Sunday Self-Care: Christmas edition

We spent yesterday in central Illinois, visiting Ron’s family, and today in Southern Illinois, visiting my family. My nieces and nephews decorated the cookies pictured above.

Besides spending time with family, I decided self-care this week would involve the opposite of self-care most of the rest of the time: I ignored my Fitbit’s admonitions and ate whatever I wanted instead of insisting on optimal nutrition at every meal or trying to jam extra workouts into an already busy holiday schedule just to compensate. If I gain an extra pound or two, so be it; I’ve got the rest of the winter to watch Star Trek on the treadmill.

Here are some pictures of the munchkins:

Hazel shows off one of her presents. I don’t really know what it is because I’m old.

I’m pretty sure I have a picture of Jamie making this same face when he was a toddler.

Martha models the Christmas-light necklace she got in her stocking.

Ollie turns a pair of bows into an impromptu Princess Leia costume. The Force is strong with this young padawan, and he wishes General Organa the best as she recovers from her recent health scare.

Hope you had a good Christmas, wherever you are.

Emily

Dogs, dinosaurs and Doctor Who geocaching

My nephews came to visit us today. We took them to the Show-Me Center for Jurassic Quest, a traveling exhibit that includes life-sized, animatronic dinosaurs, including a few kids can ride for pictures, and all manner of other dinosaur-themed activities. Here are a few photos of their adventures:

Digging for fossils with their dad. Ollie, who is very proud of the crystals we dug out of a kit Ron and I got him for Christmas, was especially pleased with this part of the show.

Something about this dinosaur’s fingers reminds me of a Skexis from “The Dark Crystal.”

Jamie told his mommy riding the dinosaur freaked him out a little bit.

Ollie, who tends to be a bit more gonzo than his brother, seemed to enjoy himself.

Jamie took off his glasses and turned his hat backwards in preparation for the bungee run in the bounce house.

After the dinosaur show, my brother-in-law took us all out to lunch at Beef O’Brady’s, a sort of Applebee’s-type place in Jackson, where I let Ollie decide what I should eat for lunch. He picked out a big appetizer plate with chicken strips and onion rings and quesadillas and mozzarella planks and four kinds of dipping sauce. He pointed to the picture on the menu and explained that we were going to split this meal: He would eat “this part” (gesturing to the row of actual food), and I could eat “all this” (gesturing to the little cups of sauce). Pretty slick, that one. He also saw Jamie playing the piano in my dining room and suggested they go sit in the ball chair, which is pretty much their favorite piece of furniture ever. They dashed into the living room, and half a minute later — with his brother suitably distracted — Ollie returned to the piano alone.

They also had fun finding the Doctor Who-themed geocache in my front yard, inspecting the quail and the frozen pond in the back, peering into the worm bin in the basement, befriending the dogs, trying unsuccessfully to coax the cat out from under the bed, and munching on cookies and ice-cream bars.

No, I didn’t give them booze. DINK Aunt Emily doesn’t have any age-appropriate glassware, so they just drank pineapple-infused water from stemware. We’re all kinds of fancy around here.

Ollie’s approach to stemware is not markedly different from his Uncle Ron’s.

Riggy has a new best friend. He loved Ollie — probably because Ollie is the only person he knows who is close enough to the ground for Riggy to lick his face.

Jamie, who has been doing a lot of cooking lately, got to take home a dozen quail eggs to experiment with. Can’t wait to see what kind of tiny egg dishes he’ll come up with.

Oh, and lest you think we neglected Hazel: She was attending a birthday party today and missed the dinosaur show, so the boys took a dinosaur souvenir home for her. Next time she sees them, she’ll have her very own velociraptor to assemble and three fossils to dig out of a brick of plaster, including a Mosasaur tooth and some fossilized dinosaur poop.

Hope you had a dinosaurs-and-ice-cream-bars sort of weekend, wherever you are.

Emily