Weekend Reading: The One Week Down Edition

Well, we made it through the first week. I haven't had time yet to read and fully process all of the executive orders that have come out this week. My first impression is that there is nothing surprising in them. This is what he said he would do. The ACLU and other groups will sue where they can. A plethora of groups will try to mitigate the damage. Many of us will hang our heads in shame that our country is doing these things. Others will celebrate. Still more will just not notice because it doesn't directly effect them.

So anyway, some links.

This essay from Adam Gopnik about Trump and Orwell's "1984" is searing to read. Whatever it is that the various people who voted for Trump and who are now enabling him want from him, they risk giving up something far more precious. The rest of us will try to defend our democracy. The terrible irony is that if we succeed (and I hope we do!) the people who have enabled this crisis will just shrug and tell us that there was no risk in the first place, and will feel justified in the bargain they made. But I guess I'll just have to learn to accept that.

Of course there is the chance that I am wrong, and that there is less risk than I think in the current situation. However, some of the issues that worry me most, such as increasing voter suppression, are not new and have been building for awhile. What is new is the lack of someone with power in the Federal government to try to keep them in check.

Speaking of voter suppression laws, Jason Kander had a good op-ed on the issue in the Washington Post.

Here is a nice summary of some remarks from Rachel Maddow about the state of politics and American government right now.

Adam Jentelson, a former aide to Harry Reid, also had an op-ed in the Washington Post. His was about the power the Democrats in the Senate have. I'm not sure what I want the Democrats in the Senate and House to do. I don't think the country is served by ever-escalated rounds of obstruction and partisanship. If this goes on, I think our system of government will eventually fall, and I suspect that will involve violence. I would very much rather we not go down that road. But I also don't think the country is served by Democrats allowing Republicans to obstruct with no consequences. That is also anti-democratic, and I think also sets us on a path to a confrontation.

So what should happen? I guess I think Democrats should obstruct on some key issues and just make angry speeches about others. Which issues are which? I don't know. We all have different priorities. I suspect it will come down to which ones voters yell at their representatives the most about. I don't know if Republicans really appreciate just how angry a lot of Democrats are right now. The anger is widespread, across many different demographics of Democratic voters. I hear it from fellow well-off middle-aged white ladies and from the college kids who staff my kids' after care. I hear it from people who are clearly not avid followers of politics (as evidenced by the number of things I've had to explain to them about how the system works). There is a lot of anger out there.

The anger also cuts across a lot of issues. People are mad about how Barack Obama was treated as president, and we're furious about the racist slurs on Michelle Obama we heard when it became clear that Melania Trump would be the next first lady. This is not just from people who are typically tuned in to racism. A lot of my fellow white working mothers really respect and look up to Michelle Obama. I am still angry about how they treated Merrick Garland, and I am far from alone in that. If Trump picks an extremely partisan judge to fill the open seat that should have been Garland's, there will be an uproar. Here's an article from a left-leaning court-watcher about three judges whose names have been floated as potential nominees, and which one he think should (and likely would) spark a big fight. Will Trump (or his advisers) have the sense to avoid that fight? Who knows.

One of the things Trump decided to do was issue an executive order halting the arrival of refugees. He did this on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was particularly galling. So while my Twitter feed was full of tweets for Remembrance Day, it was also full of reactions to his order. Here is a tweet from an account that is tweeting out the name of every passenger on the St. Louis, a ship of Jewish refugees we turned back in 1939, dooming them to death.

My name is Eva Dublon. The US turned me away at the border in 1939. I was murdered at Auschwitz pic.twitter.com/GGc6Vh5S42

— St. Louis Manifest (@Stl_Manifest) January 27, 2017

I am ashamed that we have once again let our fear of people who are different from us get the worst of us.

If you need some hope, this might do the trick (h/t @revanche): https://twitter.com/RevAGSL

"People have always stood up." Rev. Barber talks about hope in Trump's America. pic.twitter.com/IAnn5qq61D

— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 20, 2017

Or, go find photos of the Women's Marches to remind yourself of how many people are opposed to Trump. I retweeted a bunch the day of the march, but here is one that I find particularly inspiring:

The March in Haines, Alaska. Respect. pic.twitter.com/ezKpFmnT9C

— Patti Digh (@pattidigh) January 22, 2017

And I complained about getting rained on for a few minutes....

