We made it through the 4-day (or 4.5-day, but who’s counting…) weekend. We visited my brother’s family in New Jersey for the Thanksgiving meal itself. Then we faced many days of entertaining our spirited children. There was a fair amount of fighting and naughtiness. Also, the 3-year-old has regressed on sleep, waking up in the middle of the night and very early. This makes him cranky during the day (hence a lot of the fighting and naughtiness). But some fun moments too:
Seeing the Berthe Morisot exhibit at the Barnes. I may have to go back because we took all four children, and hence barely got 20 minutes in the exhibit. I saw several of Morisot’s works in Paris this fall and was quite taken with her. The Barnes pulled together a large exhibit showcasing her range: many impressionist styles, and a multitude of colorful domestic scenes. I particularly liked the paintings Morisot did of her daughter and husband playing together.
The Viking Imax movie at the Franklin Institute. I didn’t know the timeline of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson’s discoveries of Greenland and North America. Or that a child was born to European parents in North America many hundreds of years before Virginia Dare. I was pondering how advanced the Vikings were as sailors that they could go back and forth between these places. The 3-year-old fell asleep in my lap during this, so it was a fairly calm viewing experience.
The Philadelphia Zoo. It’s like taking the kids for a walk, only there are animals to look at, so they complain a lot less. Their favorite was probably the naked mole rats!
The Texas A&M game. I did not stay up for all of it, but my husband did. Seven overtimes. Insane. He showed me the highlights the next morning, and the ending of regulation was unbelievable.
Getting started on my Christmas shopping. I really like the gifts/toys section at our local Barnes & Noble. It’s well curated. Next time, I will not bring the 3-year-old (I spent a reasonable amount of time with him this weekend as my husband took the big kids to a few holiday movies). It was pretty funny seeing his attempts at empathy. I asked him what his siblings would want and…shockingly…he picked out things he wanted. Yes, I’m sure your sister would love that giant fire truck.
Making the Christmas card. Thanks to photographer extraordinaire Yana Shellman, we’re going to have a really pretty card this year.
Visiting Dutch Wonderland. This theme park near Lancaster opens its doors for weekends in November and December. Not all the rides were open, but the lights were pretty, and admission was only $15 a person (a lot better than $60 or so in the summer!) We went on Sunday and the temperature was north of 40 degrees most of the time. Perfect! Also…
Eating at Olive Garden. We convinced the kids to leave Dutch Wonderland to get dinner. So we went to an area Olive Garden. It’s not the world’s fanciest restaurant, but I was just so extraordinarily happy to have shrimp scampi, salad, and chianti, rather than amusement park chicken fingers.
Writing 4500 words in my novel. I’ve kept up the NaNoWriMo pace — I’m at 47k words now, so the goal of 50k by November 30 is in sight. I’m getting into my characters, which is always a good sign. I think I will keep pressing forward through the first few weeks or so of December to get an actual real finished draft, then put the novel away for a few months, so I can come back to it with fresh eyes. Write fast, edit slow.
We always, always go to Sonic after Dutch Wonderland and I thought everyone else did too! Olive Garden would be a major improvement, but I don’t think I could convince my husband and kids of that 🙂 The kids might be too wiped out to handle a sit-down restaurant at that point in the day anyway.
@Tory – I’m not saying they were tremendously well-behaved…but we survived. And I got my chianti!