Category: Summer of Fun II

Categories
Oh the Places I'll Go (Or Already Went) Summer of Fun II

i(Phone) Hate Myself For Loving You

(I bet you have Joan Jett in your head right about now, don’t you? Sorry, friend.  Sort of.  🙂 )

So Dan and I went on a date a couple of weeks ago.  We try to make this a semi-regular occurrence.  After all, it would be good if my husband and I still recognize each other when the kids are grown, right? It had been awhile since we had snuck a date night in, though, because the back-to-school time of year is busy for us all.

I put on heels.  Dan put on the shirt I laid out for him. We climbed into his truck and headed off to dinner.  Burgers were on the agenda.  I dug in my purse as he took off in the direction of town, and then disaster struck.

I couldn’t find my phone.  No smooth teal case met my fingers as I plunged the mysterious recesses of my “mom purse.” How was I supposed to send a text? Or check the weather?  Or Instagram? So I panicked.  You all know that moment of panic when you can’t find your phone, right?  Or maybe you don’t.  Maybe you are mentally healthier than I am, and you and your phone are not virtual Siamese twins.

Dan’s parents were watching the kids at our house, so we called them to see if they could find the missing phone.  They could. Apparently, I had left it sitting on the kitchen table as I rushed out of the house before my 6-year-old’s guilt trip could derail our date night. “Oh no,” my mother-in-law said sympathetically, after she located the phone for me.  “Forgetting your phone. That’s the worst.”  But, I realized, it actually wasn’t.

Turns out, forgetting my phone on date night is something to be thankful for. Dan and I often make fun of the groups or couples who are sitting around a table together, each separately engaged in their own phone world.  They look ridiculous.  The only problem is, more often than not, we are them.  We are guilty, too.

But that night, because I wasn’t on my phone, Dan didn’t use his, either.  This forced us to speak to each other. (Well, when we weren’t watching the Brewers game, anyway.)

And I was reminded that we can survive without our devices.  After all, our family just proved this for nearly two device-free weeks before the school year started.  (More on that here.) Sure, my kids staged a near-revolt, but we made it through. And it was even enjoyable.  We played games, got outside, went to ball games, waterskied, visited museums, built giant towers out of plastic cups…

 

Hey, whatever it takes. We emerged on the other side closer as a family, and without that lovely claw hand that comes from permanently grasping your phone. The one that Dan thinks humans may soon be born with.  Gotta love evolution.

Insert phone here.

Next up is girls weekend.  Every year, we head up north for a girlfriend getaway at my friend Peg’s family cottage.  It is one of the most anticipated weekends of the year.  Even for me, a self-declared introvert (Read about my introversion here.), it is a can’t-miss event. We pack our cars full of warm (yet cute, of course) clothes, drinks and ridiculous amounts of food, and we invade the Northwoods, leaving our husbands to hold down our respective forts.

Last year, though, I looked around the cottage as we all sat in a big circle in the living room.  The fire was roaring in the fireplace.  Ten of us were cozied up in front of it.  All. On. Our. Phones.  Online shopping, reading the news, posting photos of all the fun we were having to Facebook. Whatever. It was pathetic.

So this year, I am bringing a little gift to girls’ weekend.  Ladies and gentlemen, the Phone Bed.  The very one pictured at the top of this post. We can set the basket by the front door for folks to deposit their phones into upon entering the cottage.  And then, every time you remove your phone from the bed, you have to put an extra dollar in the “kitty,” so that your friends might profit off your addiction in the form of cheese curds and beer from the local establishments.  I don’t know if I will be invited back next year.  Heck, if the girls read this before I get there, I might not be allowed in this year. But I’m going to give it a shot anyway. Wish me luck.

Categories
Food My Favorite Things Summer of Fun II

Please Silence Your Cell Phones…

Our family loves a movie night.  We probably have one at least once a week.  Sometimes we all curl up on the giant chair in the living room, and sometimes we venture out to the back porch to watch a flick al fresco.  Sometimes my husband sleeps through the whole thing.