If you're new to paying attention to legislation, you might want to read this post about how to tell whether or not a horrible-sounding bill is something it is worth your time to worry about.

"Scientific curiosity" might be the key to dealing with partisan bubbles.

And there is a new group working to get scientists to run for office, and helping them if they decide to run.

I've been wondering what Evan McMullin would do next, beyond criticize Trump on Twitter. He has now launched a group to fight Trump from a center-right position. If you're opposed to Trump but not comfortable with the left-leaning groups, check it out.

How about some non-political stuff:

Diabetes might be an overlooked reason some Americans are dying younger.

Here's something to tide you over until I get around to writing my post about the FDA: Derek Lowe on why clinical trials fail (it is not regulations).

An 11 year old named Jordan Reeves invented a sparkle-shooting prosthetic arm for herself... and she's moving on to invent more things.

Calee Lee, who runs Xist Publishing (which published my two children's book and my first short ebook) has a new book out about reading the classics. Xist has started putting out nice editions of classic books. Yes, you can usually get the books for free, but as I can tell you from my experiences putting together the Annorlunda Books Taster Flights, the free editions are often poorly formatted and occasionally have scanning errors. I think it is worth paying a little to avoid that. In fact, I recently bought the Xist edition of the Anne of Green Gables series for Pumpkin's Kindle.

Speaking of books: this looks like a nice list of chapter books for kids.

Here is an interesting short documentary about Harris tweed.

And a bunny to end on:

pic.twitter.com/wV44bkjaYS

— うさぎ島の写真bot (@rabbit_isle_bot) January 22, 2017

Happy weekend, everyone.

Checking In

How is everyone doing?

I had plans to write a post about the FDA and drug discovery this week, in answer to a question. But I forgot that this week was lying brain and headaches week, so between that and the overabundance of news this week, it just didn't happen. I think I'll be able to do it next week, though.

There's a post by Mirah Curzer, called How To #StayOutraged Without Losing Your Mind, that has been circulating this week. It is worth a read if you're struggling with not being overwhelmed right now. I'm doing pretty well, but thinking I need to change my habits about Twitter use during the work day. I used to view it as a good short break, but that was when my timeline wasn't full of a mix of legitimately horrible things, people freaking out about said things, people freaking out about terrible things that haven't happened but might happen, people freaking out about things that are fairly normal transition things but that we don't normally notice, people yelling about what Democrats (or Republicans) MUST do now (as if anyone knows), and calls to action about all of the above. There is the occasional cute animal picture (thank God for @rabbit_isle_bot), happy personal news, or lighthearted thing, but mostly it feels like all panic, all the time.

And I don't really fault people for that, but it makes Twitter a bad way to take a break right now. So I'll need to change my habits.

So anyway, despite all of this, life is continuing. I was congratulating myself on making it through two colds in close succession around Christmas time without ending up at urgent care getting a breathing treatment, but my asthma has been really bad the last couple of weeks, so I guess I shouldn't congratulate myself yet.

Despite the asthma, I was able to go out for a run yesterday, on our first really nice sunny day in... I don't know... a week and a half? I know, we're spoiled. But it felt like a really long time. Tomorrow, I should get my regular rollerblade in, and I'm looking forward to it.

I wrote a piece about balancing household chores, inspired by the great missing rice meltdown I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I rather like it, but the editor I work with at Chronicle Vitae doesn't think it is a fit for them (I can see her point), so I'm trying to decide whether to go searching for another place to publish it for money and/or more exposure, or whether just to post it here. Opinions welcome in the comments.

I hosted my book club last night. We read Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon, which I didn't love, but ended up liking a lot better than I did early in the book. The characters kept making bad decisions (or at least what seemed like bad decisions to me), but as someone in my book club pointed out, that's a fairly accurate portrayal of life sometimes. Even when I was annoyed with the characters, Chabon's writing pulled me in, propelling me through each chapter. I definitely enjoyed the book, but it is not the first Chabon book I'd think to recommend if someone asked. That would probably be Gentlemen of the Road, although I suspect most people would go with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Next month, we're reading Stephen King's On Writing, which I'm excited about because Xykademiqz raves about it in an essay in Academaze, and I've been wanting to read it ever since I read that essay. And then in March, we're reading March, John Lewis' graphic novel, which I'm also quite excited about.

