Nearing the 15,000 mark

Just 48 more page views and I will be at the 15,000 mark!

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It has been a busy few days. On Sunday we went with Eliana and Maya to see the animated movie “The Nut Job.” The story is about a group of squirrels in search of food for the winter who are attempting a heist of a nut store, and a gang of human criminals trying to rob a bank. The voices are those of some well-known actors, including Will Arnett, Katherine Heigl, Liam Neeson, and Maya Rudolph. As the New York Times review noted, the movie has “more flatulence jokes than anyone deserves.” I doubt the children actually caught most of them. But we had a good time.

The mall where the theater is located has massage chairs that the girls really love. This is definitely in that category of “silly things only grandparents would do.”

On Monday, Simmie, Ronen, and their girls joined Barry, Joshua, Ella and me at the New England Aquarium. We arrived shortly after it opened and it was crowded but manageable. It was extremely cold so we skipped all the outdoor things but did see most of the museum. We took a break in the late morning for the children to have snacks and drinks. By the time we were ready to head back to the exhibits, it was insane! We stayed for another hour or so before deciding it was time to leave. Here are a couple of pictures.

Simmie and Ronen and the girls headed to Brookline for some shopping and dinner, while we went back to Sharon and made dinner for Dina and family.

Today, Barry had to return to New York for a few days. Dina and I took the four children to see The Lego Movie. A.O. Scott really hit the nail on the head in his New York Times review:

The story is a busy, slapdash contraption designed above all to satisfy the imperatives of big-budget family entertainment. There are fiery chases and hectic brawls, and a crowd of famous voices simultaneously enacting and lampooning the standard cartoon-quest narrative of heroic self-discovery. Pop-culture jokes ricochet off the heads of younger viewers to tickle the world-weary adults in the audience, with just enough sentimental goo applied at the end to unite the generations. Parents will dab their eyes while the kids roll theirs.

Binding “The Lego Movie” together is a “Matrix”-like conceit that turns the whole thing into an allegory about the nature of creativity and the meaning of amusement. As such, it encounters an obvious contradiction, one that bothered the 10-year-old Lego maven who accompanied me to the press screening. The overt message is that you should throw out the manuals and follow the lead of your own ingenuity, improvising new combinations for the building blocks in front of you. But the movie itself follows a fairly strict and careful formula, thwarting its inventive potential in favor of the expected and familiar.

But of course that tension lurks in every box of Lego. Sometimes you want to execute a perfect copy of the thing depicted on the box; sometimes you want to challenge the laws of physics, aesthetics and common sense. Sometimes you want to pull it all apart and throw it on the floor. And sometimes you want to read a book.

It is snowing yet again. But the forecast looks hopeful, with temperatures as high as 50 predicted for Boston by the end of the week. I know I should not complain, having spent ten days in the warm sun of the Caribbean, but I still do. Spring will come none too soon.

Have a good week!

Love,

Rebecca