Family Date: Signal Mountain Playhouse

Family date night to the Signal Mountain Playhouse. It’s a local outdoor theater that puts on a great production every summer. We’ve missed the last few, but managed to go see Bye Bye Birdie tonight. It was a little more mature than what we would normally take the boys to, but the cast did a great job. Isaac fell asleep in my lap right after intermission. Shout out to Daniel for sitting through a musical, I’m pretty

 sure this is his least favorite activity, but he was a trooper.

  

Signal Mountain Playhouse: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

This past Friday night we were whisked into Ian Flemming and Roald Dahl's world of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Having grown up watching Dick Van Dyke play Caractacus Potts in the 1968 movie,  I was both excited and curious as to how a children's theater would handle a story about a car that not only drives, but floats and flies as well.

Overall the theater group handled the story very well, singing so many of my favorite songs and providing lots of comic relief in the form of the Vulgarian spies in the first act (they were hilarious!).

The play took place at the Signal Mountain Playhouse – an outdoor amphitheater where a different play takes place every summer during the month of July. This was our first time to attend, but last year they did Peter Pan and the year before that was The King and I.

With two little ones under the age of five, we weren't sure how the night would go. But since we had had success with staying up for July 4th fireworks, we thought we would give it a chance. The boys did pretty well. Jack got a little antsy during the second act (it helped that he was already familiar with the movie), and we just kept giving Isaac snacks so he wouldn't be fussy.

Jack enjoyed the show, but was not a fan of the Child Catcher. All week he has told me how much he did not like the bad guy who took children. My favorite parts of this version of the story were the two spies in the first act and the "Doll on the Music Box" scene from the second act.

If you are interested in attending a play at the Signal Mountain Playhouse, here are some logistics you should be aware of:

The play is only on Friday and Saturday nights during the month of July and tickets cost $15 for adults and $5 for kids. Tickets go on sale at 6pm the night of the show. Daniel got in line at 5:30pm and said that the place was about 3/4 full by the time he left. When you buy your tickets, you also set up your camp chair in your desired spot (we had center seats with a great view).

The show doesn't start until 8pm, so we were able to eat dinner between the time of purchasing our tickets and the start of the show. You can bring food and drinks into the amphitheater – you could even bring a picnic while you wait for the play to start. There is also a snack bar – popcorn only costs $1.

We did not get back to our car until about 10:30pm, so if you take little ones, be aware that it is a very late night for them!

We had a lot of fun and I look forward to attending future shows. After restraining myself from singing along during the play, I've been singing my favorite Chitty Chitty Bang Bang songs all week!

Valentine's, 2016

I think one of the biggest lessons I have learned since having kids is that there are numerous instances when you need to adjust your expectations. For us, a recent example of this was Valentine's Day...

Sunday (the commercialized day of love), Daniel was coming off of working 14 nights straight. So his world was all mixed up. For that two week period, he would come home and be in bed by 5am and then up some time after lunch to squeeze in precious moments with us before heading back to work.

All of you who work nights (my sister included), hats off to you for making this lifestyle work. It was an exhausting two weeks! And not just for Daniel. I don't sleep well when I know Daniel has to drive 65 minutes home after working all night, then I would have to get up and juggle most of the parental responsibilities. Not an easy two weeks for any of us.

Anyways, on Sunday I woke up and wrangled the boys out the door for church while Daniel got caught up on his sleep. We came home and snacked instead of eating a real lunch, then headed out for an early dinner at El Metate (a local fave on our mountain).

Evidently Mexican is not a romantic enough dinner, as we easily got a table for the four of us. After our fill of burritos for the boys and fajitas for us, we headed home to get the boys in bed. 

Once our boys were tucked in, we collapsed on the couch with a chocolate mug cake and ice cream that I threw together. There were no cards, no flowers, no gifts. Just exhausted parents with cake in a mug, watching Netflix.

As our TV show came to a close, I was struggling to stay awake. So I crawled into bed while Daniel (who was now in the habit of being awake all night) decided to go to the movies. Alone. Talk about romantic. I slept and Daniel saw a late showing of a war movie.

Tuesday night I had a girl's night out planned (the older I get, the more I appreciate these nights out). One of my friends ordered a dessert to take home to her husband and I thought that was a sweet gesture. So I ordered one as well.

It still wasn't Valentines day, but sometimes special, unexpected treats are even better. When I got home, the boys were already in bed so I made Daniel and I decaf lattes and we shared the tiramisu.

Such is life. It's not always what you think it ought to be, but if you take the time, you can still share sweet moments together.

Family Date Night: Movies in the Park

Continuing with our busy weekend, we squeezed in a Saturday night movie in the park. Movies in the park has been hosted by First Things First for the last 12 years in Coolidge Park.

We attempted to go to the first movie in July, but on our way to the movie, it rained AND Jack fell asleep in the car... meaning Daniel and I settled for eating McAlister's sandwiches in our car while Jack slept. Real life of parents, sometimes dates look like this.

Last week my aunt and uncle were visiting and the weather was still questionable, so Daniel and I accepted the babysitting offered and went to grab dessert by ourselves instead of going to the movie in the park.