We all bring a dish to share to book club. I usually wimp out and do something lame like cheese and crackers. That is mostly because cooking isn't that fun for me right now. But this week, I decided that I may not really like to cook, but I like to bake, so I made a simple butter bundt cake. We had some of the leftovers tonight, and now I'm wondering why I don't make it more often. And if I did start making it (or cookies or pies) more often, would we all gain weight, or would we eat less other sweet stuff?

Speaking of baking, a couple of weekends ago, I finally relented to my kids' pleas to be allowed to have a lemonade stand. Except, it wasn't really lemonade weather, so we did a cookies and juice stand instead. The kids and I made chocolate chip cookies and I bought them some juice to sell. The cookies were a surprisingly big hit with our neighbors. We rarely see our neighbors out, but the stand did well, and Mr. Snarky, who was supervising while doing some gardening, met a bunch of new people, whose names he promptly forgot. Luckily, Pumpkin was there, too, and her memory is quite good. The kids want to do a stand again. I am not sure if (1) I want to make that many cookies, and (2) the stand will remain popular if it appears too often. So I've convinced the kids to wait awhile before we do it again.

And that's the news from here. It is time to start our bedtime routine, and then we'll see what tomorrow brings and how successfully I can ignore it so I can get some work done!

Weekend Reading: Thinking about the Future Edition

Well, it is done, and now we have a new President. May he show the good attributes his supporters see in him and the rest of us do not. And may the people around him and the folks in Congress have the courage to stand up to him when necessary, and hold him to his oath to uphold our Constitution.

If you'd like to, you can sign the WhiteHouse.gov petition to have him release his tax returns and sufficient information to show he is not in violation of the emoluments clause (spoiler: experts from both sides of the partisan divide agree he is in violation of the emoluments clause). Theoretically, if the petition gets 100,000 signatures, the White House "has" to respond. I expect either no response or an evasive and untruthful one. But I still signed the thing.

In things more likely to work: the ACLU has filed its first Freedom of Information Act petition on the new presidency, seeking information about conflicts of interest.

And President Obama resumed tweeting at his old Twitter handle (@BarackObama) and launched a new website and foundation that is looking for our ideas.

I stayed true to my plans and ignored the inauguration while it was happening. I checked in at lunch and discovered it was as grim and divisive as I expected. I won't waste my time on Trump's speech, because as Matt Yglesias says, he lies so much and so shamelessly that his words are meaningless, and the only way to judge him is by his actions.

But from what I gathered, his speech was very similar to his convention speech and people like me and especially people like my Muslim friends are not included in the America to which he directed his remarks. As people get angry about protesters saying he is "not my President" I hope they can take a moment to reflect that he himself has made it clear that he does not see all of us as legitimate parts of his version of America. (For the record, I will not be protesting with the slogan "not my President." My slogan, if I have one is "Not one step back," which I take from the North Carolina Moral Mondays.)

Along those lines, I've been thinking about Ezra Klein's piece contrasting Obamaism and Trumpism all day.  I find it profoundly depressing.

On a more positive note, here is Matt Yglesias again, this time writing in support of inclusive politics as the only way to actually have a great country.

And here is Yascha Mounk's opinion on what the best case scenario for the next four years is. I agree that if this period somehow leads the Republican party to jettison the Southern strategy for good, stop with the racist dog whistles, and build a truly inclusive conservative party, that would be a very good thing. I wouldn't agree with them, but at least I could respect them. One of the silver linings in this last year or so has been seeing some strongly anti-racist voices rise on the right. So far, none of them have any real power, but I would welcome it if that changed.

That change, though, is going to have to come from within the party (or within a conservative movement that forms a different party). There is too much tendency to blame the racist strategy of the current Republican party on Democrats, as if we are somehow making them do it by holding on to our own inclusive principles. That is infuriating and wrong, and until the Republicans own their own responsibility for the fact that people of color overwhelmingly do not want to vote for them, they will not change and our entire country will suffer for it. I don't know what I can do to fix that from the outside. My current opinion is that I can try to make them loose more elections, until maybe that forces some honest introspection on race among more of their leaders.

I like Josh Marshall's thoughts on entering the Trump era. I hope I have the courage to act in a way that will make my children proud in future years.

