45 minutes or so, all week I find myself looking forward to these days alone with F. The problem being F always wants to take all the dogs home with us.

Have a great weekend everyone! Don't forget to click over to Cherish This Day, each and every photo this week is amazing.

RANDOM LINKS:

* Everybody knows this is nowhere.

* Niagara Falls is completely frozen.

* DC Restaurants are all over the list of James Beard Award semifinalists.

* With all the cold weather lately, DC could use one of these.

* Just some squirrels making snowballs.

* If you have a child who will be in fourth grade next year, this is the BEST NEWS EVER. Let the vacation planning begin!!

Things to Watch - Netflixing (February 2015)

February is always so long (yes, I know that technically this isn't the case, but it sure SEEMS long). So I figured I'd spend some time revisiting the classics. And here they are:

MY 5 ABSOLUTE FAVORITE MOVIES ON NETFLIX STREAMING (drum roll please):



1. Y Tu Mama Tambien - I pretty much love everything about this movie. I love how it starts flippant and ends heavy. I love the unseen narrator's random segways into the lives of minor characters. I love Gael Garcia Bernal. I love roadtrips and camping on the beach. And I love how the movie makes you feel like you're on the roadtrip itself, traveling through small Mexican towns. Warning - this movie begins with a graphic sex scene and contains many more, it is not IN ANY WAY family movie material.



2. City of God - For a movie with such an incredibly depressing plot - a Brazilian ghetto taken over by children (as in YOUNG CHILDREN) with machine guns - this film is incredibly easy to watch (not an easy task).



3. Pretty In Pink - I love Molly Ringwald. I love John Hughes. And Duckie!! Especially Duckie dancing to Otis Redding. And then Ringwald makes her prom gown out of thrift store leftovers. And she looks so gorgeous next to all the other girls in their boring pastel dresses, especially with OMD playing in the background. This movie is pretty much perfect.



4. Almost Famous - I have no idea what it feels like to be a groupie. Especially in 1973. But whenever I wonder, I play this movie. Kate Hudson's Penny Lane is so wonderful to watch, vulnerable but confident. And the scene where the whole band sings Tiny Dancer on the tour bus? It's like nostalgia for something I've never even experienced.



5. Food Inc. - This movie completely changed how I see the food I eat (or, often, try not to eat). Grocery stores now seem like dangerous places.

Things to Do - 12 in 12 (February 2015)

I ended up taking these photos on Wednesday, February 11th instead of the 12th, just because I was feeling motivated. And the day before Valentine's Day is always something of a madhouse with the kids and crafting (actually, this year the whole week before the holiday was somewhat crazy).



8:00 am - The kids woke WAY before me, in order to get some extra valentines made before school.



8:30 am - We are redecorating our front room and the kids have made one of the boxes into a vacation home.



8:45 am - Walk to school.



9:00 am - 1:15 pm - Work on blogposts and a few other projects.



1:25 pm - Today is an early release Wednesday, so pick the kids up from school. T comes home with a coolio new ring.



1:40 pm - Best friends must be photographed.



2:20 pm - F spends the whole afternoon making personalized valentines for every kid in her class. EVERY KID.



3:00 pm - The boys play videogames for awhile.



5:00 pm - Sister bonding over the ipad.



6:00 pm - This is what the table looks like before dinner. The girls valentined ALL afternoon.



6:30 pm - I'm on a juice fast, so the kids and Dan have junk food dinner. The kids are ecstatic (Dan, not so much).



7:00 pm - Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day for family movie night in our bedroom. (Have you seen this yet? It's actually pretty funny, Dan and I liked it much more than we thought we would).

So that was our day, don't forget to click over to Not-So-SAHM and Where the Watermelons Grow to see what they did on February 12th.