Adventure at Twilight

So after my last post I have decided to accept that my life is an open book blog and everything is fair game. That being said, I want it to be known that I don't have to make this stuff up. Its all real. I seem to attract the unusual. Its just me. Or maybe it's the situations that I put myself in. Take last night for example.

I've made it pretty clear that I love the Twilight book series and I really, really wanted to see the movie. The problem is that I didn't know anyone else who wanted to see it too. I hate to go to movies alone but I was prepared to do just that. I wanted to see this movie within 24 hours of its release. I contemplated going on Friday afternoon while the babies napped and let Trace watch them after his class.

When I went online to see the show times and prepurchase my tickets I noticed that the theater was showing Twilight at 12:01. Hmmm.... I've done the midnight thing before with the last Harry Potter book. All I needed was my partner in crime. My biggest problem was that this was NOT his kind of movie. But lucky for me I had 2 things going for me:

1) Trace thinks unusual field trips like this are "interesting"
and 2) It was after midnight and he didn't want his mommy out alone that late.

He good naturedly agreed, Ross committed to sleeping on the second floor while I was gone and I bought the tickets the day before. It was all falling into place.

Last night was dubbed the Coldest Night of the Year on the 10:00 news and not knowing if we would be doing any waiting outside I dressed appropriately. But we showed up and got right in. In fact, as we handed out tickets to the theater employee at 11:35 p.m. she told us all the theaters were open and we could sit in any one we chose. We decided to go to the theater our tickets were for: Theater 2.

We went in and it was packed. Half the first row was elderly women, and I mean ELDERLY women. One woman had to be at least 80 years old! Maybe she knew Edward (the central vampire character) from her youth, who knows, but I was a bit surprised. Trace, of course, noticed the multitude of teenage girls who were already screaming. There really weren't any seats open so we decided to go to the theater next to it. Theater 1

Theater 1 was surprisingly empty. That should have been our first clue. (This is called foreshadowing.) But it was a much smaller theater and the doors were closed while the others were open. There was woman and about a 7 year old boy and that was it. We watched pre previews and talked the entire time wondering why no one else was coming in. Right before the official previews began two 20 something guys walked in. This was weird.

A (bad) picture of Trace and I waiting for our movie to start. Yes this is what I look like when I applied my makeup at 7:30 am and it is now 11:55 pm with no touch ups.

The previews started and they were all kid movies and then what appeared to be the feature movie started.

"Is this a Disney movie?" Trace asked as the Disney intro is shown.

"No. This is weird."

Next thing we know an animated movie is showing about a little white dog and a girl who's father is kidnapped.

"Uh, I don't think this is it."

"No kidding??? Go check and see what's going on." I told Trace. He was closest to the aisle.

He disappeared and then reappeared at the steps waving for me to come out. Turns out that out of 20 theaters in the entire place we picked the one and only one that was showing Bolt. Who in their right mind would see a cartoon at midnight?

I was ticked. If I missed even one millisecond of this movie....

Trace led us to the theater across the hallway and we found 2 seats at the very edge against the wall. Lucky for me the movie hadn't started yet but the screaming had.

The movie started and the next 2 hours were spent with Trace smirking and asking me if this or that was in the book. There was lots of clapping and cheering at parts MUCH to Trace's amusement. When the credits started rolling Trace asked "Can we go now?" I dressed for the cold and we made our way out of the theater. Right in front of us were a couple of teenage girls talking and one was saying "I want to see it again tomorrow when I can focus."

Trace and I turned to each other and laughed. Heaven only knows why she couldn't focus the first time.

As we walked to the car Trace announced "I wish I had stayed in the dog movie."

"Yeah, but it was a great adventure."

And that it was.

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I'm withholding my "review" of this movie until others have seen it. I'm eager to hear their reactions.

Oh, and I think Trace will be posting as a guest poster about our experience. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Movie Ticket Giveaway!

In anticipation of the premiere of the Twilight movie next week I am giving away 2 free movie tickets!
Two tickets to AMC theaters! The back of the coupons say they are also good at Loews theatres, Cineplex Odeon theatres, Magic Johnson theatres and Star theatres excluding Canadian theatres (sorry Canadians!) They are valid for special engagements and they are good 7 days a week.

So, what do you have to do to win these tickets? Its so easy-- leave me comment and tell me how you plan to use them. Will you go on a date night? Will you take your kids instead? Will you have a Girls Night Out? What movie do you want to see? You don't have to see Twilight-- I don't care what you see. Just let me live vicariously through you 'cause we will all know that the movie experience is a bit difficult for me right now!

I'll take comments until Sunday night 6:00 pm CST. That way I can get the tickets in the mail in time for you to use them next weekend. Oh, and if you're a previous winner of a giveaway, you're welcome to enter too!

Good luck!