There's a lot of Matt Yglesias in this post, but his comments here about how the US is different from Russia before the rise of Putin are good. (Click through to read the entire thread.)

I am pro-hysteria on general principles, but it is worth saying that the United States of America is not Russia. https://t.co/As33kJZFuX

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 20, 2017

Here's something else that gives me hope: the police chief in Whitefish, Montana standing up for the Jews in his community.

And I've loved seeing all the posts about people heading to DC for the Women's March tomorrow and being on planes and trains full of women.

The Amtrak train from NYC to DC is 90% women. I've never seen anything like this.

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) January 20, 2017

Do you know what its like to be on a plane completely full of fired-up women? This is like drugs. Incred. (Shoutout to the lone dude in 26C)

— ann friedman (@annfriedman) January 20, 2017

The rest stops down 95 are PACKED with exuberant women in pink hats. We're coming for you, DC! #WomensMarch

— Liz Gumbinner (@Mom101) January 20, 2017

Moving on...

The names being floated as possible FDA heads aren't giving me a lot of comfort. At the request of a reader, I have a post about the drug discovery industry coming. But if you want to know why I am against bringing libertarianism to the FDA, my little Twitter rant from last night summarizes it (again, click through to read the whole thread):

As a scientist who has worked in drug discovery for >15 yrs I don't want to have to judge drug efficacy as a consumer. I AM NOT QUALIFIED. https://t.co/owSS0PAdkA

— Wandering Scientist (@wandsci) January 20, 2017

If you're a Democrat looking ahead to 2018 and wanting to be strategic about where to send your money, this data set from DailyKos will help you find Clinton-voting districts with Republican reps.

One of those districts is just north of me: CA 49. I've already donated to Doug Applegate, who is running again against Darrell Issa.

Looking even further north, here is a story from San Pedro about a lottery for dockworker jobs. I remember reading about this in 2004, too.

I don't have anything fun to end on, but here's Let American Be America Again, a Langston Hughes poem for today, a sort of answer to Trump's inauguration address if you will. I find the ending stanzas particularly relevant today:

"O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!"

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad:

"Trump gives me outbreaks of sweat", his German translator says. "He is so contradictory that people think the translator talks rubbish."

— Laura Schneider (@alauraschneider) January 20, 2017

And here is something happy: a nice new review of Academaze.

And of course, here's a bunny:

pic.twitter.com/fJ9LNBFOPl

— うさぎ島の写真bot (@rabbit_isle_bot) January 20, 2017

Happy weekend, everyone, and safe marching to all those who are heading out to march tomorrow!

Facing Tomorrow

So, here we are. Tomorrow, we inaugurate a new president and embark on whatever comes next. I am not planning to watch. In fact, I think I'll close out of Twitter and stay away from the news and try to just focus on doing some work. I'd thought I might go for a walk on the beach and ignore the rest of the world for awhile, but it is going to rain. So my plan is to stay in and work and try to get a lot done so that I can take the weekend mostly off, even though I went for a rollerblade yesterday (I usually "buy" my weekday rollerblading time with some Sunday morning work time).

Anyway, I do not want to watch the inauguration. After spending far too much time on the fence about it, I finally decided to go to the San Diego Women's March on Saturday. It may rain, but right now the forecast shows Saturday as a break in the rain. So we'll see if I get soaked or not. Either way, I'm going. I have never protested or marched before. I don't really like crowds, which was the reason I spent so much time on the fence about this. Mr. Snarky asked me why I'm going, and I said I just had to go to show that I am not OK with this.

I am also hoping to gather back up the shreds of my faith in my country.

I have been experiencing an intense desire to just leave. I couldn't really explain it. I love my life here in San Diego, and don't want to move farther away from my extended family. Rationally, I think my family will make it through the next four (or God help us, eight) years OK, barring anything truly catastrophic like a nuclear war. I really, truly believe it is my duty to stay here and try to make this right, because I can do so with relative safety. Besides, this is my country, too, so why should I let a bully like our soon-to-be President force me out?

And yet, I keep thinking about leaving. Would we sell our house or rent it out? (Probably sell.) What would I do in New Zealand? (Probably try for a project management job.) How would I respond to the inevitable grief Americans abroad are going to get for the next four (or God help us, eight) years? (Probably cry a lot.) How would I help my kids adjust? (They'd probably adjust just fine.)

