How did you spend Earth Hour?

Saturday, March 27th was the World Wildlife Fund's designated Earth Hour - one whole hour,

asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Wikipedia

From 8:30-9:30 CST, we went lights out here in Plainfield and possibly found out more about each other in one hour than in a whole week.

Let me set the scene - we were at my parents house, or Grandma and Bubba's, to the kids. Mom made a wonderful dinner and we were invited to spend some time over there (lol - that makes us sound so formal, actually, we mainly invite ourselves over and to be honest, we are welcome anytime).

When 8:30 rolled around, we turned out the lights and the TV (my dad and my son were watching game shows - how cute!), and lit some candles. Then, silence.  Finally, Ana started to talk about her trip to Washington DC a few weeks back and of all the things she saw. This led to a discussion about the Vietnam War Memorial and Matt started to ask his Bubba about what he did during the war (he was a machinist and worked with the machine's that purified the water on the ship). Matthew declared that what Bubba did was probably the most important job on the ship. Can you see the glow of pride? Matt also decided he'd better ask his Great Uncles what their jobs were in the Army when he sees them next. Funny, I never thought to ask my Dad these things.

During this time, Ana and her Grandma talked. Ana said she wished we could do this more often, it was so relaxing. Then, Ana lay down on her Grandma's lap and fell asleep, giving Matt a chance to be a star.

Matthew demonstrated his new whistling skills for us (especially for Bubba, since he's a master whistler...if there ever was such a title, he'd have it), found out that my Dad only likes peanut butter, but not jelly sandwiches ("That's where I get that from!" exclaimed Matt), and showed us all of his karate moves (he's getting his promotion to yellow belt this coming Saturday). Matt also demonstrated his self defense skills....on me! He said, "Don't worry, Mom, I know how to be gentle and I won't really hurt you."

He didn't hurt me and neither did turning out the lights and turning off the TV. On April 2nd, we are going Internet Candy/Junk Food free for the month of April. I'll share what I mean by that in a future post.

Have a lovely week, and remember, it doesn't have to be "Earth Hour" to turn off the lights .....