Places to Go - Bumper Bowling at Fort Myer (Arlington, VA)

We had the most chill/lazy/relaxing holidays ever. My mom visited, so I planned all sorts of fun activities. But most days we ended up playing boardgames and watching movies, which really felt sort of wonderful. And we did manage to go bowling one afternoon.

Up until now, I'd never taken the kids bowling, as I always thought of it as more of a big kid activity (little toes, heavy balls, you get the picture). But a few weeks ago, T's friend hosted a bowling birthday party. On the way there, he asked me, "mom, are you sure there will be enough wii remotes for everyone?" Apparently, my 4.5 year old had no idea that bowling could be "real", it sort of blew his mind.

At the birthday party I discovered how bowling has been modified for the preschool crowd. First of all, when you enter a player's name, you can now check whether or not to add bumpers. So bumper rails rise from out of nowhere whenever needed. Further, they also have ramps available for the younger bowlers (you can see one in the background of the vertical pictures of T above). In order to bowl, all T needed to do was carry his ball to the ramp and push it - more like pinball than bowling. But he was elated. And he spent the next week, telling everyone "bowling is real! really it's real!"

So when my mom visited, we decided to take all the kids. Things were all fun and good until F started scoring much higher than P. Oh the drama. Lately it's impossible to make all three happy. By the end of the game, P was in tears, begging us to never bowl again. How is a parent supposed to deal with such things? I have no idea what the proper course of action is. And trying to figure it out is exhausting the hell out of me, whatever we do (from breakfast food through books we read) someone claims I'm acting unfairly. Now I see how parents take pride in being mean, there often isn't another course of action available, so you might as well make the mean work for you.

Anyways, on the upside, Fort Myer has a wonderful, cheap bowling alley. You have to show a government ID and submit to a vehicle search in order to enter the grounds, but after that, it's all fun and games. Click here for more info. On Friday and Saturday nights, they host glow in the dark bowling for only $3 a game.

Things to Do - Cherish This Day & Random Links

Cherish This Day put together a compilation of some of our favorite photos from 2013, one of mine is above, now click on over here to see everyone else's.

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

RANDOM LINKS:

* Paper City. This is so beautiful, I watched it over and over.

* I really like the jewelry on this site, plus the prices are reasonable.

* Art you can print yourself. Nice ideas for last minute gifts (even after the holidays).

* The New Yorker's Best of Photojournalism 2013, wonderful photos.

* Not that I can afford it, but I still sort of want a Hush chair.

* Great list for a snowy day - The Artful Parent's 89 Indoor Activities to Keep Kids Busy

Things to Do - Summarize a Year (2013)

Oh 2013, this year we: hiked the Italian coastline, had our basement redecorated by Land of Nod, swam in an ocean, joined a pool, floated on a lake, adopted a puppy, put Coco on Prozac (I kid you not), hired a dog trainer, visited the world's largest model train, caught snowflakes in Times Square, "survived" a Civil War attack (not a real one, obviously), threw our biggest solstice party to date (130 people is a lot of people).

F received her first "ring" from a boy and memorized the names of all the One Direction band members. P cartwheeled her way through the year, sometimes with a Diary of A Wimpy Kid book in tow. T learned more about the alphabet (sort of) and asked about 5 million questions. Dan caught a REALLY big fish. I Bikramed. So things were good.

Well, sort of.

Dan had cancer and two surgeries, three good friends lost a parent, one good friend lost a spouse.

Honestly, 2013 was sort of a roller coaster of a year. Hopefully 2014 will bring the calm, more like a Disney ride then a carnival ride.

I'm putting together a BEST OF LIST for next week with book recommendations and other such stuff. So keep reading.

HAPPY WEDNESDAY EVERYONE!

Things to Do - Tag Old Photos on Facebook

A few weeks ago, a Facebook acquaintance from my college days tagged me in a group picture, circa 1998 or so. At first, the image was so foreign I assumed my inclusion had been accidental. The other people pictured were all friends of my college boyfriend, who I hadn't seen or talked with in over 15 years. But sure enough, upon close inspection the image included a young, sort of blah looking me.

I spent the rest of the day trying to piece together who these people were, when the image was taken, etc. Isn't it funny how memory works? At noon that day, I couldn't have told you a singe thing about the photo, but, almost as if I'd gone into an attic and taken a box off the shelf, by 5 pm the entire weekend (Spring Break in Denver, my senior year of college) came back to me - down to the detail of what we had to drink (strawberry lemonade, because everyone was tired and hung over) and the fact that my facebook acquaintance's mother had treated us all to the meal (Mexican food). She was a judge, which seemed so incredibly worldly at that point in my life - the first judge I had ever met.

The odd thing about aging is that you picture yourself in younger years as looking a certain way, or more exactly, as being a certain way. As you get older, you keep the good photographs and throw away the bad ones. You hold onto the memories of a fun, exciting "you" and let go of the other stuff. You become, basically, a little more glamorous.

But in this group photo I didn't radiate glamour at all. Rather, I was underdressed and ghostly pale, with pulled back hair and no makeup except for the bright pink lipstick that I wore everywhere in those days. I can hazily remember the conversation I had with my boyfriend prior to the dinner, stating that I was too tired/lazy to look nice. Probably some sort of request for downtime or to do our own thing - my anti-social introvert tendencies causing an almost fight.

And I realized how little I've truly changed. That I can blame my sweatpant wearing ways on my children or on my lack of a "real" job, but that I've always been rather slouchy. And that a whole weekend surrounded by other people has always overwhelmed me, that this will be an issue in all my relationships (thank you, Dan, for dealing with me:). That maybe I was never that glamorous.

Anyone reading this who knows me probably isn't surprised by anything I've said. But I'm still a little boggled by it all - that suddenly the past can surface like that, become almost real for a moment, an open door. And it's not good or bad. It just is. And so are you.

Things to Do - Merry Everything Everyone!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!! THANKS FOR READING!!