Posts Tagged With: fun

busy and lazy Christmas fun

Thing 2 and I met Sundance and Girlie Thing yesterday morning for a bit of last minute Christmas shopping. We didn’t know Girlie Thing was going to be with her mom. I saw her before Thing 2 did and when I said it out loud, Thing 2 took off running down the store’s main aisle into the outstretched arms of her cousin. My heart grew three sizes that moment.
Sundance announced her progress since her surgery and Girlie Thing announced she has a boyfriend! There was a great deal of squealing and giggling.

Thing 2’s boyfriend D decided at the last moment to come here for Christmas. Which is wonderful! But…there are not gifts for him under the tree. I sent his Christmas Eve jammies and book and a couple of other things down to him earlier in the month.
But now that he’s going to be here Christmas morning, we had some quick shopping to do. The mom in me and the dad in YBW couldn’t abide him being the only person with nothing under the tree. YBW tasked Thing 2 straight away with the job of going with me to choose things for him. It was cute, he was all: This is your job! You can’t do anything else until it’s finished!
We not only managed to finish in one day, but get everything wrapped too!

Then the lazy fun started! Holiday movie time!
We started with Love Actually while I wrapped his gifts. The whole time making fun of the articles I sent her before I wrote about the haters in I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes….
We took a break when YBW came home to eat a quick dinner and then organized ALL the pressies, moved the bulk downstairs.
We snuggled up on the sofa and went straight back to it. Thing 2 wishes the haters some ‘Love Actually’ peace.
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We had a mini-debate on whether to watch The Holiday or Miracle on 34th Street (the original). Thing 1 wants to see Miracle on 34th Street, but we figured we could watch it twice…
We did the age old “behind the back choosing” and realized we wanted The Holiday most.
I popped corn and we got sorted on the sofa ready to go. Thing 2 gives two thumbs up.
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Today’s movies: Miracle on 34th Street (to be watched again at some point after Thing 1 arrives tomorrow afternoon) and White Christmas. (I’ve watched it two and a half times already this season, but Thing 2 has never seen it and I think she’ll like it.)

What will we do this evening you ask?
Why, The Nutcracker, of course! So much squealing and clapping!

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may the force (of Christmas) be with you

YBW and little D’s daddy, S went to see Star Wars this morning. They’re like kids in a candy store. I think if they weren’t “grown up men” they would have been clapping and squealing like ballet going little girls. Apparently they’ve got more self control than others of us.
I can’t wait to hear all about it when he gets home! I love to see him be happy and excited about the things he loves!

Speaking of (lack of) self control, Thing 2 will already be on the plane this time tomorrow! (I may have clapped and squealed.)
She just sent this to me in a text: SO excited to be with all of you! And the ballet and the nativities :3 ah! I can’t wait, Chriiiistmaaaas! (Sing-songy at the end there)
Oh, little girl, I could hear your sing-song voice as I read the words!

Exciting things all around this weekend!

I’ve got Christmas music playing, right now it’s James Brown’s Funky Christmas. James Brown singing The Christmas Song. I can’t even!
I feel like Thing 2. Terribly excited to be with my whole family. Ready to dance with the sugar plum fairies. All the baby Jesuses waiting for us at the Cathedral!

Oh how I love Christmas!
It truly is the most wonderful time of the year!

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I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes…

So it turns out there are a metric ton of haters out there regarding Love Actually. I find this most amusing.
Personally, I like this movie. But I like it for the quotable one liners and the Christmas-y-ness of it, not for it’s eternal epic film quality.
No shame in my Love Actually enjoyment game.
Thing 2 and I watch it at random throughout the year, but always together at Christmastime.

This is her favorite part:
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I probably shouldn’t find it so amusing that my child loves the rampant cursing…but I do.

This is my favorite part:

Now, I’m not saying there are some things about this movie that are absolute crap.
For instance:
Karl and Laura Linney’s inability to sort out having a mentally ill sibling and getting it on. If they truly cared about each other, the could have sorted it.
Perhaps it’s because he’s prettier than anyone else in the movie?
This storyline feels superfluous to me.

That whore that works for Alan Rickman. She needs to go die in a hole. He’s married to a frumped-up version of Emma Thompson, who BTW, rocks out loud with a fiery vengeance, frumpy or not. Get it together, dude! P.S. What the flying hell kind of dolls do they have in England? “…the one that looks like a transvestite, or the one that looks like a dominatrix?” I’ll just keep my 1970s ‘Malibu Barbie’, thanks.