I couldn't really figure out why I was doing that, but today, I think I cracked it. I saw this thread from Toronto Star reporter David Dale, in which he talked to Trump supporters who are at the inauguration. Like many people, I read their words and wondered if we were living in the same reality. And then I remembered the interview one of the incoming administration people gave about why Kanye West wasn't asked to play at the inauguration. Their response was so revealing. They put together an event in which the entertainment was "typically and traditionally American," you see. And apparently, that's not Kanye West.

And then I thought back to that set of interviews with Trump voters, and the one young woman who said she didn't vote for Hillary Clinton because Clinton talked about Black Lives Matter protesters, and DREAMers, but not "regular" people like her. (Nevermind that Clinton did talk about white working class people, too, even had policy proposals to help them, but that didn't get reported on much. It wasn't newsworthy, I guess. Presidential candidates are just assumed to talk about the white working class. It is news when they acknowledge the other people struggling in the country.)

I realized: what is making me want to flee is this careless, thoughtless assumption that only white people are "regular Americans." It is the casual dismissal of so many of my friends, and my kids' friends. It is the treatment of the last eight years—which felt like welcome progress to me—as an aberration.

I didn't feel like I'd lost my country on the day after the election. I figured I'd always known that there was a lot of racism and sexism here, and that we had more work to do to overcome it.

But as I read attempt after attempt to make me understand Trump voters, and saw repeated examples of them just not even acknowledging that there are "regular Americans" who don't look and think like them, my hold on my country seemed to slip. As I read successive think pieces about rural and small town America that failed to recognize that there are people of color who live in rural areas and small towns, my grasp slipped further. And when I saw people tell me I should "give Trump a chance" even after he'd appointed a white supremacist as a key adviser, I think I lost touch altogether. Someone who wants advice on how to govern this country from a white supremacist is not someone who has any chances left with me.

The country I love is diverse and while still working towards really embracing that, at least aware of that diversity and the strength it can bring. It is trying to get to a place that celebrates Americans of all backgrounds and creeds. It fails in that goal often, but at least keeps trying. But I realized reading all this post-election coverage that a lot of people don't even know my country exists. They think America is their country, and theirs alone, and everyone else is an illegitimate interloper. And that broke my heart.

I have read several comments from people of color about how this alienation I am feeling is something they have long felt and already had to work through. I think that is a fair criticism. I have never before had to confront so directly the chasm between the country in my heart and the country out there in the real world. I knew the gap was there, but thought we were making our way across that gap. Now, it feels like we've turned around and are headed the other way.

Now that I am forced to confront the gap, I know I must learn how to make peace with it, so that I can work to bridge that gap and continue to advance towards a more perfect union.

I am determined to do this work, because I really want to stay. I know that the country in my heart is the country in the hearts of lots of other Americans, too. In fact, based on the popular vote numbers, it is probably safe to assume that there are more Americans who want a country like the one in my heart than not.

So I guess I am also going to the march to remind myself that my country is still here, and worth fighting for. We're all "regular Americans" and someday, if we work at it, maybe we'll all recognize that fact.

Family Fun List 2017

One year, on New Year's Eve, I had a random idea. I decided we should have a "family fun list" for the next year, and we should write it as part of our family New Year's Eve celebrations. The kids and Mr. Snarky went along, and it was a big success, so much so that last year, when Pumpkin was asked to write about a family tradition in school, this is the one she picked. It may be my best parenting idea ever.

If you want to follow the entire history of the Family Fun List, you can click back one year at a time, starting with last year's list. The short version is: each family member gets to pick three things to put on the list. That gives us twelve things, and we try to do roughly one per month. Last year, we had a bonus item that we all agreed on, and this year that morphed into an item that we all agree on, but suggested by the person who had the fewest of their items done in the previous year. Because, yeah, we've never made it through the entire list. 

