We have a little family tradition that I started when Eleanor was just a tiny baby. Every Sunday morning (some Saturday mornings and an occasional evening or weekday morning by special request) we have a family dance party! The big event starts right after breakfast and we are, most often, still in our pajamas. Just a few of Eleanor’s favorite songs and dance moves get us ready to start our day!
Despite the fact that we have exposed Eleanor to a pretty wide range of musical genres, and although she seems to enjoy any and all music, she clearly has a preference for a catchy pop song that you can dance to. Her favorites at the moment are Lady Gaga’s Pokerface and Just Dance, Beyonce’s Single Ladies, and Rhianna’s Umbrella. Her all time favorite, that I’ve been playing for her since she was tiny, is the Jackson 5, especially Rockin’ Robin and ABC. Her dance moves, by the way, as you’ll see shortly are variations on jumping up and down, some sort of pony-like trot, and running in a circle. We need to get this girl in dance class.
Here she is at a specially requested afternoon dance party:
Last Sunday night we had Andrew & Amy and Betsy over for a holiday movie and baking party. The whole thing was Andrew’s idea, by the way, and thank you Andrew! It was a great idea! We all had so much fun. This is one of my favorite parts of the holidays, getting to spend time with our closest friends.
I wanted to bake my favorite holiday cookie, chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies, but the dough needs to be refrigerated for several hours before baking so I spent the morning making all of the dough so that once the guests arrived all we would have to do was to roll it into balls and roll them in sugar before putting them in the oven.
Here are my ingredients. I actually make this cookie from scratch, and real scratch, not my new ” from scratch.”
Of course I didn’t actually take any pictures of the party itself, because as I’ve said I tend to forget about my camera when I’m hosting a party. And to be honest I was pretty drunk through the entire party. I hadn’t eaten much that day, so all it really took was a glass of wine just after Andrew and Amy arrived.
At some point I had a second glass of wine and then while Amy, Josh and Besty watched Love, Actually (such a great holiday movie, always makes me cry) Andrew and I worked on the cookies and some very very boozy eggnog that he had made himself. It was actually really good eggnog with tons of Brandy. So I was pretty good and drunk through the entire party. We had a great time just talking and laughing and occasionally watching parts of the movie. I spent half of the night just listening to Betsy and Andrew talk which was so much fun for me. It felt just like old times when the three of us were best friends in high school spending every Friday night watching movies at Betsy’s house. Oh, the good old days!
Saturday night Eleanor stayed at home with Josh’s family while Josh and I went out on our first date in a few months. We did our favorite new suburban parent style date night: dinner at a decent enough restaurant, drunken walk to nearby movie theater, and sobering up while watching a movie.
It really is quickly becoming our favorite thing to do. While the food is only decent, the wine is pretty good. We split a bottle, which is more than enough for us both to be drunk. We love it! We just laugh a bunch, making stupid jokes, and speculating about the other people in the restaurant.
When we finish dinner we drunkenly walk down the street, which, even though it is just an outdoor portion of the shopping mall, is still kinda pretty lined with these lit-up trees and street lamps. At the end of the street is the movie theater, where we get a tub of soda, candy, and popcorn. We get to fill up with junk while sobering up enough to drive home by the time our movie ends.
This time we saw Where the Wild Things Are. We highly recommend it. I think I cried through the entire movie starting about 30 seconds in. It was just beautiful and so so sad. And it had a fantastic soundtrack. It really stayed true to the heart of the book, which I imagine was difficult to do because the book is such a short and simple story.
I know that this isn’t the most exciting date night we’ve had in our six years together, but it actually was so much fun. I’m curious what you all do on your date nights, especially you parents. Anything as fun as drinking and then filling up on candy and popcorn until you feel a little sick?