Talk about superfluous…the entire Colin character’s story line. “And he’s got a big knob” (you know you heard it in his voice) might be the stupidest thing in the history of film…that or I need to visit Wisconsin as a different me.

Keira Knightley does that jacked up thing with her mouth and needs to eat a thousand cheeseburgers.
AND Chiwetel Ejiofor, I just gotta say: Nobody is that oblivious. Your best effing friend has it on for your wife. Pay attention!

Hugh Grant, I think it might be sexist and pretty darn illegal to “fire” an employee because you’ve got the hots for her…but maybe that’s just in America?

I adore Colin Firth. I don’t have many bad things to say about him…and I actually adore the scene after the swim to save his book when they’re saying the same things and not understanding each other. But is he REALLY going to learn Portuguese to marry that girl? I do love when the children say, “I hate Uncle Jaime!” I say it often at random intervals…I have no uncles and don’t know anyone called Jaime…I just love the way it sounds.

The relationship between Liam Neeson and that kid who does the voice of Ferb might be my favorite. Doesn’t that kid have a biological dad? Doesn’t matter. They’re solving problems with love and fun. What parent says to a child: We need Kate and we need Leo and we need them now.? Then his encouragement of chasing down the little girl.

“Lets go get the shit kicked out of us by love.” just might be my favorite line of the entire film. (But Hugh Grant looking at the portrait of Margaret Thatcher and calling her ‘saucy minx’ is a close second.)

The most normal relationship is that of Martin Freeman and ‘Judy’. They might be naked, but they manage to develop a pretty successful friendship that becomes something more.

Sure, the movie is flawed.
But so are we and so is love.
Haters gonna hate.
But I’m going to watch it whenever it pleases me. And I’ll be watching it when Thing 2 get here.
If you haven’t seen it, I think you should. If you have and like it, I’m “air high-fiving” you. If you hate it…well, that’s your prerogative.

And finally, I must admit I love Bill Nighy’s “festering turd” of a record.

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a boozy debate

So Thing C and I are playing a drinking game while watching the Republican debate.

Thing C is drinking Angry Orchard Cider.
ANGRY.ORCHARD

I’m drinking Leinenkugel Cranberry Ginger Shandy.
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We drink each time one of the candidates says something stupid.
Oh…tomorrow is going to SUCK!

We finally had to turn it off…we simply cannot listen any longer.
Because we don’t discriminate, we’ll be playing the same game with the Dems, too.

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paint and a bit of roughhousing

I babysat this afternoon for a friend and neighbor. A five year old (didn’t make the kindergarten cut off) girl and her two and a half year old little brother. Normally when I babysit for this family, it’s in the evening when the little dude is already sleeping and his big sister and I play for a bit before her bedtime. But today it was full on fun!
Big sis, M, and I took advantage of our unseasonably warm weather and took paints and paper onto the table on the back porch.
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This is my favorite of M’s paintings. First, she painted her mom, “Miss Robynbird, what color pants was Mommy wearing?” (She was wearing jeans.) Then she added herself with a “tropical bird” on her shoulder.
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My painting is more self-explanatory.
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I absolutely adore my tree, but the pressies…meh. I’m not an artist like that, but I love to play with color.

Little brother, B woke up and we had a snack. Then we played. It’s been a loooooooong time since I rolled around on the floor “roughhousing” with small children. When B accidentally head butted me we changed the nature of our play. My head is hurting a little this evening, but it was worth it. I miss spending my days with small people.

Then I came home and the boys and I had breakfast for dinner!
It was a pretty great Robynbird day.

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early morning trains

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This is what we do at my house before 6:30 on a Saturday morning. It’s been fourteen years since I had a four year old in my home.
I forgot how early they wake up!

My sweetie, little D needed someone to look after him while his daddy went to a holiday party last night. So I picked him up at school yesterday (after spending an hour visiting former colleagues and students) brought him home where he and Thing G and I watched all the ponies episodes off the DVR then when Thing C came home we ate little D’s favorite dinner: “Apoachlay” (that would be Chipotle to you and me). We played a little while then he went to bed.
Sweet dreams, little D.

This morning at 5:30 my bedroom door opens and little D comes across the room he says: Hi Robynbird! Hi YBW!
Then he climbs in bed for a snuggle and the first thing he says is: You hot Robynbird. (My skin was warm from being under the blankies and his feet were COLD!) He accidentally kicked the blankets on the other side of him and said: Oh! I sorry, YBW.
I told him YBW wasn’t in bed, he was downstairs on his computer.
He said: We go see him.
I said: Not yet, let’s snuggle for a minute.
A minute was not a lie…we were up and he was raring to go. (But he had to be quiet because Thing C and Thing G were still sleeping.)

