twelve dates of christmas / an ugly sweater party + a video (and a few other dates, too)

i can’t believe christmas eve is tomorrow already! since thanksgiving took place later than usual this year, i feel like christmas showed up too quickly! i need another week! we are still trying to find ways to enjoy the season together as a family and cram in all our favorite holiday appropriate things to do together.

we all went to the guggenheim museum to see peter & the wolf narrated by isaac mizrahi and accompanied by the juilliard ensemble a few weeks ago. (i took E last year and we loved it so but this year was ten times better with acting and dancing, too!) it’s things like this where i always walk out afterwards with an “aha!” moment and i think to myself, “see. we live in new york city because of things like this. it might be crazy hard at times raising a family in the city, but THIS. this is amazing. it’s things like this that make it worthwhile.”  and then i feel great about raising kids here long term and start planning out the next twenty years of our life here. ;)

for another date of christmas, josh and i finished up some christmas shopping together and grabbed a slice at Ray’s pizza. i had never been. and it was pretty good. i mostly just liked sitting across from him in the booth and talking. we rebelled against our tired bodies for another date and stayed up late to watch a movie together one night. we ended up watching sleepless in seattle and i loved every minute of it (after all, i got to choose the movie, so….)  it had been years and years since either of us had seen it and neither of us remembered what happened and also, cheesy love stories where it’s full of destiny and fate and love at first sight and meg ryan and tom hanks and old computers and all these close calls where they almost miss each other at the end…. those sorts of movies can be fun sometimes.

(double click this video to see it larger. i have no idea why it is embedding so small (anyone else know?) i’ve tried to email vimeo support but they can’t seem to figure it out either. anyway, if you wanna watch it bigger head over to my vimeo page or double click it.)

josh and i went to an ugly sweater christmas party hosted by friends for another one of our christmas dates. everyone was asked to bring a talent to share with the group after dinner. we were entertained by magic tricks, musical instruments, juggling and christmas stories and jokes. a few weeks before the party, josh and i had talked about making up a dance together to perform, but we didn’t get around to it until 5 minutes before we left our apartment for the party. we had just put the littles to bed and were waiting for our babysitter to arrive so we made up a little pas de deux to jingle bells in our living room, performed it once for our sitter when she arrived to make sure we had it down, and then trekked in the snow to the party. the whole way there we were joking that we were going to forget half the routine and josh was probably going to drop me, but at least we had “prepared” something! ;)

that video clip i’ll forever hold dear. you’d think josh did finger turns and shoulder lifts all day long, right?! that man is always full of surprises. he’s a good sport and this was a lot of fun. thanks to our friends for being a lively and kind crowd to perform for. and to amanda for catching it on her iPhone and to tony for accompanying us on the piano. :)

merry christmas!!!