Had a whirlwind weekend of travel. The little Lady and I went to Michigan for a family wedding. I got about 9 hours of sleep total from Thursday night through Sunday, but it was all worth it.
So glad to see the family and hang with my girls.
Steadman--you looked stunning in the pink on pink. Guest blogging privileges have been extended to you--so don't disappoint!
The Lady hung with her dad and the in-laws while we were gone. She passed the time by playing with her cousins, eating about 700 pieces of ice cream cake and barely napping.
Will post a few pics when I get a chance to download them.
Showing posts with label family time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family time. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Beach, Beach and More Beach
It amazes me how much quicker the day actually goes by when you have something to do and people to do it with.
The Lady, The Big Guy, Bunny, The Twins, The Wild Man, LJ, and the Brown Bear
I was lucky enough to spend over a week at the beach in New London and then another long weekend there as well the following week. I have decided that it is much easier to carry on conversations and get things done with three to five other adults in the house and with other kids the Lady can play with.
Granted, I heard her screech "No, mines" about a hundred times a day and some days were easier then others in terms of getting everybody out of the house and to the beach, but just to have the access to the beach, to a park, to a nice neighborhood walk--heck even to a patch of grass bigger than a postage stamp really made all the difference.
For as many people as we packed into the beach house on certain days, it still felt like we had our own space and coming back to the four walls we have surrounded ourselves with for the past five years and realizing that we have to add another babe to the mix is starting to sink in with me.
Powerball--when will you grace me with your sweet lovin?
We are very lucky that for the past 33 years we have spent time at the beach with our family. It is a tradition that my cousins and I are hoping to carry on for at least another 33 years or more. So each July we pack the car and drag all the babies to the beach. Here is a pic of all of the cousins (minus the little mad man who was sleeping).
The Lady, The Big Guy, Bunny, The Twins, The Wild Man, LJ, and the Brown BearHere is one of the Mad Man in full NL beach gear.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Good Intentions
A couple of weeks ago, I watched an episode of Oprah about learning to live with less. Basically, the show followed two families, who were forced to give up all the technology in their lives and spend more time together. They had to surrender all their TVs, cell phones, and access to the computer for a week (and in one case two weeks), and spend some quality time with their family. In addition they were told they had to give away at least ten things a day that they could live without.
I started to think about how I could incorporate some of these same ideas in my own life. My initial thought was to give up watching TV one night a week. My initial plan was to have this happen last Thursday. The reason why I picked last Thursday was because the Yankees had an off night and I was already Tivoing, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). I figured it would be an easy transition.
Another reason I picked Thursday was because my husband and I were already planning on going to a happy hour that his office was hosting. Now, usually any sort of work related thing with my husband isn't too interesting to me, especially since a lot of the people who I know who worked there have moved on to other things, and more importantly I cannot drink. However, after a teary conversation a few nights earlier, which I blamed on being really tired and seven months pregnant, about not spending any time together, I figured that something was better than nothing. Now, I ended up spending about 45 minutes at the Happy Hour, in which time, my husband played a trivia game, and we watched the four TVs that were on in the bar, one with headline news, one with Jeopardy, and two with the women's college softball playoffs. Turning the TV off seemed to be a little harder then expected.
I think that had we gone home and the Lady had been sleeping then maybe we would have whipped out the Scrabble, where we would have sat in fierce competition and I would have pouted my way through it because he has a knack of using like all his letters on a triple-word score and I get stuck with a hundred k's and z's. However, not only was the Lady not sleeping but The Scripps National Spelling Bee was on in prime time.
Have you watched this? A few years ago, I was lucky to watch the early rounds on ESPN one late Spring afternoon and I was sucked in. Since then, I have been an adamant watcher of home schooled kids, in awful outfits, with braces and crazy hair and uni brows. I have had the pleasure of seeing how thirteen year-old boys can look both thin, frail, obviously hairless in the pants, and unsure of their sexual orientation, to full fledged men complete with facial hair. And speaking about facial hair, oh those poor little Indian girls. I mean, I know that at twelve or thirteen you aren't thinking about your eyebrows, but really, just pick up a razor and get the fuzz off the lip. These poor ladies, isn't it bad enough that you are a competitive speller? Don't you take enough flak at school? (If in some cases you actually attend school and aren't taught by your overweight mom in a peasant skirt, or your tyrannical father, who wields flash cards and spelling lists like the world is going to end.) Please ladies see a salon specialist, now I know that the eyebrow wax is painful, but you are national TV for God's sake.