We came close last year, though! We just fell one item short. Here are the details:

• Make a LEGO city in our living room (Petunia) DONE, in January.
• Walk around the neighborhood looking at Christmas decorations (Pumpkin) DONE, in December.
• Visit the Friendship Park at the border (Mr. Snarky) DONE 
• Ride a surrey bike (me) DONE, but there was so much whining that I no longer consider this fun and did not put it on the list this year, for the first time since the start of the list.
• Get ice cream from an ice cream truck (Petunia) DONE
• Go climbing at Solid Rock (Pumpkin) NOT DONE. We kept thinking we'd do it on a rainy weekend, and it didn't rain. Then we thought we'd squeeze it in before heading over to AZ for Christmas, but I got sick.
• Go on a real train ride (Mr. Snarky) DONE. We took the Amtrak train up to San Juan Capistrano and had a very nice day.
• Go out to brunch (me) DONE. We had brunch at one of the hotels on the bay, and it was very nice.
• Go the train restaurant (Petunia- this is The Station, in South Park) DONE.
• Have a picnic at a park (Pumpkin) DONE. I think we did this for Petunia's birthday, actually.
• Go get a doughnut at a doughnut shop that isn't Krispy Kreme (Mr. Snarky wants us to try some new doughnuts, apparently) DONE. I am the only one in my family who doesn't love doughnuts and this means that every year someone puts something about doughnuts on this list.
• Visit a botanical garden (me) DONE.
• Bonus: Go to Boomers  DONE

I usually link to the posts I wrote about our fun things, but I didn't write any last year. I'll try to do better this year!

Here are some tweets from the fun list outings:

The kids' favorite part of the San Diego Botanic Gardens is never the plants:

Riding dinosaurs at the botanic gardens. pic.twitter.com/QO51MbbILu

— Wandering Scientist (@wandsci) April 24, 2016

The kids ran part of the way home from the doughnut shop outing:

My feed's been a downer today. So, here's a picture of my kids running a race on our way home from getting doughnuts pic.twitter.com/ZMxk7fL5Ng

— Wandering Scientist (@wandsci) May 22, 2016

The pit of corn was on the San Juan Capistrano trip. There  is a petting zoo near the train station, and they also had a pit of corn.

Current status: sitting in a pit of corn. pic.twitter.com/s4rDJQX6lm

— Wandering Scientist (@wandsci) November 23, 2016

I can't believe I didn't write up a post about visiting the Friendship Park, so I'll put some pictures here. 

The beach on the US side is very empty! This is a popular place to go for a horse ride on the beach in San Diego county. There are stables nearby where you can rent time on a horse.

Here is the "friendship" part of the Friendship Park. Families and friends separated by the border can meet here and talk. 

Only a small number of people are allowed in past this first fence on the US side at a time.  The inner fence is where the people get to meet and talk. I hear that it used to just be a chain link fence. Now it is a tall, fairly solid fence. You can see through it, but you can't touch through it. We didn't spend long in the inner area, because there were people waiting to talk to people on the other side, and we didn't want to delay them.

This is the border meeting the sea.

On the Mexican side, there is an art project where part of the fence is painted so that it disappears. Someday, I want to go see that.

This is the border headed east.

For readers who have never been to the US-Mexico border, I'll mention that this is some of the more hospitable terrain. Inland from San Diego, it gets very rugged in places. If Trump really does build a big wall, it won't be cheap. But that is politics and for another post.

Now, on to this year's list:

• Make a LEGO city (Petunia)
• Walk around our neighborhood looking at Christmas lights (Pumpkin)
• Go to Mexico (Mr. Snarky)
• Try a new restaurant (me)
• Invite [one of her friends and her family] to our local pizza place for dinner (Petunia)
• Go to a botanical garden (Pumpkin)
• Go to Dave and Buster's (Mr. Snarky)
• Go to Legoland (Me)
• Have an art competition, with [my sister] to judge (Petunia)
• Paint our own ceramics at the paint-your-own ceramics place in Liberty Station (Pumpkin)
• Go on a hike up a mountain (Mr. Snarky)
• Take a bike ride along the river (Me)
• Bonus: Art, Cuddles, and Doughnuts Day (It is our own holiday that the kids just invented. They saw a TV show in which the characters tried to invent a holiday... and this was their idea.)

As you can see, there are some favorites that were repeated onto this year's list. I put Legoland on the list because my kids are approaching the age where they won't enjoy it as much and I want to get at least one more visit in. We may be able to time it during a promotion where we can get two visits for the price of one, and then we'll go twice. I can always convince Mr. Snarky to go to Legoland. The only downside is that he usually buys himself a big set when we go.

So, here's to us having fun in 2017. Maybe this is the year we'll get through the list!