How to spend a rainy afternoon

Saturday could have been a disaster.  I was zonked still from a work Christmas party the night before.   Justin was at the movie theater for an all day marathon showing of the three Lord of the Rings movies (directors cut, may I add).  Oh, and it was rainy.  And cold. 

But, I am a creative genius.  Or maybe just crazy.  Logan and I have been reading the book Nicholas St. North and the Nightmare King which happens to be the book the new movie Rise of the Guardians is based on.  In a stroke of genius (or craziness) I decided that the three of us (me, my five year old, and my TWO year old) would go to the movies.  Logan was on board, and Gavin was agreeable enough after I mentioned the word "popcorn." 

The movie was at 1:50, but we arrived at the theater at 1:10.  You might be thinking that was a little crazy of me to get there so early, but I had a plan.  I bought popcorn and a drink, and we headed into the theater where my two little boys got to pick any seat their little hearts desired (because of course we were the only ones there at that point).  I got them settle into seats (with me in between cuz there was no way I was letting those two sit next to each other) and started passing around the popcorn.  While scarfing down popcorn and chugging my soda (oh well) we watched those not-so-entertaining screen shows they run before a movie starts.  Hey, the boys thought they were great so who am I to complain?  And, by the time the movie started, they were done with popcorn and my soda was drained dry.  Just like I planned.  And boy was I glad I did it that way when half way through the movie I heard the thump and slosh of a spilled soda and a desperate mother trying to calm a very upset child!  (See, I am a genius!)

I didn't limit my kids to the seats either before the movie.  I let them move around and check out the theater a little, so by the time the movie did start they were ready to sit still and watch.  Yes, even Gavin, my two year old!  Logan sat next to me in his seat the entire time without making hardly a peep.  Gavin ended up crawling into my lap and lodging himself there for the duration of the movie, but guess what?  He didn't make a peep either!  Both boys just sat in awe watching the movie.  And, you know what, so did I!  I thought it was a sweet and funny movie with a heartwarming message about life and faith and purpose.  When it was over, Logan asked if we could go see it again!

Going to the movies seemed like the perfect way to spend a dreary afternoon with my boys.  I not only got to share a fun movie with the both of them, but I also got to witness Gavin experiencing his very first movie theater movie!  Talk about turning a could-be-disaster of a day into an awesome, fun experience for all of us!

P.S.  Oh, and I now get to cross off Goal #12!

Gift #104 - buttery movie theater popcorn

Gift #105 - snuggling my little one in a dark movie theater

Gift #106 - Seeing the delight on my Logan's face as he watches a movie on the big screen

The End & Goal #83

With this post I will have officially completed a NaBloPoMo.  My very first in fact.  I will also have completed Goal #83:  Blog every day for a month.  The questions is, what did I gain from this experience?  Well, let me start by telling you what I didn't get.

First of all, I didn't win any prizes.  I guess when you officially sign up for nablopomo, those that successfully complete the challenge can be "drawn" to win prizes???  As far as I know, I didn't win.  And that's okay, because I didn't do this to win stuff.

Second of all, I didn't really get more "page views" just because I was on a list somewhere.  I guess page views are important to some bloggers?  Yeah, not me so much.  Sure, it's cool to know that people are reading my stuff, but it's not why I do this.  And technically, I guess I did get more page views total for the month, but it was because I had more pages to view since I was blogging every day! 

This leads me to the third thing I didn't get:  more readers.  I guess for some bloggers it's all about how many followers you can get?  Yeah, that's not me either.  I haven't checked my stats page in awhile, but all of my readers were the usual ones as far as I can tell meaning that signing up for noblopomo didn't bring in newbies.

So, if I didn't do this whole blog-every-day-for-a-month thing for prizes, page views, or readers than why do it?  That's an easy one.

I did it because I like to write.  I like to share.  I come here as an outlet for my feelings.  I come here to store the stories of my life so I don't forget them.  And sometimes I simply come here to keep my family updated on our lives. 

But there's been a problem lately.  I haven't been making much time for this space.  I haven't been making much time for me, to do what I love.  This challenge was about me reconnecting with myself and my blog.  By forcing myself to write every day, I reminded myself how much I love to do it!  I'm hoping that my now that my love for writing has been rekindled, that maybe I won't let myself drift so far away from it again, away from myself and who I am. 

The past thirty days have been an amazing experience.  It hasn't been easy.  There were nights I barely squeezed in a post.  Turns out that I actually prefer to write when I have something to write about.  And it turns out that my life doesn't offer up interesting material every single day.  But, here I am at the end of thirty days of posts, and I couldn't be happier with what I have done and what I have achieved!

And to you faithful readers out there...Thank you for coming on this journey with me!  Feel free to keep stopping in - I plan to be writing quite a bit even if it's not every day anymore!  And leave comments - I love hearing what you all have to say! 

Happy end of November everyone!  Hope to see you in December!

 

Gift #101 - Time to write here, my blog

Look what I learned to do! (Goal #66)

My mom has cross stiched birth announcements for each of my boys that I have hung on a wall in their rooms.  For instance, here's Gavin's hanging in his nursery:

Nice, right?  Well, when Gavin was around a year old, we decided to move his crib into Logan's room and turn the nursery into a playroom.  I just kinda left Gavin's birth announcement hanging in the playroom instead of moving it to the bedroom.  I had every intention of rehanging (okay, making Justin rehang it), I (he) just never got around to it.  So, there it hung out of place by itself...you can just barely see it above the shelf in this picture...