So trains it was.
YBW and I built the track and little D drove the train all around.
Then he ate two huge bowls of cereal then got dressed. It wasn’t much longer before he got picked up to go to swim lessons.
Did I go back to bed?
Nope.
Why not? You ask.
Because I’m an idiot.

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I love that he makes me laugh

YBW and I went over to Barnes and Noble this morning because I had a 20% off coupon that expired today. Sundance’s birthday is in two weeks and I was hoping to find a cookbook for her. She loves to cuddle up and read them as though they were novels. I kinda love that about her.
I didn’t find anything that I thought she needed. But I did find the third volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography.
Happy Christmas to me! (please read that in a jazzy little sing-song way)

We were walking by the info desk and I said: Do you need that new Twilight book from Edward’s point of view?
Without missing a beat he said: Who’s Edward?
The lady at the info desk looked up incredulously like, WTF dude? Where have you been for the last ten years.
I just cackled.

I suspect some people would consider it one of those “I can’t take you anywhere” moments. Not me! I thought it was the funniest damn thing and I’ll keep taking him places because he makes me laugh.

I love that he makes me laugh.
I love that he doesn’t care that I sometimes pick out my own gifts.

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the gift of memories

Saturday marks the fourth anniversary of my mom’s death and it’s got me thinking about a lifetime of memories. I’ve written about my complicated relationship with my mother in missing Mommie, but today I’m not thinking about the unanswered questions.
Today I am simply remembering her. Remembering specific moments with her. Sometimes I feel like I’ve done her a disservice by talking about my conflicts with her, with my feelings about her, and not talking about the memories. Because even though the conflicts were many, the memories are too.

Fox in Socks is my all time favorite Dr Seuss book because of her. I was either in kindergarten or first grade, my brother was three or four. She sat with us to read this book, got tongue twisted beyond our imaginations and we laughed until we were collapsed in a heap in the floor.
She never read it again, but laughed about that moment for the rest of her life.

I learned to love Elvis because of her. She would play records and we would dance and sing until we were worn slap out. These moments were rare, seeing her be joyful simply for the fun of it. She never let herself go, always kept a tight reign on her emotions. Even then these little moments were sacred to me, I understood without really knowing how precious they were.

She never read us bedtime stories, she didn’t like to read aloud. Instead she would often use dolls or action figures to tell us stories at bedtime. My brother would scoot into my bed ready for the story. Sometimes she used my brother’s Weebles, or our Fischer Price people to tell the stories. But my favorite stories always starred I our bendy Evel Knievel and Derry Daring figures.
evel knievelderry daring
(Is it just me or were toys cooler in the 1970s than they are today?)

I would become distraught (I am in no way exaggerating.) when Grandaddy would get on an airplane to go on a trip. I would stand at the gate waving at him through the window until the plane took off and then I would completely loose my mind. I was all tears and hyperventilation and the way she had decided to console me was to take me to Toys R Us for a color book and new box of crayons. And even as an adult, I would receive a new box of crayons and a color book any time there was something serious going on. When I went to have my hysterectomy I got the big box of 64 and five brand new color books. She wanted to make sure I enough to keep me occupied.

After I was already married but before Thing 1 came along, she and I went on a road trip and documented it with video. I laughed more with her in the car those four days than I can even believe! We were positively punchy but it all made sense. I don’t know what ever happened to that old vhs tape, I wish I had it though. It would be fun to laugh with her again.

My memories of my mom are a gift. All the memories, the good ones and the complicated ones. I’m lucky to have them. I was lucky to have her. I’m not sure if I told her that. I know she knew because moms just know those things, but it might have been nice to say it out loud.

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It’s a stupid thing to do. SO DON’T DO IT!

The Saw Doctors was Thing 2 and Girlie Thing’s first concert, front row seats at a teeny little club in Greenville, SC. Leo and Davy invited the eight year old cousins on stage to dance Tommy K with them. Thing 2 was game, Girlie Thing was leery so they danced on the floor in front of the stage. They flirted and danced and sang all night long. The band signed their Clare Island shirts before we left. Thing 2 still uses hers as a sleep shirt.
It felt like a Saw Doctors kind of day this morning when I woke up.
I’ve been playing them all day and decided to share one of our silly favorites.

(click the playlist icon on the upper left and go to the last song: Hay Wrap)

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the honeymooners

Our wedding was beautiful and now we’re resting and delighting in Barbados.

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The view of the Caribbean from our balcony.

YBW keeps saying: My sweet wife.
Makes me giggle every single time.

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