Summer Vacation Movie Marathon Weekend

You know your kids are done with summer vacation when...

...you find them in their bedroom playing "school" and ES is reading a book to YB.

That was a first for us.

Even so, they're going to seriously go into J & M withdrawal when school starts. They've been spending all day every day playing with J & M from the house across the street. Whenever we want to go run and errand somewhere (like to get haircuts this afternoon), regardless if we're only going to be gone for like an HOUR, and in spite of the fact that they've already been playing with J & M for like FIVE HOURS, you'd think we were driving the WAH-mbulance. They sit there and WHINE about how they want to go HOME to play with J & M.

Good Lord! There is MORE to life besides playing with your friends and making a disaster area of both our houses and our front yards and leaving toys strewn across the street between our houses (or at least sidewalk chalk drawings).

I also don't look forward to the goodbyes we will have to endure in a little over a month. It was hard when Z & C moved out of that same house across the street back in October. In fact, it took a while for the boys to even approach or start to play with J & M, because they were sad over loosing Z & C and it was weird having someone else living in Z & C's house.

Movie Marathon Weekend

Yesterday, J & M's mom B invited us to go with them to see Kung Fu Panda at the Sharkey Theater matinee. The Sharkey Theater is a really good bargain. Active duty are free. I think adults are like $3 and kids over six are like $1.50. It's amazing for all four of us to go to a movie theater and pay like $6 to get in and another $5 or so in refreshments.

The drawback is the place was packed. If you're tall like me, your knees rub up against the row of seats in front of you. Little kids were squealing and crying in various corners of the place. We actually saw several of our neighbors there, too.

Anyway, in spite of the drawbacks, Kung Fu Panda was really funny, and we all laughed a lot. Thanks to B for inviting us along!

Rounding out our movie marathon weekend, we watched the second part of our Tom Hanks double-header tonight - The Man with One Red Shoe. This one was WAY over YB's head and he didn't even attempt to watch it. He built a fort out of couch pillows and blankets instead.

ES enjoyed it, but it was a bit over his head and he had a lot of questions. I had to pause the movie several times to explain whether the spies currently on the screen were the good guy spies following Tom Hanks to protect him and make him look important to the bad guys spies or if they were the bad guy spies trying to figure out why the good guy spies were following him.

Two of the less comfortable questions ES asked... First, there was scene with Carrie Fisher in a leopard print bikini trying to seduce Tom Hanks in his bedroom and making monkey noises. ES asked what they were doing, and we told him they were playing a game. Then later Hanks' brother (Jim Belushi) is upset because his wife (Carrie Fisher) is "making love" with someone else and kept saying it over and over again and was really angry about it. This led ES to ask what "making love" meant.

So if you've got young children and you're reading my blog for movie recommendations - I guess in hindsight I'd hold off on the Man with One Red Shoe. (It's still a great movie though!)