Anyway, there is obviously a market for this event because beyond the sheer awkwardness of each speller with their minor ticks and tricks to spell out the words, this thing is broadcast in prime time. I can't be expected to look away, besides my husband and I sat side by side on the couch, communicating about the flaws and features of prepubescent children, and laughed in glee as each time a word was spelled incorrectly, the bell dinged and another kid ran off to sit on the lap of their parent, tears in their eyes, and the shame of a misspelled word fresh in their minds.
Now, I know I have a ton of clutter here in this house that I can get rid of. I know that if I really made the effort to turn off the TV, even one night a week, then maybe our family would run a little smoother, be a little closer, but had I missed Kavya Shivashankar's spelling Laodicean which is defined as "lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics," I think that I just might have lived a little less.
I started to think about how I could incorporate some of these same ideas in my own life. My initial thought was to give up watching TV one night a week. My initial plan was to have this happen last Thursday. The reason why I picked last Thursday was because the Yankees had an off night and I was already Tivoing, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). I figured it would be an easy transition.
Another reason I picked Thursday was because my husband and I were already planning on going to a happy hour that his office was hosting. Now, usually any sort of work related thing with my husband isn't too interesting to me, especially since a lot of the people who I know who worked there have moved on to other things, and more importantly I cannot drink. However, after a teary conversation a few nights earlier, which I blamed on being really tired and seven months pregnant, about not spending any time together, I figured that something was better than nothing. Now, I ended up spending about 45 minutes at the Happy Hour, in which time, my husband played a trivia game, and we watched the four TVs that were on in the bar, one with headline news, one with Jeopardy, and two with the women's college softball playoffs. Turning the TV off seemed to be a little harder then expected.
I think that had we gone home and the Lady had been sleeping then maybe we would have whipped out the Scrabble, where we would have sat in fierce competition and I would have pouted my way through it because he has a knack of using like all his letters on a triple-word score and I get stuck with a hundred k's and z's. However, not only was the Lady not sleeping but The Scripps National Spelling Bee was on in prime time.
Have you watched this? A few years ago, I was lucky to watch the early rounds on ESPN one late Spring afternoon and I was sucked in. Since then, I have been an adamant watcher of home schooled kids, in awful outfits, with braces and crazy hair and uni brows. I have had the pleasure of seeing how thirteen year-old boys can look both thin, frail, obviously hairless in the pants, and unsure of their sexual orientation, to full fledged men complete with facial hair. And speaking about facial hair, oh those poor little Indian girls. I mean, I know that at twelve or thirteen you aren't thinking about your eyebrows, but really, just pick up a razor and get the fuzz off the lip. These poor ladies, isn't it bad enough that you are a competitive speller? Don't you take enough flak at school? (If in some cases you actually attend school and aren't taught by your overweight mom in a peasant skirt, or your tyrannical father, who wields flash cards and spelling lists like the world is going to end.) Please ladies see a salon specialist, now I know that the eyebrow wax is painful, but you are national TV for God's sake.
Anyway, there is obviously a market for this event because beyond the sheer awkwardness of each speller with their minor ticks and tricks to spell out the words, this thing is broadcast in prime time. I can't be expected to look away, besides my husband and I sat side by side on the couch, communicating about the flaws and features of prepubescent children, and laughed in glee as each time a word was spelled incorrectly, the bell dinged and another kid ran off to sit on the lap of their parent, tears in their eyes, and the shame of a misspelled word fresh in their minds.
Now, I know I have a ton of clutter here in this house that I can get rid of. I know that if I really made the effort to turn off the TV, even one night a week, then maybe our family would run a little smoother, be a little closer, but had I missed Kavya Shivashankar's spelling Laodicean which is defined as "lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics," I think that I just might have lived a little less.
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