I usually pop a big batch of popcorn the old-fashioned way (on the stovetop!) before the show.  I like to use coconut oil to pop the kernels in our giant stock pot.  It feels somewhat more virtuous than microwave popcorn, and it’s freaking delicious.  Plus it pairs great with Sauvingon Blanc. Bonus.

One of the most beautiful things about movie night is that, once everyone is settled with their respective bowls of popcorn and the movie selection has been negotiated, you are virtually guaranteed two blissful hours without sibling squabbles.

Our method of choosing a movie could best be described as a limited democracy.  I am the official movie-picker-outer.  I put together a selection of 3-5 choices, based on what is available on Netflix and/or Amazon (which is basically everything these days), but also based on what won’t make Dan and me want to bang our heads against the wall.  Then the options are debated and voted upon until we reach a familial consensus.

Our movie choices are eclectic, and they are seldom critical smashes.  Gene Siskel I am not. For instance, last weekend, we enjoyed a viewing of “The Game Plan,” starring none other than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Our first-grade daughter loves The Rock. I don’t claim to understand her stance, but hearing no objections, we went with it.  Turns out, everyone liked the movie.  It may have received only 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was a hit with the Van Bommels.

We try to keep things family-friendly and non-traumatic, of course.  But we have experienced a few missteps.  So, take it from me, if you have dog lovers in your house, avoid Benji like the plague. Actually, avoid any films containing even a hint of dog-related peril.  No Lassie.  No Homeward Bound.  None of the above.  Just. Don’t. Do. It.  There will be tears.  Lots and lots of tears.

We have made some forays into ’80s cinema.  Back to the Future proved to be a major win for us.  Not only was it a fun flashback for the adults in the family, but the kids really got into it.  (“So where is he now?”  “Wait, that’s his mom?”)  And the best part of Back to the Future is that it’s part of a trilogy.  That means, once you overcome the hurdle of achieving an initial consensus, you have at least 3 argument-free movie nights in your future.  Sequels are great, but trilogies are gold.

However, just a friendly heads up that the movie rating system was a tad more liberal back in the 1980s. For instance, although Top Gun is rated PG, it probably wasn’t suitable for our 7-year-old son. But back when we drank out of garden hoses and rode in cars without those pesky seatbelts, it was also okay for children to watch someone flipping the bird (“You know…the finger?” “Yes, I know the finger, Goose.”) and joke about having relations on a bathroom counter (“A long cruise, was it, Sailor?”).  Now, that is good stuff. Classic stuff, even, but probably not totally appropriate for family viewing.  So pretend I didn’t tell you that Top Gun still ranks up there as one of Baylor’s faves.  Come to think of it, Back to the Future might have been a bit dicey too.  (Remember the bedroom scene between Marty and his 1955 mom? “Why do you keep calling me Calvin?”)

Part of me looks forward to a time when we need not be so careful with our movie choices.  A larger, wiser part of me does not. So when in doubt, we usually go for a Disney movie.  It’s safe. I’m not talking Snow White or any of its animated cohorts (Although our daughter did go through a significant Frozen period.  Shudder.).  We gravitate towards Disney’s much more sophisticated live-action teeny-bopper genre, e.g., Zombies, Descendants, High School Musical (another trilogy for the win!), The Princess Diaries.  School of Rock and The Sandlot aren’t Disney movies, but they are awesome. Enchanted makes my list.  That may or may not have something to do with its inclusion of Patrick Dempsey.

Now, I am not a Lindsay Lohan fan, but I have to admit that girl can crush a family movie. In fact, she stars in two of my favorites – Freaky Friday and The Parent Trap.  Freaky Friday has been redone over and over again, most recently this summer. I have seen them all, but Lindsay’s incarnation is my favorite.   Similarly, LLo’s reboot of The Parent Trap surpasses the originals.  In fact, it’s probably one of my top five movies of all time.  Don’t judge.

