The Adventure Begins

Since the time my son (Ben) heard there was going to be a Spiderman 3, he has been tracking its progress and release date.

As the date crept closer, it was time to find the best theater for such a momentous event. After many, many phone calls the Alamo Drafthouse was chosen as his top pick.

This is a very important decision. As a mom of a movie lover I have come to truly appreciate a theater that will entertain you for three to six hours before the start time of an opening picture.
For you non-Austinites, the Alamo is a restaurant/movie theater that is known for its pre-movie shorts. Most of them I wouldn't even think of taking my kids to, but for this they were showing the old Spiderman cartoon and - my kids loved this - in the opening credits it boasted the fact that it was IN COLOR!
Another fun element to the theater is that if you would like to order food, you write what you want on a paper and stand it up on the table in front of you for the waitress to pick up. (This is an important fact as you read on.)

Over the past week:
At least several times a day Ben would give us the countdown for the start time, including what he would like to order to eat, and when in the movie he wanted to write it on the paper for the waitress to pick up. It's a science really. We're holding out that there is a scholarship fund somewhere for students with this talent.

The Big Day:
Ben called the theater at six to find out the best time to line up. They said it shouldn't be bad since we already bought our tickets and an hour or so is all we should need. This seemed very daring to the boys, who wanted to be there around nine. Despite their overzealous excitement, we decided to throw caution to the wind and leave at ten for the midnight showing.

We carefully chose our seats. Wrote out our food order and held on to it until just the perfect time (which we figured to be about five minutes before the movie started).
It was a lot of fun. We watched shorts on spider specialists giving us the low down on the creepy crawlies. They showed international versions of spidey, and those old cartoons - which were to fun to remember! I sat bouncing in my seat and singing the song, "Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can. Can he swing on a thread? Take a look over head..." as my son tried to hide behind his menu and pretend he didn't know me.
OH, c'mon I know you're singing it now too!

Anyway, it's now five minutes before. We place our order up on the table and take our last run to the bathroom - so as not to be interrupted.
Finally, the lights go down, the previews start.... and stop.

Yes, that's right, the projectors busted... or something.

The managers came out about every fifteen minutes to tell us that it would be another five minutes or so and they've figured out the problem.
Some people left after a half an hour, but not us. I drank caffeine after nine, I was in for the long haul.

I told my boys that if we don't get home until four, there would be no school the next day. Suddenly, it didn't matter how long the wait was.

Finally, six free sodas and an hour later, the movie begins.
We didn't ask for freebies, they just started giving them out. Now, I'm really awake.

The movie was actually pretty good. Not a lot of bad language or awkward scenes. Lots of fighting, but these were pretty bad guys, right?

Several good points to the evening:
Lots of laughs
Smiles
Good memories
Free soda
We now know what the Japanese Spiderman looks like - Spiderman, who knew?
We pulled in at 3:50, but that's close enough - no school!

Another plus:
They gave us free movie passes and the third edition of Pirates comes out in two weeks! Guess where we'll be?

My favorite Stupid Video

I was telling a friend about this video last weekend. Sadly, this brings me to tears from lauging so hard. Watch the window on the right side.

A little note (before you think I'm not a compassionate person), I've done this myself before, so it's ok to laugh. Go ahead... you know you want to...






It's the little things in life that amuse me.

Lovely...

Have you seen this?

Take you for who you are...

Just recently ran across this. It really struck me as to who we are today as opposed to who we were made to be. We weren't made to be alone, yet (at face value) we want to be seen as more than capable to stand that way... but... deep inside... we are all hungry, even starving because alone is not how we were created to be...

You have to watch the whole thing, it's really awesome.
Don't forget to turn the sound on.

Take care...

Life is precious, Life is sweet...

I have started today's post several times. For the first ten minutes I typed furiously at the keyboard working in one direction and then finding another to explore. Next, I read, reread, and finally deleted it all. There are many things I wanted to say, but none really seem to matter right now.

I think I'll just leave with this one thought. Through the last six + weeks we've watched some friends of ours walk through personal tragedies and yet, I still seem to let the little things get to me in my own life.

My prayer for myself, my family and for yours is that we let the little things go. Speak the truth in love, be gracious in all things, quick to listen and slow to speak. Settle little issues before they are to big to see over them and never settle for "just enough". Above all cling close to God...

Take care...