Holiday Movie Night

One of our recent special family activities is "Friday Movie Night." It's a super fun activity and since we don't often watch movies at home, we make a HUGE deal of it. Jaden gets to pick the movie (and when Elijah's a little bit older, he will get to pick one too). Then we go to the store to get lots of fun treats, which is also a HUGE deal because (almost) nothing is off limits. Jaden gets to pick out all of the fun treats that are normally not 'allowed' at our house, which makes it an extra special event. And I have to admit that Sam and I probably take advantage of that more than Jaden does. For example, this time I insisted on the Christmas tree Little Debbie cakes; all Jaden wanted was a box of Triscuit crackers. Bue he later appreciated my choice (and so did I :o). The movie that Jaden picked was Dora's Christmas something or other, which seemed to me like it was never going to end...but he loved it, which is all that matters. It was wonderful family time spent together! And normally movie night is something that is reserved just for Jaden and mommy and daddy (for now, anyway), since he is older and we feel it important that he get that special time by himself with just us. But this time was Elijah's first time getting to be a part of it (for about 15 minutes, before his bedtime), upon request of his big brother, who really wanted Elijah to watch with him. So it was very sweet... literally --haha...

Monday Movie Night

As a special summer activity for Jaden, and just to spend some nice family time together, we decided to have a movie night once a week (or as often as possible). Our plan was to do it last Friday, however things always seem to come up (luckily we hadn't mentioned our plan to him yet), so we did it tonight instead. Jaden and I took a trip to Blockbuster to rent a movie. When we got there, he said "This isn't the movie, mom." I guess he thought we were going to the movie theater, like we had done once before. But once we got inside, he was sold. He went straight for the candy section; I had promised him he could have a special treat for our movie night. I convinced him to help me pick a movie first, otherwise I would have to listen to "open, mom!" the whole rest of the time.

I was planning on them having some of the Discovery channel's Planet Earth movies to rent because Jaden loved the animals on the movie Earth when we saw it. Unfortunately they didn't, but one of the associates recommended Disney's Sacred Planet, which she thought would be similar. I also let Jaden pick a movie and we would see which one kept his attention the longest. First he picked a Dora video, then changed his mind and picked Madagascar II. Then he got to pick a candy, changed his mind a couple hundred times, and finally settled on a bag of M&M's. We even splurged and got a bag of popcorn...I mean real popcorn. Not our usual no butter, no flavor kind; we go the good stuff...EXTRA butter!

When we got to the check out, much to my surprise, I found out that ALL of the movies are $.99 every Monday (even new releases). We left our stuff at the register and I was easily convinced to go look for one more. I know darn well I'll never watch it, but you can't beat $.99! Meanwhile, Jaden thinks the sales associate took his candy so he kept saying "I want my candy back!" as we went through the "new release" section to pick one more movie.

Finally, after too many movie and candy choices, along with a new account application (apparrently it's been a loooong time since we've rented a movie), we finally made it home for our movie night! And not even five minutes into his Madagascar movie, Jaden was ready to watch the other movie. And once again, he loved seeing all of the different animals (and even bugs this time) in Sacred Planet. I felt like we were back at the movie theater watching Earth, complete with Jaden's ten thousand questions, his quiet movie "whisper"...haha, and popcorn all over the floor.