Family Hour: Uncle Wiggily

If I start dinner by 5:00 (which means we haven't had any afternoon playdates or visitors, or gone anywhere too fun for too long after school, and we don't plan to go anywhere fun in the evening), and I sit down with the girls to eat by 6:00 (which means they're not too involved in play to pitch a fit about dinnertime, and they haven't been too involved in helping me make dinner to delay its production, and they haven't wooed me away from dinner prep to read stories or help with games so that dinner is burned), and Matt can get home to join us by at least 6:30 (he generally nukes a chicken breast to add to my vegetarian dinners, and he also eats REALLY slowly, and the girls also finish first and then pester the life out of him because they're so excited to see him), we generally have time for an hour or so of doing something all together as a family starting at around 7:00 (if it doesn't take too long to straighten out a play area, and if the girls don't have a tantrum about helping to clean up after dinner, and if they're not already totally exhausted from their day and clearly ready for bed):
Uncle Wiggily is a favorite choice. Willow has mastered the game by now and just enjoys playing it, but Syd still has a lot to explore in terms of number recognition and turn-taking and moving the piece one hop per number and stopping when you've reached that number, etc.:

And at around 8:00, we all write where we've left off on a sticker so we can start there again the next time, and then we have teeth-brushing, pajamas, a chapter of Bambi, an episode of Meerkat Manor, some streaming Pandora radio in the dark, and then it's just the dad and me.

We're exhausted, of course.