If it was up to me, we’d be celebrating National Cheese Lovers Day with a table full of different varieties of cheese. Brie, Cheddar, Edam, Feta, Goat Cheese, Gouda, Manchego, Mozzarella, Pepper Jack, Provolone, Swiss. You get the picture.

But when I mentioned National Cheese Lovers Day to the kids, they weren’t quite as enthusiastic. One kid even said, “I don’t like cheese and I don’t like lovers.”

But they did want macaroni & cheese so we had that for dinner, along with my husband’s  famous (in our circles) Caesar Salad. (Click here for the recipe.)

It’s also Penguin Awareness Day.

Our Medley Moments

The older boys were watching a hockey game (Go Coyotes!) so me and the youngest watched a penguin show on Netflix: “Penguins: Spy in the Huddle.” It was pretty incredible – it’s a BBC nature show that includes robotic penguins with cameras in their eyes (and there was a “rock” cam, too, as well as an “egg” cam), which allowed for close-ups of the penguins as these robots travel with the penguins. The show we watched was called “The Journey” and followed the regal Emperor penguins in Antarctica; rockhoppers who lay their eggs on giant cliffs; and the tropical Humboldts in Peru.

Here’s a synopsis:

Emperor penguins cross a treacherous frozen sea to reach their breeding grounds, and on the way one becomes lost in a blizzard. Once there, the females flipper-flight over the males and those that succeed waddle-walk with their partners. They must lay their eggs without touching the ice, but it is the males that face the greatest challenge – overwintering alone in the coldest place on earth.

Rockhoppers brave the world’s stormiest seas, only to come ashore and face a daunting assault up a 300-foot cliff, hopping most of the way up. Having laid their eggs, these plucky birds face airborne attacks from skuas and vultures.

Humboldts are a strange tropical penguin that have rarely been filmed. To reach their desert nests they negotiate 20,000 predatory sea lions, dodge vampire bats and battle half a million sharp-beaked seabirds.

The hard work for all the penguins finally pays off when their tiny, vulnerable chicks begin to hatch.

Their journey is pretty incredible.

And, as I mentioned above, we had Caesar Salad and macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Maybe next year it will look more like this (along with Caesar salad):

 

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