Captain America

We're at home tonight.  I know at home on a Friday night, how did that happen?  Nikki went to a dance/party at Scandia with Sydney.  After all of the holiday eating, we wanted to stay home to have dinner.  But since I haven't been to the grocery store since before Christmas, the pickings were slim.  So pancakes and eggs it was!

Since we were all here we decided to watch a movie too.  It's increasingly hard to find a movie that both Stephen and Ali will watch.  We settled on Captain America (only with a bribe from Bill to rub Ali's back during the movie).  We're only about a third of the way through the movie so far, but it's much better than I'd expected.  Although I think I'm going to like the part before the "procedure" better than the after.  We'll see.

Weekend Recap

I haven't taken any photos lately.  Well I have, but I haven't downloaded them.  I took about 200 photos over the weekend of water polo.  Both of our girls are at camp.  It's hard to believe they only left last Sunday.  It feels like they've been gone a lot longer.  Here are some pics of what they're doing:

Yes it looks like they're having a great time.  I think the hardest part of them being gone is that I can't talk to them.  If I could hear their stories each day, it would be easier.  But I know they're having a great time and I'll have plenty of time to hear all of the stories when they come home on Friday.  These are life experiences that they'll never forget.  I'm so glad that Ali decided to go with Nikki this year.

So what did we do this weekend?  Stephen had water polo games at Servite on Thursday, and then a tournament in Corona Friday thru Sunday.  They took 5th place in the tournament and qualified for USCC, which was great.  Didn't get much running in over the weekend.  I did get four days in this week, so I guess that's fine.  Although I only got in 18 miles.  I'm trying to keep my minimum at 20, but what can I do?  Bill joined me for a run in Corona.  I'd done Map My Run and found a great 4.25 mile route from the high school Stephen was playing at.  That was Bill's longest run and he did great!  It's fun to have him to run with.  I enjoy running alone, but it's nice knowing he's right there too.

Last night after Stephen's second game we met The Filpi's for dinner at Gyu-Kaku.  It's a Japanese BBQ place where they bring the food to you raw and you have your own grill at each table.  You grill the food to your liking and eat it as it finishes.  We'd been before and really like it.  From there we went to the movies to see Bad Teacher.  

It was pretty funny, although I felt like we'd seen most of the funny parts in trailers.  Then because it was only 7:45 we decided we needed dessert.  We decided to find someplace we could get a drink and dessert.  So we headed over to The Heights.  We were looking for the drink because we'd talked several times about Buttery Nipples and how delicious they are. 

 I'm always up for something new so this was what we were after.  They were so good, we ended up ordering a second round!  I could drink full glasses of that stuff!  We had an early morning of water polo on Sunday so after that, we called it a night and headed home.

Today we went for bagels before heading out to polo.  As we were eating, in walked The Filpi's!  Too funny!  After Stephen's first game, one of his teammates invited us back to their house since they lived nearby.  So we headed over and had a delicious barbeque.  We hung out there for a few hours, eating and visiting before heading back for the second game.  My parents had come to both games, so we invited them to join us back at our house for dinner.  I'd planned to make shrimp tacos and with the girls gone, I knew we'd have enough.  It was a nice ending to a busy but fun weekend.  I'll be counting down the days until the girls come home on Friday.

Soul Surfer Movie Review

Ali had been asking me to take her to see this movie since the day it came out.  Unfortunately we'd been a little busy.  So on Monday when she asked me to take her I promised we could go on Thursday, her early day.  We took a few of her friends, Nikki and Stephen too.  What an amazing movie.  I knew the short story of what had happened, because I remember the real life story.  But the actors they cast for the movie were perfect.  And of course the story was so sad, yet uplifting.  We all cried most of the movie, but came out of the theatre with big smiles.  It was great to see a movie that was appropriate for the entire family.  One that didn't have sex, language or drugs and drinking.  Kind of amazing!  If you haven't seen it, go!

The Fighter

We went to dinner last night with The Filpi's.  Stephen invited Sammy to come along as well.  We went to La Tolteca, and had to split up with the kids on one side of the restaurant and adults on the other.  Dinner was fabulous as always.  Then we headed back to our house.  The kids went out and swam (yes the pool is barely 70 degrees!), and the adults watched The Fighter.  It's my goal to watch all 10 movies that were nominated for Academy Awards.  I've seen more this year than in any other year!

We all really liked the movie.  I don't think it was meant to be as much as a comedy as we found it to be.  The eighties hair and clothing just cracked us up!  The music was great, even the cars were hilarious to us.  Lisa just liked looking at Mark Wahlberg!  It was a really good movie, probably one of the better ones on the list so far.

Just Go With It

Bill had been saying we needed a night away, so I booked us a room at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa.  I convinced my parents to watch the kids and we were good to go.  I'd booked the room through a site called Jetsetters.  It's all high end travel at discounted prices.  The catch is that your room is not able to be cancelled or changed and is prepaid.  You know where this is going...yep Bill found out the SEC auditors would be coming on the day we were supposed to go.  Well since it had just been my parents 40th anniversary and we were wanting to send them somewhere anyway we gave them our room and Bill went to work today, yep Sunday.  So the kids and I went to see Just Go With It.

It was pretty funny.  It's hard to find movies anymore that all 3 kids are willing to watch.  Stephen was pressing for Hall Pass, but I draw the line for now with R rated movies.  It wasn't exactly how I thought I'd be spending the day, but I enjoyed the day with the kids and then watched the Academy Awards with the girls.

Waiting for Superman

Just finished watching this amazing show.  It's from the same people that did An Inconvenient Truth and came across the same way.  It's about the state of education in our country, and what a mess it is now and has been for decades.  Unfortunately it's unlikely to change anytime soon.  The sad thing is that we had our kids in private school for many years before transferring them into the public school system so we've seen the differences.  There are some that are good and some that are bad.  Overall I think the schools in this area are doing an okay job with the parameters they have to do it in.  But does that mean I think they're great?  No, but then again I don't think the private school was great either and we were paying a lot of money for pretty good.  I like the ideas of some of the individuals in this film and will do everything I can to support them.