Happy **I Need a Drink** Halloween

Let's just start this off by saying that our Halloween evening didn't start out full of sunshine and happiness. This was Day Two of the fall school conference, meaning second day in a row of no school. I love my children dearly but for some reason lately they seem to feel my existence is purely to entertain, clothe, feed, pick up after and cater to their whims. So when it was time to start getting my children dressed and ready for our neighborhood chili dinner prior to trick-or-treating, I was already tired, drained and a bit miffed. I told them it wasn't nice to ME to make me a mean crabby mom. Yeah, I know, we make our own happiness, yada, yada, yada.

But we all got dressed, Julia's hair straightened, corn bread made and put into bowls, gathered TWO cameras and headed on over at 5:00. It was a beautiful day here; warm and sunny so my mood couldn't help but get better.

Here is Emma dressed as a fairy. She is not a head band kind of girl and we have caught her in the act of starting to remove the offending accessory.

Ryan was knight. He wasn't sure he liked this costume until he realized that he got to carry around Julia's pirate sword. My goal had been to have Ryan and Emma's costumes match some how. I never came up with anything brilliant (I save my brilliance for my blog-- LOL!!!) but a knight and fairy go well together... I think.

Jenna was so busy running around with her friend Kendall that I realized after I uploaded my pictures that I never got a full shot of her costume. UGH! But here's a picture of her running off. She's in the light pink leotard and tights and cream colored skirt. She was an ice skater.

Julia was supposed to be a pirate. She even had TWO costumes to chose from. But a pirate is not a girly girl costume so she spent the day coming up with a new costume. I told her I wouldn't spend one dime more, that she had to find things around the house. She ended up going as a prom queen. You'll see a better shot of her in a minute. I just love this photo of her with Emma.

The girls also decided that I needed to dress up as well. I'm sure that you don't find it hard to believe that I do dress up for Halloween. I just didn't have a plan for this year so the girls raided my closet and decided that I needed to go as a super model. They found a fancy dress they wanted me to wear along with a pair of 3 inch heels. For some reason I didn't feel confident in pulling the super model look off. The good news was that the dress actually fit!!!

So I played it totally ultra boring and safe this year. First I told them I was a best selling author. Later I told them I was Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series. I had to go with Stephenie rather than Kay Bratt, my other favorite author, because Kay is blond and I am obviously not. I thought the sun glasses really helped pull it all together.

I find our block parties or even hanging outside to sometimes be somewhat stressful. Emma still doesn't walk well so she's crawling around scuffing her shoes and wearing holes in her pants. Tonight was no exception. I spent pre-dinner chasing her around, keeping her from putting various objects on the ground into her mouth and watching as she climbed all over a children's table. Then it was time to eat.

Let me ask you, have you ever tried to get food for 3 small children while holding a baby on your hip who grabs everything in reach. Throw in a 5 year old girl who thinks that she can eat only a handful of chips for dinner and 2 year old who only wanted a hot dog. But it only got better.

Jenna sat at this table.

Jenna sat on the other side of the driveway with Kendall.

Julia sat in a chair in the drive way.

And Ryan sat at another table closer to Emma. I got to run from child to child, the 3 younger children anyway, checking on them and making sure they weren't climbing on the table (Emma), eating other people's food off their plate (Emma and Ryan) and that they were actually eating their food (Jenna.) You would think that with all that running around that I wouldn't get a chance to eat but never fear. I ate plenty. I have to tell you that at one point as I was running around I thought to myself "Why am I stressing myself out like this?" but the happy looks on those children's faces made it pretty clear why I did it. They were happy and making happy memories. I was burning an extra 50 calories and inching myself closer to high blood pressure.

Then it was time for Trick-or-Treating.

I took the Big Boy camera back home and got the stroller so I didn't have to carry Emma around. I also needed to retrieve the trick-or-treat buckets and we were off.

We ended up going around with Kendall, much to Jenna's delight. We started out with most of the kids on the cul-de-sac but Ryan was pretty slow and soon the bigger kids took off without us.

Ryan really had no clue what all of this was about but it only took him one house to figure out that it was a good thing. Smart boy.

We walked around a couple of streets. Ryan was impossibly slow, Emma was getting restless in the stroller and at one point I turned to Kendall's dad and told him I had the title of this post already figured out. Happy ** I Need a Drink** Halloween It was no surprise that by the time we got close to our street Kendall's dad offered to let Jenna continue on with them so we could go home. Julia ran on home to turn on the porch light and pass out candy while I took the babies to a couple of other houses on our street. At the last house my neighbor opened the door and and asked me if I wanted to come in and have a drink. She told me that I looked like I needed one. Was it that obvious?

I guess Halloween wishes do come true.



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Edited Saturday morning at 9:30: I did want to add that the children were oblivious to my stress. They just had a good time. I was unhappy the I wasn't having a good time.