This week was the last movie of the summer and even though we had been busy (Lookouts Game, biking, concert) we felt like we should go. Ok, let's be real, I thought we should go. Daniel would have been happy to watch a RedBox from the comfort of our own home and Jack wouldn't know that we had skipped on a summer movie.

I decided that since the movie was free (we somehow even managed to find a free parking spot right next to the park) we should go a little early and get ice cream at Clumpies. This was our first visit to this ice cream shop and it did not disappoint. Our philosophy is that is ok to splurge on ice cream since the rest of our evening was free.

Daniel had peanut butter ice cream, Jack had strawberry ice cream with sprinkles and I had the Espresso Chocolate Chunk in a fresh waffle cone. So good! 

While ice cream was a fun idea, it kind of backfired on us, in that by the time it got dark enough for the movie to actually start Jack was wound up. He sat quietly for about 45 minutes and then he started standing up, dancing around and jumping on us. 

One hour into the Lego Movie, Daniel and I decided to call it a night. It was 10pm, church was in the morning and getting jumped on while we watched a movie was not exactly fun. Overall a good experience. We will try again next summer when Jack is a little bigger and will hopefully sit for the entire movie...

Family Date Night: Nightfall

For the last couple of years, Justin, one of Daniel's co-workers has asked us on several occasions to come see his band, Function, play in Chattanooga. Normally at bars... late at night. Since we have a toddler, it never worked out for us to go.

Last week we learned that Function was going to be the featured act at Nightfall and we thought that it would be a good opportunity to see Justin play.
  

Nightfall is a free, family-friendly concert series held in downtown Chattanooga from early May through September every year. We have been wanting to go, but have been pretty busy all summer. Thankfully we were able to kill two birds with one stone – attend Nightfall and finally get to see Justin play.

Before heading to watch the show, we made a stop at Lupi's for a pizza. Then we snagged a parking really close to Miller Plaza and even found a section of grass to put a blanket on. Score for good pizza, close parking and a grassy spot to sit!

Jack really enjoyed hamming it up for the people sitting around us. Once the music started he liked pretending to play his version of guitar (holding his hands close together and pretending to strum). We stayed until about 9pm and even ran into one of the operators that Daniel works with.

 

Nightfall was a great way to spend an evening as a family. Free family date nights are the way to go! Well the pizza cost $, but was definitely worth it.

 {via}

Chattanooga Lookouts

After three weeks of barely seeing Daniel, we are thrilled to have him home for an ENTIRE weekend! We are making up for lost time and cramming lots of summer activities into this one weekend.

To start, Thursday night we went to a picnic at the Lookouts Game that was hosted by NAYGN, an organization at Daniel's work. We had burgers and met some of Daniel's co-workers from the plant where he now works. There were even a couple of other toddler boys for Jack to roam around with.

I think the highlight for Jack was getting to eat ice cream sandwiches.

Though a close second would be checking out the lawnmowers that were displayed for an upcoming lawnmower race – they were nice enough to let Jack sit on a couple of the lawnmowers.

Jack also invented his own game that involved throwing an empty cup over the bleacher chairs and running to get it, over and over.

We didn't watch that much of the game. We left during the 5th inning and the Lookouts weren't doing so well. But we still had a nice evening out.

As we left, Jack cried and emphatically told us that he wanted to stay at the game and that he wasn't ready to go home. 

Poor guy. It's rough being a toddler. 

Creative Discovery Museum, age 2

Daniel has been working a lot lately. As in gone from our house over 70 hours a week. It's been tough for our family. Last week, Daniel was doing some testing at work (which meant even longer days), but it also meant he crammed in his hours in 5 days instead of 6, so he got to stay home on Saturday. Hurray!

Since Daniel was home (and it's been so cold out), we decided to take Jack to the Creative Discovery Museum in downtown Chattanooga. The last time we visited this museum Jack was about 10 months old. Looking back at those pictures reminds me of how little he was! While he seemed to enjoy the museum at 10 months, he really LOVED the museum at 26 months.

He loved the water table and learning how the bridges and locks around Chattanooga work.
Really, he probably just loved splashing in the water and Daniel had fun with the locks!

Then he discovered that he loved climbing in the playground above the water tables. With mommy in tow of course.

Then we found the music area and Jack had a blast with all of the instruments. He has been playing the drums on anything he can get his hands on... blocks at home are drums, plastic cups in the grocery story are drums, everything can be a drum!

After music, he went and dug in the dinosaur pit. There were so many kids that this activity was a bit overwhelming for Jack.

He had more fun pretending to be a baby dinosaur (his favorite make believe game).

We skipped a few other parts in the museum and headed upstairs where Jack loved the winter maze they had set up. He followed me through the maze and then worked his way backwards through following the EXACT SAME PATH that I had led him.

We even ventured out onto the upstairs patio and Jack played with the bubbles and learned about pulleys. We were just glad to get to spend some time playing outside of our house.

We decided to get a family membership and plan to go back to the museum at least once a week when it's not so hectic.

It was so nice to have Daniel home for two whole days this weekend. After the museum, we had a late lunch at Five Guys. There was a firetruck outside and Daniel and Jack were in little boy heaven.

After eating, Jack took a nap in the car while we drove around and looked at few neighborhoods we had not yet looked at. We have one more set of houses to view on Tuesday and then hopefully we will make a decision on what house to buy by the end of the week.