Ultimate Family DVD List

Andrew O'Hehir, the self-proclaimed "pretentious art-film snob" critic for Salon, asked his readers for family film suggestions that were off the beaten path, and likely to be enjoyed by both kids and parents. It's a great list, I plucked a dozen of the suggestions off and added them to our Netflix queue. Many films aren't appropriate for the under 8 set...Awesome Kids' Video Project

Top Four Family Films

1) The Iron Giant
We own this movie, Elliot loves it.

2) My Neighbor Totoro
Another great movie we own, both kids are big fans.

3) The Princess Bride
This is now in our queue.

4) Time Bandits
For older kids - 9+.

Family Dinner Magic: Yet More Reasons to Eat Together

Ok, now I'm convinced. No more kid only meals while I wash dishes and Dan cooks our dinner while talking on the phone. We're all eating together. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

From the Slate article, The Mac and Cheese Effect: Why the family dinner is good for parents. The family dinner is ambrosia and nectar and manna, too, researchers have long told us. It helps prevent teenagers from abusing drugs and alcohol or smoking, and it protects them from stress, asthma, and eating disorders. It boosts kids' reading scores and grades. By the time all the virtues of dinner togetherness have been extolled, you can only feel that if you love your kids, you have to get home in time to sauté the stir fry. You might even cut back to working part time to force-feed them falafel, as law professor Cameron Stracher relates in a book he published last year.

Happily, according to a new study, family dinner appears to be good for parents, too. The research by lead author Jenet Jacob of Brigham Young University found that among 1,580 parents who worked at IBM, those who said their jobs interfered less with being home for dinner tended to feel greater personal success, and success in relationships with their spouses and their children. The working parents—both mothers and fathers—had all of these buoyant feelings if they made it home for dinner more regularly, even if they still worked long hours. They also felt more kindly toward their workplace. Parents who missed dinner at home because of work, on the other hand, felt gloomy about their professional futures. "It is noteworthy that although longer work hours predicted significantly greater perception of success in work life, work interference with dinnertime predicted lower perception of success in work life," Jacob and her co-author write.

Summertime Photos 2008

Here are some recent picture of our family for some people to view. They are, by and large, pictures of a trip to Discovery Park. Elliot got stung by a bee 15 feet from the completion of our sojourn. A couple of pictures are from a toy sale that Elliot instigated at 6:30 on a Wednesday.

Bubble Calendar

I know the boys would go nuts over this bubble calendar. Pop a bubble daily for a year. I bet they'd pop the whole year in one day actually. Cute idea.