Even though we don’t usually watch animated films, The Bee Movie is a exception, and a perennial favorite in our house. Who knew Jerry Seinfeld would make such a likeable bee?  More than that, though, I think this movie reminds us of a simpler time that (some of us) look back on fondly for the togetherness it engendered.  Back when we were building our house and lived in our cabin for six months, we didn’t have Netflix or Amazon. Heck, we didn’t have a washing machine or an oven. Or bedrooms with doors. But we did have a DVD player, and we had The Bee Movie on DVD.  So we watched it.  A lot.

Now, remember, I’m not claiming to be a movie guru. In fact, when I looked up most of these films on Rotten Tomatoes, there weren’t more than a couple in the bunch that exceeded a 50% rating.  This week, though, we are going to go with a critical darling.  Baylor’s first football game of the season is coming up on Saturday.  So on tap for Friday night is Remember the Titans (…assuming I can get everyone on board. I think I’ll offer up some particularly unattractive choices for Options 2 and 3.  Remember – I said this was a limited democracy.).

What works for your family?  Do you have any movies we should add to our rotation?

Categories
Summer of Fun II

Stop and Smell the Summer

Many years and many sunsets ago, my husband and I decided that we were going to dedicate one particular summer to the pursuit of fun.  We called that summer the “Summer of Fun.”  We’re super creative like that.  But the Summer of Debauchery might have been a more appropriate name for it.  This was pre-kids (and also before the explosion of social media, thank goodness!).  And we had the kind of fun you could only get away with in your 20s, and probably only in Wisconsin, for that matter.  
 
Before summer began, we sat down and made a conscious decision to generally streamline our lives, leaving as much room for relaxation and playtime as possible.  We continued to work, of course, and we still accomplished the absolutely necessary items on our “to do” lists. But we made a plan to temporarily outsource as many of our household tasks as we could (buh-bye yard work and cleaning!), and we nixed or put off any projects that weren’t essential.
 
The Summer of Fun was filled with swimming and music and sunshine and beer. Lots of beer. It was fantastic and juvenile and stupid and glorious. Let’s just say it’s a good thing summer in Wisconsin is short.
 
Since the conclusion of that summer, we have had two children, built a house and taken on numerous less significant projects.  We may, or may not, have also grown up a tad. That’s really open to interpretation. Now, this isn’t to say we haven’t had other fun summers in the interim. We have! But we haven’t again made such a conscious effort to focus on enjoying the summer season to the exclusion of all the extraneous stuff. 
 
See, we tend to take on challenges, strive for more, keep moving forward. It’s what we do.  We need to periodically remind ourselves to stop and scoop up the fun that’s right in front of us.  
 
So we recently decided the time was right for another Summer of Fun.  We are calling this one – wait for it – “Summer of Fun II”! It will look a little different from the original.  We have traded in our powerboat for an arguably more sensible fish-and-ski number.  There will be no dancing on bars (Not that I ever did such a thing, but if I did, you could never, ever prove it.).  I don’t see any Shot Skis in our immediate future. There won’t be any semi-permanent houseguests sleeping it off in our spare room. I am at least reasonably certain of all of the foregoing. 
 

There will also be less beer.  Don’t get me wrong – there will still be time for beer. But the focus will be different. There will be lots of fishing and campfires and tubing.  There will be giggles and smiles and cuddles.  There will be ice cream and pancake breakfasts and trips to ballgames and zoos. There will be movies and s’mores.  Our summer playlist will likely include some Taylor Swift, to appease my 6-year-old diva, er, I mean daughter. But we’ll sneak in some “Don’t Stop Believin'” too, for old times’ sake.

 
Most of all, there won’t be any projects that can reasonably wait till next year, or at least till fall (which will likely arrive in Wisconsin in approximately 3.2 seconds). And that’s really what this whole Summer of Fun thing is all about – making an effort to find room in your life for fun, whatever “fun” may mean to you.
 
So stay tuned for updates on the Summer of Fun II.  It began last week, and it’s looking pretty good so far.  Do you guys have any fun summer plans?