Then came this summer.  I just cracked.  I mean, here my boys were with this huge room full of every toy imaginable (well, not really), and they were never in the playroom!  Every night we were picking up their toys and hauling them back to the "playroom."  My living room and bedroom were constantly littered with toys!  I had no space!  So, I took back the playroom and moved all their toys into their bedroom.  (Of course, there are no pictures of the new "my space" cuz I haven't exactly finished it yet...)

At this point I was determined to make rehanging Gavin's birth announcement in the bedroom part of the whole process, but yet it just laid there on top of the dresser for months.  Justin wasn't around to hang it for me anymore, and I didn't really know how to go about doing it.  A nail?  A screw?  And if I use a screw, how do I make the drill work?  And which drill bit would I need?  And how do you change a drill bit?  And how do I get the picture centered on the wall?  How do I get one picture line up with the other when one is portrait and one is landscape?  Soooo many questions and no answers.  Course, I never thought to ask anyone...

Then one afternoon at work, my boss had us start hanging up a bunch of new posters and pictures.  I learned that a nail is more than adequate for hanging a picture, so the whole drill crisis was averted.  And I learned that measuring tape can go a long way to helping someone figure out how to center a picture on the wall.  And finally, I learned the importance of just "eyeballing it" sometimes. 

That was a month ago now, and Friday night I finally got daring enough to give it a shot on my own and finally accomplish goal #66. 

Before

That's Logan's birth announcement all alone up there on the wall...

 

After

 

I was feeling so confident in my skills at this point that I decided to move a couple of other pictures that were already hanging in the boys' room!

 

Before

See those two pictures hanging above the bed?  Well, now that we have bunk beds, they were hanging above empty space and looked completely out of place!

After







 

 Doesn't that look great?  Please say it does...my confidence can't take a kick to the face right now! 

 

Two things are for sure after writing this post:

1. I can hang my own pictures now!  Woohoo!
2. I didn't take any pictures when I moved the playroom back into the bedroom...totally bummer because it made it really hard to find any "before" pictures!

 And, I know I just said I learned only two things, but now I just realized I learned a third:  I need to do a post about my boys' bedroom/playroom and the amazing difference a set of bunk beds made in my life! 

 

Now, I'm talking craziness!  I think NoBloPoMo is getting to me if I'm going to resort to talking about bunk beds just to get a post up every day for the rest of the month...

 

Okay, back to the point!  I completed Goal #66!  And I did it by myself!  And it looks great!  Woohoo!

 



6 Musts to Movie Night Our Style

One of my goals is to get back into having family "movie nights."  I figure if my boys are going to be watching TV on Friday nights, the least I can do is turn it into a family activity!  Here's a peak of movie night our style...

1.  There must be sleeping bags, billows, blankets, and stuffed animals.

2.  There must be a movie...preferably one that Mom (me) is interested in watching, too.  (Sometimes that's a hard bill to fill though...)

3.  There must be snacks...lots and lots of snacks!  (Not hard to do if it is two days after Halloween.)

4.  There must be settling down into all of those blankets and pillows...

5.  For some reason the boys think there must be the hogging of the popcorn and the fighting over the popcorn that results from the hotting of the popcorn....

6.  Finally, there must be simple movie watching fun and love!

A Pumpkin Patch Visit

I think this may be like the 3rd year I've taken the boys to the Gunter Farms pumpking patch.  It's always a hit with Logan (and now Gavin) because they don't just offer pumpkins there, they offer a wide variety of different activities.

First, there are the games.  While they are pretty much the same every year, they are always a hit!

Like the ring toss...

...and bowling for milk bottles...

...and toss the apples!

Along with games, they have fun things to climb in and on!

There's the large pool of corn!

There was also a new attraction this year: the slide...

Complete with rock wall to climb to the top!

They've got another cool climbing opportunity: the rope ladder!  (Gavin had no interest in trying this one thank God!)

Luckily, there was the "tractor" outside to keep Gavin busy!

Another cool thing about this particular pumpkin patch?  It's a dairy farm, too, so there are mama cows!  And babies!  And they let you TOUCH them!

Of course there are mazes, too.  First, a little straw bale maze for the kiddos...

Logan was so fast this year I didn't have a chance to snap a picutre!  Gavin did about half of it before he got turned around and ended up working his way back out the same way he went in - not bad for a two year old in my opinion!

Normally, they would have to corn mazes - one small and one big - to go with the straw bale maze, but the drought really did a number on the crop this year.  To compensate, they created a hay bale maze that, I must say, was just as fun!

This year there was a surprise at the end of the maze:  a goat!  A stubborn goat who was too busy eating to look up for my camera!  They boys were in love and talked of bringing Mr. Baby Goat home!

Finally, after all that fun we made it to the pumpkin "patch" (all pre-picked pumpkins at this farm).

And last, but not least, there was the hayride.  No visit to the pumpkin patch can be comlete with out a hayride!

I brought home two very dirty and satisfied little boys - they had a blast!  And that is why we keep going back to this particular pumpkin farm every year!

Happy fall everyone!  And Happy Halloween!

From my family to all of you!

P.S.  This post proves that I'm working on Goal #12!