Small Moments, Big Love

There hasn’t really been much blog-worthy stuff happening on the home-front lately.  Life has just kind of been creeping along.  And, I have to say, I kind of love that.  Last year, I remember we over-committed ourselves during this time of year.  This year, though, we had a conscious effort to keep the first few weeks of school kind of low key, and it has been wonderful.  We have truly gotten to focus on the few things we wanted to focus on.  Such as…

• Bean started playing soccer last week.  We tried this when he was three years old, but it was a disaster.  He just stood out in the middle of the field giving Chris and I the “thumbs up” with this crazy, manic grin on his face.  He never chased a ball, never joined his team, never seemed to enjoy anything other than standing in the middle of the field, waving and watching airplanes fly over.  He lasted two games into that season before we decided he just wasn’t ready for a team sport.  This year, though, he has been pumped.  And he loved practice.  He has a great coach and team full of boys.  They are like herding ants with soccer balls, and Bean is in the middle of it all!  His games start next weekend, and we are all super excited!

• Next weekend, Gracie starts ballet lessons. I don’t know who is more excited – me or her. That’s a lie. I am more excited. I danced for something silly, like 13 or 14 years when I was growing up, and I can’t wait to see Gracie in a tutu! She is pretty darn happy about it, too. She is obsessed with ballerinas. She’s also really excited because her best friend is going to take classes with her. The two of them are the cutest! Sara is from Italy and her family is only here through the end of this year before they move back to Rome. You should hear the two of them talk. 90 miles an hour, Southern accents, Italian accents, bossiness, love, hate, and everything in between! They are like two little old ladies! And they will make the cutest little ballerinas, too!

• Chris and I went out on a date night this weekend! We haven’t been out together in a while, so it was a lot of fun to get all dressed up. We met some of my friends from work at a comedy club here in Orlando to see Josh Wolf. I had never been to a comedy club before and was a little skeptical, but it was so much fun! I laughed so much I got a headache halfway through the show!

• Speaking of Chris, he is hard at work in the middle of renovating our downstairs basement area and turning it into a really great playroom, mud room, and new bathroom. It will add a whole 1/3 of our house that we’ve never used before into our lives. With the kids getting bigger, we thought it was time for the playroom project to begin. The project includes moving the downstairs bathroom to make room for the mud room and to create a direct path from the pool to this bathroom. Lots of messy plumbing work for Chris, but he has been handling it like a champ!

We are basically tearing down the entire room to the studs, and rebuilding it back. Here’s a little tour of what’s going on: (ignore Jimmy Buffet yelling in the background of the video. He was having a moment.)

• Every Friday night, we have movie night with our family. I didn’t intend for it to become this sacred tradition, but our kids think it is the greatest day of the week now. After work, I stop at a RedBox and rent a movie none of us have ever seen before. Then, we usually order pizza. This week, though, I made homemade BBQ chicken pizza with leftover shredded BBQ chicken.

And we have a dessert or treat of some kind. This week, I stopped at the drug store where I got the RedBox movie and picked out four boxes of different candy. And then when I stopped at the grocery store to get pizza dough, I also stopped by the bakery and got four petite fours (those were for mom and dad).

I have learned that movie night is all about presentation. For example, we don’t just lay on the couch and watch the movie. We get sleeping bags or build tents and watch the movie that way. And we don’t eat dinner at the kitchen table, like we do on normal nights. We eat in the living room on the floor. And instead of just putting candy boxes out on the table, I grabbed little cellophane gift bags I had left over from Christmas and put all the candy into little bowls. The kids got to use spoons to make little candy bags out of whatever kinds of candy they wanted. It’s the process that is so much fun at movie night, and it is fun for ALL of us! And it is super affordable. Including everything – dinner, treats, and a movie – it cost me $10.00!

So, that’s what we’ve been up to.  Small moments, big love.  That’s how we roll.