We had a great week last week since my sister and mother came in to visit for Thanksgiving. The girls love seeing their aunt and Nana, and we love looking up to realize that someone else is going to give them a bath or read to them. (Also, seeing my sister and mom is great.) Finally, there was a ton of food and over the weekend we threw Christmas decorations against just about every household surface to which they’d stick, including the children.
You may also notice from the pictures that we made a family outing to the world famous St. Louis Arch and went all the way up to the tippy top. Geralyn, having worked there as a tour guide during high school, was able to regale us with various facts about the height of the arch, the number of steps, and various datelines related to its construction. The kids didn’t like the waiting in long lines parts, but they did love the observation area at the top where we could marvel at the skyscrapers and parks of downtown St. Louis, Missouri on the west side and the casinos and strip clubs of Sauget, Illinois on the east side. Truly we got the entire spectrum of delights.
In other news, I recently decided to further Sam’s geekification by exposing her to the Star Wars movies. I figure she’s ready. What I hadn’t realized, though, was that there is considerable debate among the nerdigalian about the proper order in which to view even the movies –never mind the animated Clone Wars movie, the TV shows, or the Ewoks Christmas Special. Some people seem to recommend a Roman numeral soup of viewing sequences, like “IV, I, V, II, III, VI.” What? To me, these are the insane ravings, burbling from the mouths of some asthmatic, lunatic zealots and based on logic so byzantine that it defies my simple mind. So chronological order it is. Sam enjoyed the first hour and a half of The Phantom Menace that we watched last night, and even though the notorious pod racing sequence was her favorite, she tells me that Jar Jar Binks is “an idiot” and that she hates him. So there’s hope.
Wow – I thought I was a complete outlier in recommending exactly that order: IV, I, V, II, III, VI. I didn’t know anybody else out there was crazy enough to agree.
Insanity!