par·a·dox noun \ˈper-ə-ˌdäks, ˈpa-rə-\ : something (such as a situation) that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is actually true or possible Ben went through a Phantom of the Opera phase a while back, after reading a kid version of the story at school, and made the mask, and acted the part, until I had to rent the movie, … Continue reading Before These Moments Slip Away
As we rounded out the year of 2015, the boys and I sat up late-ish to watch Inside Out.
Of course, I’m raising boys after growing up in an all-girl family. It’s like Life doesn’t actually ever want us to feel capable or like we know one iota of what we’re doing. So, I can’t tell you if the interior landscape of boys during the upheaval that is Junior High is anything like that of girls, but I can tell you that I identified with every single thing that movie showed us about how an emotional world can crumble overnight.
Continue reading “Pre-Pubescent Insanity”
“Not Cool, Robert Frost!” It has been all the rage on the internet, at Ted Talks, on the Late Night Circuit – all over the place. If you have not yet seen The Pep Talk, by Kid President, please, go see it now. I will wait. My kids and I have watched this so many times, we have it memorized. We have gone on to … Continue reading Monkeys Flinging Poop, Friends Visiting and other Poetic Adventures
It was a Poet-Philosopher’s Dream – to watch Life of Pi tonight with my family. To watch the beautiful interpretation of delving into oneself to learn about the great unknowns, the enormous out there, the big questions, the tiger, the vegetarian, the sea and the sky and the storm and the quiet. Oh, such a tremendous movie. Such a story. Such an achievement. A poet … Continue reading Such a Golden, Ruffled Dreamworld; Such a Blue, Blue Sea!
Suddenly, I’m not tired anymore. My last day at my job was a week and a half ago and I’ve been sick, and voiceless ever since my first day home. That was not the entrance into this new life of working from home that I was expecting. But it was a transition period. I needed some sleep. Tonight, we watched, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, with … Continue reading “Your Life is an Occasion: Rise to It!”
In a radio interview with movie director Robert Zemeckis, I learned about the origin of the movie, Back to the Future. Robert and his writing buddy were talking about their fathers, and their relationships with their fathers, and wondering if they had met their dads when they were kids, if they would have been friends. That was the seed, he said, from which sprouted the idea … Continue reading Would we have been Friends if we’d Met when we were Kids?
Ben is extra sweet and sensitive today. I am extra sweet and sensitive today. Bean is always sweet and sensitive. He is such a show-off. The rest of us are often all up in our own heads. We can be very poetic about how much we love one another and still get snappy the second we don’t get our way. Last night, we lived … Continue reading Day after Wild Things – The Effects
“I’ll eat you up, I love you so!” Where the Wild Things Are, based on the classic children’s story by Maurice Sendak, was a treat for both children and adults in our house. For me, the mom, seeing into a world that was created by Max, was deeply moving and sad. He wanted to be able to solve all the problems of the world, by … Continue reading Movie Review: Where the Wild Things Are
This is Super Exciting to be Hosting the First Ever Family Friendly Movie Reviews. I hope you’ll add your link and then put a comment in the comment section to let us know you are participating: Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets — Auto-Linky widget will appear right here! This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site. Share your Family Movie Night Reviews … Continue reading First Ever “Family Friendly Movie Review” – Linky
“There’s a great — with the significant risk of sounding a bit pretentious — there’s a great Camus quote, in which he says something like, I may paraphrase, but, ‘A man’s work is nothing more or less than the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in the presence of which his heart first opened.’” … Continue reading Great and Simple Images that Open our Hearts
What I would love to do is have a weekly Family Movie Night Review. Sunday would be a great day to check in, so that whether you do Friday Night Movie Night in your family, or Saturday Night Movie Night – either way, end of weekend, Sunday, we could share our reflections. We don’t have to give away the storyline, or do big spoilers, but … Continue reading Popcorn & Snuggle Time – Family Movie Reviews
Saturday Night we watched a movie with the boys called Flyboys, about American pilots flying for the French in WWI. It mostly focused on the flying, but there were moments that showed the devastation of war, the displaced families, the star-crossed lovers and the heartbreak of it. The boys missed most of that, but it clung to me as I was picking tomatoes on Sunday … Continue reading Canning Tomatoes, while being Lost in Paris most of the Day
This is not the scene from SYTYCD – it was just the best semi-related picture I could find! It has been a long week. One thing I love about when the days start getting shorter, and the kids aren’t running around outside until almost nine o’clock at night, is that we can start doing Friday Night movie nights again. It doesn’t seem right to close the … Continue reading “Mommy, Can I Dance in a Dumpster?”
What was I thinking – teaching my kids about Bugs? Seriously, did I contemplate the repercussions of this wise move for even a moment? As we got started on the Classification of Animals section of What Your Third Grader Needs to Know, the part my kids got all wound up about was learning to tell bugs apart from each other. I had heard there was a Bug … Continue reading I have boys. I will get used to bugs. I just will.
For a Friday Night Movie night not long ago, we watched, The World’s Fastest Indian, the story of Burt Munro and his Indian Motorcycle and the story of him setting land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Ben has been obsessed with it ever since. Tonight, he built a miniature, including canning salt sprinkled onto glue on cardboard to make the Salt Flats Continue reading The Salt Flats
Bean being outfitted as a Knight for Jousting We are starting early at raising our boys to be Renaissance Men! A renaissance man or polymath is a person who is skilled in multiple fields or multiple disciplines, and who has a broad base of knowledge. The term renaissance man is largely based on the various artists and scholars of the European Renaissance, (starting in about … Continue reading With Great Success and Aplomb
We worked all day! First we watched a Behind the Scenes video on the Monsters, Inc. DVD that showed the filmmakers creating storyboards. Ben worked in his two-story playhouse (that was on property when we got here… we can’t take credit for it being cool!), and turned it into his Film Studio. We did all the filming while his little brother was taking a nap … Continue reading Ben’s First Film
Last night, Ben had to crawl in bed with me – at nearly seven years old – and snuggle because his imagination was scaring him. Who knows where this is coming from? We don’t watch scary shows or even that much TV. Sometimes on weekends, Ben will watch a car show with his dad. Yesterday, some guys digging around a scrapyard for parts found a … Continue reading Screenplay for a Horror Movie
