Stay-at-Home Sundays

For those avid cyclists, Amish Americans, and cave-dwellers who may not have noticed, gas prices are yuckier than usual lately, and we at the Bears' Den have been trying to cut back on our driving as much as we can...which isn't much, considering that Bear's job involves driving all over creation and that we live a solid 10 miles up the freeway from pretty much every place we need or want to go! At the very least, starting Stay-at-Home Sundays has given the girls and me an excuse to stay in our jammies all day, do some fun activities together, and for me to catch up on cleaning (and maybe a little relaxing), without spending any money driving around or entertaining ourselves while Bear's at work.

My Stay-at-Home Sunday rules are simple:

1) We stay at home. (Duh.) Walking or riding bikes somewhere would be acceptable, if we I weren't too lazy to do so. There are a lot of big hills around our house, people.

2) It doesn't necessarily have to be Sunday--that's the day we usually have no plans, but any day is fine.

3) I try to plan a fun theme or activity for the girls and me to do that day, but it doesn't need to take up the whole day, and it certainly better not be anything that requires a ton of preparation, lesson planning, or clean-up...because that would get in the way of the whole "relaxation" aspect we're shooting for here. The point is to break up the day, keep the girls busy, and hey, maybe tie in a book or a movie if it fits.

Two weeks ago, we had Movie Day.

Keira made tickets...



("Welcome to our movie. There will be popcorn.")

We popped popcorn and the girls set up a concession stand:




We closed the blinds, set up chairs, clearly did not do any cleaning, and settled in to watch The Princess and the Frog (which turned out to be pretty good, actually):


(By the way, I totally did not sit in that kitchen chair for 97 minutes watching the movie--I adjourned to the couch within the first 3 minutes or so, and enjoyed 94 minutes of lounging!)

Last Sunday, we had a Mother's Day picnic. I took no photos of this event, but trust me: it was blanket-on-the-patio, PB&J's-on-plastic-trays FANTASTIC!

And today, we had a Fancy Tea Party, based on this book:

Fancy Nancy gives detailed instruction in this book for making fancy butterfly-shaped placemats, fancy invitations, fancy decorations, and fancy treats. Our tea party turned out to be significantly less fancy than Nancy might have done, but we made do with what we had and did the stuff we I felt like doing (sorry, Nancy, but I wasn't in the mood to facilitate lollipop bouquets, cute though they are).



Sticking out your tongue is essential to using scissors:



Froot Loops are fancy, right?


In between all this stuff, there's quite a bit of laundry, free play, squabbling, dishwasher-loading, and mess-making going on (I'll let you guess who's participating in each of those), and none of it is picture-perfect or magazine-worthy (note the spilled apple juice all over the table and the random toys laying around...oh, you already did?), but it's the beginning of a fun little tradition for us that also does our bank account--and the planet--a small favor. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday!